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AG: Sandusky investigation continuing

I just caught the last half of a live presser Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly gave to update reporters on the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal. I missed her opening statement, but in the portion I saw, she was very conservative, and very tentative in her remarks. She did say that both grad student Mike McQueary […]

I just caught the last half of a live presser Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly gave to update reporters on the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal. I missed her opening statement, but in the portion I saw, she was very conservative, and very tentative in her remarks. She did say that both grad student Mike McQueary (whom she didn’t name) and Coach Joe Paterno operated on the right side of the state’s mandatory reporter law by taking the information they knew about Sandusky’s alleged assault on kids to their superiors. Whether or not these two (Paterno and McQueary) had a moral obligation to do more to stop Sandusky is a different question. If Paterno really didn’t know in detail what the grad student had allegedly seen Sandusky doing to that boy in the Penn State locker room, then it’s because he didn’t want to know. Whatever the grad student told Paterno concerned him so much that he called the athletic director at home on a Sunday … but then supposedly didn’t want to know any more about it.

That behavior may not be criminal, but it’s shockingly immoral, especially because this inaction left Sandusky to go on to molest more children over the years, if the charges prove true.

Kelly said several times that this investigation isn’t over. A reporter asked if Paterno knew about the 1998 investigation of Sandusky on child molestation charges. She said she didn’t know, because that investigation was handled by university police. (My view is that it is impossible to believe that Paterno wouldn’t have known about that. In fact, it is reasonable to believe that Paterno’s telling Sandusky that he wouldn’t follow in the Penn State head coach slot, thus triggering Sandusky’s retirement in 1999, comes from this.)

The AG said that the grand jury investigation that resulted in Sandusky’s arrest and the indictment of two Penn State officials started when a small-town school district called the cops. Said AG Kelly, “But for them, we might not be standing here today.”

A small-town school district did the right thing, when a major university did not. Incredible.

Take a look at this three-minute promotional clip with Sandusky in which he talks about his charity, The Second Mile. He comes off as a charming, trustworthy guy. According to the indictment, he targeted at-risk boys from troubled families — those looking for father figures, and emotionally vulnerable. Typical predator behavior.  You never in a million years would have picked this guy out as a pervert. I know I wouldn’t have.

UPDATE: NYT sports columnist George Vecsey says the problem is with the way we see college sports:

The horrendous scandal at the flagship campus of the Pennsylvania university system has been aided and abetted by the oppressive status of King Football.

Officials at Penn State did not want to know that, according to prosecutors, boys were being abused by a trusted member of the football family. Perhaps the subject was too queasy for them. Besides, it would get in the way of entertaining the masses, which is what the sport is for.

Football is the central fact of life in the state. When a large male newborn is on display in the nursery of a hospital, people make loving jokes about sending him out to JoePa to play linebacker. Not so funny at the moment, is it?

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