C: The Part of the Freeh Report I”m Not Buyin’

Good, job, Louis Freeh!  He was hired by Penn State to do an investigation, and he has not spared his employers.  Freeh has released the results of his Penn State investigation.  It seems that all the “higher ups” who knew that Jerry Sandusky was sexually molesting young children knew about it fourteen years.  Fourteen Years! Yes, Fourteen Years.

During those fourteen years, these fellas saw Sandusky most every day (Freeh said that Sandusky’s offices was “steps away” from Paterno’s office).  These tough guys stood by and watched as Sandusky was honored by politicians and service organizations for his wonderful work with youth (some awards recently rescinded), they attended sports banquets and functions with this man.

I ask you: Could you so much as shaken his hand knowing that he was raping young boys?  Ewwwww—wouldn’t you have wanted to scrub up if you did? 

Could you have slept at night knowing that he had done such a thing and was daily being provided a fresh slate of young, innocent victims whose impoverished mothers were gratefully entrusting their young ones to this “great” icon in hopes of a better life for their child? 

It is, for sure, a scandal that a pedophile was on the prowl, but we know that they walk among us.  We recognize that these monsters exist.  The news alerts us to this.  The real scandal here is the circle of silence by seemingly responsible men in authority who allowed this to go on for fourteen years.  For what?

And, Freeh says in the report, they showed NO concern for these little victims.

It is a given that Sandusky is a sicko; now the sickness of the entire Penn State staff is exposed, Paterno included.  (Yes, take the statue down; he is unworthy of any honor).

The one part of the Freeh report I disagree with is his conclusion that this cover up was done to protect the football program.  According to Freeh, these athletic/university leaders did not want to damage the lucrative football program at Penn State. 

Had they followed the law and blown the whistle on this guy, what could they have expected to lose? A couple of years set-back, maybe, by exposing a child molester among them? Penn State’s athletics program would have recovered in short order.

And, by the way, what is the price of their integrity if money is the reason?

If “protecting the program” was their goal, they surely knew that Sandusky was a ticking time bomb.  Since they decided not to do the moral thing have this guy arrested, then wouldn’t it have been better “protection” to just shuffle him off somewhere else (ala Catholic church) by firing him or forcing resignation?  Wouldn’t you have wanted to remove the looming threat if protection of the program was your goal?  Then when the bomb burst you might say you didn’t know when he was at Penn and, hopefully, it would be too long in the offing to be proven otherwise.

Nope.  I’m not buying the program protection story.  This was the Bro-Code in action, as I posted the other day.   This was men protecting one of their own—their golfing buddy, their co-worker, one of their circle.  Some men will protect a brother no matter how sick he may be.

Men standing by, knowing of sexual sickness, watching him gather accolades and build his “charity” which turns out to be harvest ground for his perversion. 

Yes, they stood by -

Watching kids enter his clutches.

Knowing what he was doing.

Probably dreading that this would explode.  But, nevertheless,

Protecting.

But it was not the program they were protecting, it was a Brother.

You’ll never convince me otherwise.  C.

PS – and I bet their wives knew nothing—I bet none of them went home and said, “Sandusky’s diddling kids…”  Is there a wife out there now looking at her Penn-State-Staff husband with new eyes, saying "You KNEW about this?" or, worse yet, "We let our boy go play over there!" Whaddaya think?