Alternate take on Freeh report

[IowaFan81]

The fact that outside law enforcement and the district attorney's office investigated the 1998 incident and decided to drop it,but somehow JoePa was supposed to go beyond them and somehow prosecute Sandusky himself has always bothered me.

Then Emmert and the NCAA decided that JoePa was responsible from 1998 forward,as evidenced by overturning game outcomes from that point forward,just cements in the publics eye that somehow JoePa covered up the 1998 incident.....when in fact it was investigated by law enforcement.

I think Freeh's gravitas as the former FBI director allowed him immense slack in drawing these conclusions from a public and NCAA eager for a public hanging.
Of course,with Erickson willing to accept the conclusions without any scrutiny, it made it very easy for the public and NCAA to drop the hammer.

As difficult as it would have been, PSU should have had Freeh wait until the trials were concluded and Schultz and the AD had testified....more info will come out,and it could leave PSU,NCAA and Freeh looking dumb.

I was addressing the Freeh report,and commenting on this former prosecutors analysis of that report.
It was not the wins that mattered,but the implied guilt assigned to JoePa for not doing something after the 1998 incident,after law enforcement and the district attorney had done an investigation and did not pursue it.
I am just asking what exactly JoePa should have done in 1998 after law enforcement dropped the case? Should he have taken the law into his own hands? I want to know why he is held more responsible for that incident than the law enforcement and district attorneys office whose actual responsiblity it is to pursue criminal justice?

Go to this link and read page 39. http://www.thefreehreportonpsu.com/R...NAL_071212.pdf

Then come back and say that JoePa wasn't partially responsible from 1998. They should of at least denied him access to PSU facilities. Not let him use facilities until November 2011. He's not the only one guilty of not doing enough, but he is the most well-known and had the most power of any of the 4 whether people want to admit it or not.

[hoffahawk]

Jopa ran the program the was used as a tool to rape little boys.

McQuerry told him what happened in 2001. That along with the 1998 allegations that Jopa knew about pretty much seals Jopas status as one of the villians in the PSU rape factory.

Please drop this Jopa is innocent nonsense.

Mother F'ing THIS!!!!!!!


Seriously why is it that hard for people to understand?

[SpiderRico]

Mother F'ing THIS!!!!!!!


Seriously why is it that hard for people to understand?

No $hit. I'm getting really tired of people parsing stuff and looking for little loopholes wherever they can. The bottom line is that Paterno was told in 2001 by a member of his own staff that he saw Sandusky anally raping a young boy in the showers. Their response was to continue letting him use the PSU facilities until November of 2011.

So please everyone, just stop with the 1998 bull$hit, or the "woe is me" stuff related to Paterno. Why anyone would try to or want to defend someone who was told that and still did nothing is beyond me.

So can we please just stop talking about it. It's over, nothing will ever change. And fall camp starts tomorrow!

[deanvogs]

No $hit. I'm getting really tired of people parsing stuff and looking for little loopholes wherever they can. The bottom line is that Paterno was told in 2001 by a member of his own staff that he saw Sandusky anally raping a young boy in the showers. Their response was to continue letting him use the PSU facilities until November of 2011.

So please everyone, just stop with the 1998 bull$hit, or the "woe is me" stuff related to Paterno. Why anyone would try to or want to defend someone who was told that and still did nothing is beyond me.

So can we please just stop talking about it. It's over, nothing will ever change. And fall camp starts tomorrow!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. This is a coach, who supposedly had honor and integrity, who "Won the right way". At an absolute minimum, you kick off the campus a person who is seen raping children, and you never, ever let your yourself or your school be associated with them again. They banned an agent from the campus because he had like $400 of goodies for the players with him, and Penn St. can't have that on campus.....yet they don't mind letting a child rapist roam the campus??

This was about protecting the Penn St./Paterno image. Plain, and simple.

[racerhawk]

Parsing be damned.

This was a leadership failure at PSU. President, AD, JoePa. I think grad students will study this in terms of leadership, ethics, cost/benefit, and PR in the future.

I'm not sure I would necessarily agree with everything in the Freeh report, but there is enough there for me to do facepalms a thousand times over.



Total failure.

[DwayneTwill]

Penn State was a cesspool. They got what they deserved.

[David79]

The Freeh report's conclusions are flawed but no one really cares at this point.

[dmackindm]

I have migraines from this!

They are probably from your recent accident. Call your attorney.

[KCRC]

This thing has been debated and hashed over about as much as it's going to and the camps are set and no one is going to move from one side to the other....either you think the administration knew what was going on and did their best to sweep it under the rug in order to protect the program and institution or you think they didn't. No amount of additional discussion or reports or anything is going to change that at this point.

This attitude is the most frustrating thing for me (not trying to single you out, Spider). I have never understood the need to be in one camp or the other re Paterno. I'm firmly in the "I don't know" camp unless I see more evidence one way or the other.

I watched some of the Freeh Report news conference and follow up media onslaught and thought to myself, wow, there must be some emails, statements of witnesses or other evidence that prove without much doubt that Paterno was involved in a cover up. In the days after, I was leaning heavily toward the he's guilty camp (maybe I still am). But then I actually reviewed the details of the parts of the Freeh Report that Mr. Freeh used to reach his conclusion against Paterno (much like the author of the link in the OP) and I was astonished. That's it??? That's the smoking gun that leads to the removal of statues and vacating wins. Frankly, I can't believe it.

Now, I understand PSU's willingness to accept the sanctions, remove the statues, etc. PSU just wants to move on and the best way to do that is distance itself from all of the former guard, take its medicine with the lawsuits, sanctions, publicity, etc. and move forward the best it can. I get it.

As suspicious as I am about Paterno and what he knew, I just have not seen enough actual evidence to know for sure, or even know with any amount of confidence, that he deserves the condemnation that he is receiving.

[David79]

This attitude is the most frustrating thing for me (not trying to single you out, Spider). I have never understood the need to be in one camp or the other re Paterno. I'm firmly in the "I don't know" camp unless I see more evidence one way or the other.

I watched some of the Freeh Report news conference and follow up media onslaught and thought to myself, wow, there must be some emails, statements of witnesses or other evidence that prove without much doubt that Paterno was involved in a cover up. In the days after, I was leaning heavily toward the he's guilty camp (maybe I still am). But then I actually reviewed the details of the parts of the Freeh Report that Mr. Freeh used to reach his conclusion against Paterno (much like the author of the link in the OP) and I was astonished. That's it??? That's the smoking gun that leads to the removal of statues and vacating wins. Frankly, I can't believe it.

Now, I understand PSU's willingness to accept the sanctions, remove the statues, etc. PSU just wants to move on and the best way to do that is distance itself from all of the former guard, take its medicine with the lawsuits, sanctions, publicity, etc. and move forward the best it can. I get it.

As suspicious as I am about Paterno and what he knew, I just have not seen enough actual evidence to know for sure, or even know with any amount of confidence, that he deserves the condemnation that he is receiving.

The problem is that most people formed an early opinion, guilty or not guilty. Then they find stuff to support their position and discount the stuff that doesn't support it. Most people have a hard time being objective, especially about something that evokes such strong emotions.

You are right there are serious flaws with the conclusions Freeh reached because the evidence isn't really there for a lot of it.

[IowaFan81]

This attitude is the most frustrating thing for me (not trying to single you out, Spider). I have never understood the need to be in one camp or the other re Paterno. I'm firmly in the "I don't know" camp unless I see more evidence one way or the other.

I watched some of the Freeh Report news conference and follow up media onslaught and thought to myself, wow, there must be some emails, statements of witnesses or other evidence that prove without much doubt that Paterno was involved in a cover up. In the days after, I was leaning heavily toward the he's guilty camp (maybe I still am). But then I actually reviewed the details of the parts of the Freeh Report that Mr. Freeh used to reach his conclusion against Paterno (much like the author of the link in the OP) and I was astonished. That's it??? That's the smoking gun that leads to the removal of statues and vacating wins. Frankly, I can't believe it.

Now, I understand PSU's willingness to accept the sanctions, remove the statues, etc. PSU just wants to move on and the best way to do that is distance itself from all of the former guard, take its medicine with the lawsuits, sanctions, publicity, etc. and move forward the best it can. I get it.

As suspicious as I am about Paterno and what he knew, I just have not seen enough actual evidence to know for sure, or even know with any amount of confidence, that he deserves the condemnation that he is receiving.

Let's end it here. Paterno himself said that he didn't do enough, that's enough for me.

[dmackindm]

The problem is that most people formed an early opinion, guilty or not guilty. Then they find stuff to support their position and discount the stuff that doesn't support it. Most people have a hard time being objective, especially about something that evokes such strong emotions.

You are right there are serious flaws with the conclusions Freeh reached because the evidence isn't really there for a lot of it.

True

[HawkeyesWin]

I am convinced nothing less than Jopa emerging from the grave and admitting full culpability as an accessory to Sandusky's crimes would convince some people of his part in all of this.

Even then many would maintain his innocence.

[Golfer]

There is some serious doubt about the President. Based on my experience with U admin, I don't think there was a conspiracy, but I don't doubt one bit the current PSU administration jumped at the chance to throw dead persons, and persons under criminal indictment, who are no longer employed by PSU, under the bus to get this concluded more quickly.

Billso's post is a good one. I don't think he ever said what happened there was acceptable, but there are unanswered questions. I think that's pretty fair.

[Billso]

Pretty clear who read the linked article, and who didn't.

It isn't about PSU's mega-failure as an institution, which is indisputable (which is why PSU accepted the report and the NCAA punishment). It's about Paterno's culpability, and the fact that Freeh's summary findings (like those on page 39 linked above) aren't backed by the facts the investigation unearthed.

Read the article.