jerry sandusky
As you may know, last week Joe Paterno, college football’s most winningest coach, was fired from his position at Penn State in response to a sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who stands accused of sexually abusing at least eight boys over a 15-year span. In 2000, a Penn State janitor witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy between the ages of 11 and 13 in Penn State’s football showers and reported the incident to his immediate supervisor. In 2002, a graduate assistant witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in those same showers and reported the incident to Paterno, who reported the allegations to Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. Neither Paterno nor Curley reported them to the police. The University prioritized the health of their football program over stopping a serial pedophile.
The media has been watching in horror as “losing Joe Paterno” has apparently become the real tragedy in the minds of many Penn State students and football fans. Paterno was one of many officials, including University president Graham Spanier, who allegedly knew of Sandusky’s crimes and didn’t report them to anyone outside of Penn State, such as the law enforcement officials or child welfare workers that they were required by law to contact. Tim Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz have been charged with perjury and failing to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations. Last night on NBC, Sandusky insisted on his own innocence. Why, exactly, NBC thought it’d be appropriate to give on-air minutes to a serial rapist is beyond me.
This story illuminates The Institution’s extreme vulnerability for corruption, similar to what we’ve witnessed with the Catholic sex abuse cases, where higher-ups chose to conceal (and therefore condone) sexual abuse rather than take action or report it to authorities. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, another football town, and can tell you that the devotion Penn State fans have to their football program, as weird as it sounds, isn’t unlike religious conviction.
There’s so much wrong here. So many angles from which this situation just looks worse and worse still. Yet despite the endless journalistic fount this story provides in terms of abuse of power, the lengths we go to to absolve our heroes, or the continuing silence around child sexual abuse, Warren Olney, the host of Public Radio International’s “To the Point” show, decided the best way to talk about Penn State in his show was to use it as a jumping off point to discuss gay & lesbian adoption, of all things. Here’s the show’s description:
Penn State’s alleged sex abuse scandal casts a spotlight on the plight of at-risk kids and foster care. We update events at Penn, then look at the foster care system nationwide and current efforts to expand the pool of parents to include gay and lesbian couples, in the face of efforts in many states to prevent same-sex couples from fostering and adopting.
Sandusky and his wife Dorothy had adopted six children themselves and often brought foster children and fresh-air kids into their home. Sandusky founded The Second Mile charity in 1977, through which he met many of his alleged victims. A 2007 article in Fight On State lavishes praise on Sandusky for founding Second Mile in order to “provide a helping hand and human contact for at-risk children and education and support for their parents.” He also operated a summer camp for young boys on a Penn State satellite campus.
During the radio program, Olney spoke to a reporter about the basic details of the case and then introduced Frank Cervone of the Support Center for Child Advocates to discuss how the hell Sandusky made it through the rigorous background check foster/adoptive parents are supposed to endure. The show’s next guest, John Ireland of the Raise a Child Campaign, described the process he underwent with his partner when they adopted their daughter.
Next up was Jerry Cox of the Arkansas Family Council, a group which had lobbied for a law to prohibit unmarried couples from adopting children (the state Supreme Court found it unconstitutional). Cox was introduced on the show as a family values and “traditional marriage” advocate.
Cox’s moment of hell starts at about the 29 minute mark:
Some choice words from Cox:
“Our measure was designed to point the state in the best direction possible and say [they]… have an obligation to put them in the very best home possible. And what does the research show, what do thousands of years of history show, what does common sense — it all points to a home with a married mother and father… I find it interesting that we talk about the Penn State situation and then we talk about other situations where certain categories of people say ‘it’s alright to adopt, it’s alright to be a foster parent. In both of those situations, the rights of the children seem to have been put second place. […]
Cox then argued that this issue was tied into the Penn State issue because both are examples of “the needs of adults are put ahead of the needs of the children.” In Penn State’s case, this is putting football ahead of child welfare and in the case of LGBT parents, this is putting our on-principle-only desires for equal rights ahead of child welfare. Cox continued:
“If you have a same-sex couple with an adoptive child, what you’re in effect saying is that moms don’t matter or dads don’t matter. You’re saying that one of the genders doesn’t matter. And the research is really to the contrary. The research seems to indicate that children fair much better if they are much better if they are in a stable home with a married mother and father.“
This is patently false, but Olney unfortunately does not correct Cox. Nor does he mention all the recent research proving that gay couples are no better or worse at parenting than straight couples. The American Psychological Association has empirically stated that ” results of research suggest that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children.” Cox worries that if LGBT adoption becomes widespread, all the religious adoption agencies will shut down and all the foster kids will end up worse off than they are already. This is especially absurd to me personally — not only is my Mom gay (she came out in my mid-teens), but I have two half-brothers (via my Mom’s partner) who were both adopted out of foster care.
In order to maintain established systems of social, economic and cultural hierarchy, the majority has a sordid history of stereotyping minorities as somehow representing a danger to their most vulnerable members, such as the lynching of black men who were falsely accused of raping white women. In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. As the outrage around Paterno’s job loss illustrates, the majority also has a history of unconscionable skepticism when it comes to members the dominant majority culture doing the same things, no matter how strong the evidence is.
Linking homosexuality to child abuse and sexual abuse is a has been a technique of anti-gay activists since forever-ever. It’s not true, and it’s incredibly undermining to our fight for equality. Gay men in particular are painted as sexual predators unfit for things like teaching in schools or leading Boy Scouts. The argument was used (and totally smacked down) in the Prop 8 Trial by our favorite witness Dr. Tam. Even just having pedophilia and LGBT adoption in the same radio show is remarkably irresponsible.
Listeners did complain about Olney’s choice to merge the two topics and Olney issued an apology last week. It was kinda meh, so yesterday they released a much better apology. From that apology:
With hundreds of thousands of troubled children in need, we thought it was a good time to point out that gay and lesbian couples are often prohibited from both fostering and adopting, even though they can provide loving homes. But we failed to point out explicitly that pedophilia and homosexuality are not connected, and that led some listeners to think we were buying into an infamous falsehood. Over the weekend, we received a lot of critical comments from people who thought that, by discussing both topics in one show, we had equated the two. We respect our listeners, and we want to respond. There is no connection between pedophilia and homosexuality, and we never intended to say or imply there is. But our failure to make that crucial distinction explicit was a serious oversight. We regret it, and we apologize.
[Sidenote: You know, sometimes reading the news it seems like just about every shitty thing happening in this country can be traced back to a group of (usually white, rich) men at an institution — government, Wall Street, religion, corporations, college athletics — who did evil things or knew about other people doing evil things and either participated themselves or did nothing to stop additional evil things from happening. If already-corrupt college football is supposed to be redeeming because it “builds character,” I have a lot of questions about what “character” means.]
Did Olney’s show make the point it claims it was intended to make — “that gay and lesbian couples are often prohibited from both fostering and adopting, even though they can provide loving homes”? It didn’t, because Olney didn’t correct or even challenge Cox’s lies about “the research.” And how fucking insane is it that Cox actually insisted on the superiority of the one man one-woman adoptive family when Jerry Sandusky is straight and is married to a woman and clearly wasn’t a good adoptive family? There are a lot of indefensible and frankly unforgivable things happening here — mostly unspeakable crimes against children, and the decision to let them continue for the sake of keeping the peace and keeping Penn State’s football legacy intact. But isn’t the decision to spend time debating the hypothetical failings of LGBT parents by waving around debunked research when there’s a very real failing on many different people’s parts, supported by very convincing evidence, but they happen to be powerful straight white men, also pretty indefensible?
Regardless, nobody here needs to be convinced that kids have better outcomes when adopted by LGBT families than when they’re not adopted at all. That’s actual common sense.
But perhaps what’s more interesting about this Penn State case as it relates to the plight of foster children isn’t, really, how much better adopted children turn out because of what good parents have to offer orphaned children. It’s what this case says about how much better adopted children turn out because of how much differently the rest of the world — outside of the home — treats children with permanent legal guardians than it does treat children without them.
The vast majority of boys who are sexually abused will never report the crime, so it’s unsurprising that when Penn State was crafting its cover-up, one thing you don’t hear is anyone being worried that Sandusky’s actual victims might blow their cover. But these kids — these kids specifically — were even more dramatically unlikely to report Sandusky.
Why? These boys were young, they were poor, and many of them didn’t have dedicated parents who might have noticed behavior changes or other signs that their child had been abused. Many of them didn’t have parents at all, let alone parents with money and/or influence. The grad asssistant made eye contact with Sandusky’s victim as he was being raped, which means the victim saw an alleged authority figure witness his violation and run the other way. (Although he at least claims otherwise.)
Who would these kids even tell. It sure doesn’t seem like anybody was listening.
“The research seems to indicate that children fair much better if they are much better if they are in a stable home, male mother and father.“”
Is it just me who stumped by this? I’m guessing the word ‘male’ is wrong.
Definitely not just you.
There are a few typos in that quotation. He really says “married mother and father”, then goes on to talk about the importance of having a male and female role model.
Are these people raising their kids in a box with only their parents as role models?
Sometimes, yes. Think about what this means for the poor homeschooled Mormon kids.
Great post, Riese. This whole thing is so disgusting and so horrifying on so many levels.
If I have to read or hear the term “horsing around” one more time in an attempt to reframe child rape as male bonding I’m going to barf.
It just blows my mind that that APA position statement is over 7 years old, and yet the same stupid arguments are rolled out time and again.
It’s because religious social conservatives (as a group, I know individuals differ) just don’t really value science, so telling them that something is “scientific fact” doesn’t have much meaning for them. Remember, these are a lot of the same people who want creationism taught in public schools. They’ll make up pseudoscience to try to convince others who think differently that their ideas have more scientific legitimacy than they do (and they do this not just with gay rights but also other issues, like the complete nonsense about “post-abortion syndrome”), but truthfully, science just isn’t where they place their trust.
“In 2002, a graduate assistant witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in those same showers and reported the incident to Paterno, who reported the allegations to Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. Neither Paterno nor Curley reported them to the police.”
Maybe I’m being nitpicky, but this is a bit misleading. Paterno also reported McQueary (the grad student)’s story to Schultz, who in addition to being VP, is the head of the campus police. So it’s not that Paterno didn’t go to the police; the police Paterno went to covered it up. (One hopes the State College authorities would have done better but considering the DA declined to press charges when Sandusky basically admitted to molesting another kid in 1998, maybe not). I’m not claiming Paterno was behaving as responsibly as possible here, but I also wonder how many of us would have acted differently, particularly considering Paterno only heard a second-hand account about Sandusky which he couldn’t verify, and the grand jury report suggests McQueary did not tell Paterno specific details about what he saw. It’s much easier for us to say, “if it were ME, I wouldn’t just go to one police, I’d go to ALL THE POLICES! I wouldn’t rest until I had DRIVEN THE STAKE THROUGH SANDUSKY’S HEART MYSELF!!” — particularly with the benefit of hindsight filling us in on everything else that has now come out about Sandusky — than it is to actually act in the situation. Sociologists have found people are much likely to *believe* they would intervene to stop wrongdoing than they would actually be to act. For example, in a 1999 study, half of students asked said they would say something if someone made a sexist remark in their presence, but only 16% of students actually spoke up when researchers arranged for it to happen.
I’m sure a dozen people will accuse me of defending a child-rape-enabler for saying that, but I think it is important not to let our anger over what has happened cloud or reason in determining each person’s accountability. It’s right to be angry. It’s not right to be indiscriminate in our anger. I think a better route would have been to put Paterno on administrative leave while the university is investigating how much he knew about Curley and Shultz’s (lack of) investigation and then make a decision about whether or not to fire him based on their findings.
I also think it lacks nuance to suggest, as many blogs and commentators have, that the anger over Paterno’s firing being just about football, or that being angry that he was fired mean you must be *more* angry about his firing than you are about children being raped. That’s incredibly oversimplistic. People aren’t just upset Paterno was fired because he won a lot of football games; people are upset Paterno was fired because he spent 46 years demonstrating upstanding character and contributing greatly to the university’s educational mission and to the community. People are upset because the mob has drawn inferences about Paterno’s knowledge/motivations/culpability that aren’t supported by known facts and are inconsistent with the reputation he has established through past actions. People are upset because there are so many *other* people in this situation who had more concrete evidence of Sandusky’s crimes than Paterno did and did less about it — but no one is talking about those individuals because they aren’t celebrities and it’s easier to just talk about how blind and unprincipled football fans are. It’s really disappointing.
“Why, exactly, NBC thought it’d be appropriate to give on-air minutes to a serial rapist is beyond me.”
There is no doubt in my mind that Sandusky is a child rapist, but we also live in a country that values the principle “innocent until proven guilty.” Sandusky hasn’t been convicted yet; I don’t expect NBC to treat him like he has.
And now, I await the inevitable firestorm of people saying that the only reason I would say any of this stuff must be because I MUST LOVE CHILD RAPE AND RAPE-ENABLERS. (Sorry for the cynicism but it seems to be the pattern on the interwebs for anyone who questions some of the unwarranted assumptions that are going around.)
First of all, I really hate this prefacing of arguments with “Now here comes people saying I’m ____, waaah”. If you think your argument is presenting itself as such, maybe you should check yourself. Otherwise, it’s just a veiled attempt to delegitimize any rebuttals coming your way. And trying to make a mockery of it by making “rape enablers” ALL IN CAPS!1 doesn’t really make you look any better.
Anyway. For the life of me I can’t comprehend this reasoning of “Well he reported it to sooomeone, so at least he did something.” Fuck. This isn’t talking about a colleague who didn’t return a key to the admin at the end of the year. This is molestation and sexual assault. Rape of children. You hear multiple rumours about this guy, then you get an official eyewitness report, and you do the minimum to wash your hands of it? Paterno saw Sandusky around kids and on campus for years after this report and he did nothing to make sure that there was a thorough investigation. And you better believe he knew what was going on because Paterno cut off his personal relationship with Sandusky shortly thereafter.
If you read the indictment and you consider all the evidence that continues to pile up, all signs point to a massive cover-up here.
L, I don’t think my argument is “presenting” itself as being pro-rape in any way — but I am also aware that this is a very emotional issue about which people are rightly outraged, and when people are outraged it is not unusual for them to make unfounded attacks on someone they disagree with regarding that person’s motivations or character. Certainly, an ad-hominem attack based on my motivation or character would be inappropriate and deserves to be delegitimized in advance. An accusation that I’m some kind of monster who doesn’t deplore child rape, for example, would not be a reasonable or fair. Actual rebuttals of my argument, on the other hand, are welcome.
The indictment does not say that Paterno was told that a child had been raped, and Paterno has denied that McQueary told him any such level of detail. The grand jury report suggests that Paterno had been told about “fondling or something of a sexual nature.” As I explain in my reply to Riese, this is obviously still a very big deal, but people who say Paterno was told about the rape, much less “knew” the rape had happened (two very different things), are making an assumption that goes beyond the facts currently known. Also, what is the evidence that Paterno heard “multiple rumors about this guy”? What previous allegation was Paterno privy to? Why would he be suspicious to see a guy who founded a charity for kids spending time with kids, when he had no reason to suspect Schultz had buried the matter rather than doing his job and investigating?
As to Paterno cutting off his relationship with Sandusky — where did you learn this? I’ve not read that anywhere.
” Sociologists have found people are much likely to *believe* they would intervene to stop wrongdoing than they would actually be to act. “
This may be true. It may be true about people who witness or hear about a sexist or racist remark. It may be true about people who witness or hear about a theft of property. It may even be true about someone who walks by a couple arguing and sees the man being aggressive towards his wife. It may be true about breaking & entering. It may be true about fights between two grown men or women.
But a grown man raping a little boy? That’s just about the worst thing in the world a person could possibly walk in on, short of murder. That’s just the worst fucking thing a person could ever do. This wasn’t an ordinary crime, and seriously even horseplay in the shower would’ve raised a few eyebrows for a lot of reasons.
I don’t think when we’re talking about a grown man anally raping a child that anyone who knew anything has any excuse to have not done everything they could to find the truth and/or stop it from happening again.
I’m going to be totally honest: as a sixteen year old girl who weighs 50kg and is about 150cm tall, if I walked in on a fully grown man raping a child, I don’t think I’d have the guts to confront him then and there.
HOWEVER I would get out of that room and run as fast as I could for the nearest adult, person of authority, and/or call the police. And I would expect that adult/that person of authority/the police to fucking DO something about it.
Paterno didn’t walk in on the boy being raped, though — McQueary did. I think McQueary’s inaction is another matter altogether. Not only did Paterno not walk in on the boy being raped, the report McQueary gave him does not even to have mentioned anal rape. Based on the grand jury report, exactly what McQueary told Paterno isn’t clear, but it appears the most detail Paterno was aware of was that McQueary saw “fondling or something of a sexual nature.” Obviously, Sandusky doing ANYTHING of a sexual nature to a child is a very serious matter, but to suggest that Paterno was aware that anal rape had occurred, much less that anal rape was being alleged, much much less having witnessed anal rape, is inaccurate.
Nor is the phenomena of people being less likely to intervene than they believe restricted to minor harms. Famously, for instance, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death within earshot of many of her neighbors, but no one intervened. This case isn’t unusual at all — all kinds of awful and despicable crimes take place where people have an opportunity to intervene or report what happened and do not. And again, all Paterno had was a vague, unsubstantiated account — we’re not even talking about something he witnessed or knew to be true. For all he knew, McQueary was mistaken or had an axe to grind. It’s not unusual for people to be skeptical of allegations that terrify us to believe.
Conservative assholes citing completely inaccurate “study results” as reliable information is so infuriating, I can’t even. Because unless someone calls them out instantly, that information enters the public sphere. Once that happens, it takes infinitely more work to undo the damage, no matter how many sane, rational people call them out using reputable sources. I just… I know this is how the world has worked for quite a while, and I know the best we can do is keep raising our voices and showing our work, as it were. But I still have moments of not being able to believe how incredibly vile and unfair a tactic it is.
exactly
Ugh ugh ugh to all of this. ALL OF THIS IS UGH.
I love how the gay community always gets stuck as the bastard “parent”, you know, the parent that gets blamed for all the bad things.
e.g. (“Oh he is a married (to a woman)& a star football coach, he plays for our team!” “Oh wait, he’s a pedophile! He must actually play for your team!”)
first off thanks for not saying “Penn State students”, because 1. most bloggers/sites commenting on this fall back on that phrase when in actuality there are 20 campuses in all (with well over 50,000 students)and 2. not every student cares about the football program at PSU (when I attended the main campus I always bought a parking pass over a season pass).
secondly, Shultz was head of the campus police (which is a legitimate police force in the state of pennsylvania, obviously not all colleges in pa can say that about theirs) but still it wouldve been better if someone, like Paterno, wouldve made sure that Sandusky paid.
thirdly (to actually relate to the article), I read someone’s take on this whole thing and they compared Sandusky’s pedophilia was a result of his oppressed homosexual urges. I wanted to cry.
also, kind of unrelated – I have a Penn State hoodie that I wear a lot this time of year. and last week, shortly after Paterno got fired, some man said to me “You’re pretty bold for wearing that.” I just looked at him with a wtf-face and said “I’m proud of my alma-mater, thankyouverymuch.”
Well, this is probably the second most horrifying thing I’ve read all week. (Yeah, it’s been that kind of week.)
I don’t understand why on Earth anyone would think you could use this case to talk about gay adoption rights. Sandusky adopted those children within the context of a straight marriage. Banning gay adoption wouldn’t have stopped him from having access to children.
(Of course, there’s also the fact that there’s absolutely no indication that Sandusky is gay, but who’s going to pay attention to that?)
It’s the fact that when the known assaults were being swept under the rug Paterno, knowing no further action was being taken, did nothing that legitimizes his firing.
Everything about this story is mind boggling and infuriating. The judge who let the rapist out on bail was a volunteer at his charity. The rapist continues to get a salary of 60,000 a year. Comparing this scum bag to gay child adoption on any level is beyond insulting.
Furthermore, a child deserves and needs a loving, stable, and safe home more than he needs a “married mother and father”. Ironically and completely contrary to what that asinine radio host said, gay adoption is often putting the needs of the child first. Foster care and government housing institutions for children suck ass but here’s two people who love each other and want to provide a loving, stable and safe home for a child and you’re saying it’s in the child’s best interest for them to have a married mother and father. News flash, there aren’t enough married couples willing to adopt. On top of that over half of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. And the more importantly, why the fuck are you even comparing gay adoption to a child rapist.
Collectedprose, I see what you’re saying, but did Paterno know no further action was being taken? That’s the question. Schultz had the power and the obligation to investigate McQueary’s claims. When Paterno saw that Sandusky didn’t go to jail, why would it have been more reasonable for him to assume “there must have been a cover-up!” than “looks like this terrible allegation against my coworker must have proven false when it was investigated — I guess McQueary was mistaken about who or what he saw when he said he saw something of a sexual nature”? It’s also worth nothing that confidentiality rules sometimes protect the accused in these situations, so “first reporters” aren’t even necessarily able to probe the details of the investigation until everything is resolved, which can take years.
Paterno cut off his personal relationship with the rapist. Whatever the eyewitness saw and reported to him was enough for him to believe he wanted nothing to do with the rapist. So it’s “reasonable for him to assume there must have been a cover-up!” If he doubted what McQheary told him or felt that it had been proven false he wouldn’t have so abruptly distanced himself. Paterno knew that the rapist was still spending time with children and that’s where his obligation as an authority figure on campus comes in to play. When you do nothing or the minum when child rape happens your basically teaching the victims that what happened to them was okay. And you’re telling all the people who knew what was going on or had heard rumors that its okay to turn your back on people who can’t defend themselves. I hope that weighs heavier on Paterno’s back than it appears to.
Where did this information that Paterno cut off his relationship with Sandusky come from? I haven’t been able to find that in the grand jury report or anywhere else.
Paterno did what he was legally obligated to do. However, as a mentor, coach, and authority figure on campus he had more than a legal obligation, as a man who built his entire career on “honor and excellence” he had a moral obligation. As a mentor and coach his lack of action is repugnant to me, as a human being his lack of action is heartbreaking.
It seems foolish and trivial for us to argue about this when we clearly feel differently and are argument can’t make one bit of difference in those children’s lives.
The third and fourth quotes from the grand jury presentment related here relays the sentiment of Paterno cutting off his relationship with Sandusky if you still want to know:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/11/10/on-joepa/
I agree with you that arguing over this won’t help those kids, but I also think addressing the misinformation that is circling around this story is important. I would like to point out that the whole thing being described in these quotes about Sandusky’s retirement happened in 1999, 3 years before the McQueary shower incident in 2002, so Paterno’s decision not to make Sandusky head coach couldn’t have been related. The report also only speaks to Paterno refusing to make Sandusky head coach, not cutting off his personal relationship. Though quotes dating to Sandusky’s retirement in the 90s suggest that the two never had a cozy personal relationship to begin with, e.g. a 1999 Sports Illustrated article:
“Sandusky was asked last week if he’ll miss Joe Pa. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he said. ‘You have to understand that so much of our time was spent under stress, figuring out how to win. That takes a toll. We’ve had our battles. I’ve quit. I’ve been fired. I’ve walked around the building to cool off.’ Paterno says, ‘I’m not the easiest guy to work with.'”
And in January 2002 (before the shower incident), Paterno told the local paper, “In staff meetings, it was getting to be ‘We’ and ‘You’ and it should be ‘Us.’ Jerry [Sandusky’s] leaving gave me an opportunity to get that out of the way and do things I’m comfortable with.”
This whole thing is so physically nauseating to me and even worse because I have a 5 year old son and I have the unfortunate task of having to TRY to always protect him from exactly this kind of sick crime. Plus I am always asking him when he is down or quiet, “Is everything ok? Has anyone touched you anywhere?” And he always looks puzzled. And yes all these institutions can definitely foster this sickness: Church, football, cub scouts. Before I had a kid it would horrendous but now its indescribable. All these guys are guilty – ALL of them, including Paterno. One never turns their back to child sexual abuse, whether its fondling, oral or anal. You Go to he police bottom line. You fire the guy who did it. Thats it. Too much intellectualism blurs the truth and reality.
So, wasn’t Sandusky married??? To a woman?? So children fair better off in homes with one mommy and one daddy even if one of them is a serial child molester? HMM. Something isn’t adding up here!!