Joe Paterno's family members "vehemently disagree" with findings of Jerry Sandusky report
Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, right, poses with his defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky during Penn State media day at State College, Pa., Aug. 6, 1999. / AP Photo
Updated at 11:17 a.m. ET
(CBS/AP) STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Joe Paterno's family strongly denies the findings of a special investigator who described the late coach as one of four high-ranking Penn State officials who covered up child sex abuse allegations against former assistant Jerry Sandusky.
In a statement Monday, the family says they "vehemently disagree" with the conclusions reached by a team of investigators led by former FBI director Louis Freeh.
Freeh's scathing report last week said Paterno and other university officials covered up for Sandusky to avoid bad publicity. It says administrators reversed a decision to report a 2001 encounter between Sandusky and a boy after the athletic director discussed it with Paterno.
"We are dismayed by, and vehemently disagree with, some of the conclusions and assertions and the process by which they were developed," the family says in the statement. "Mr. Freeh presented his opinions and interpretations as if they were absolute facts. We believe numerous issues in the report, and his commentary, bear further review."
Sandusky was convicted last month of 45 counts.
The family has attorneys reviewing the Freeh report and says it is "absolutely not" the last word in the case.
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(Watch the interview at left)
In 2001, Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant, told Paterno he saw Sandusky with a young boy in the football team shower. Paterno, in turn, alerted athletic director Tim Curley, who investigated the report along with university vice president Gary Schultz, who oversaw the campus police department. Curley and Schultz ultimately decided not to alert law enforcement or child welfare authorities.
Curley, who's on leave, and the now-retired Schultz, are awaiting trial on charges they lied to a grand jury investigating Sandusky and failed to report the McQueary complaint to civil authorities as required.
Freeh's report found that Curley, Schultz and university president Graham Spanier initially planned to report the 2001 shower incident to the state Department of Public Welfare only to back off after Curley had a conversation with Paterno. The three officials then agreed to tell Sandusky "we feel there is a problem" and offer him "professional help." The officials also agreed to report Sandusky if he didn't cooperate.
"I didn't know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was," Paterno told The Washington Post after the scandal broke, according to the report. "So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn't work out that way."
More than 430 current or former school employees were interviewed since November, including nearly everyone associated with the football program under Paterno. The Hall of Fame coach died of lung cancer in January at age 85, two months after being fired as coach following Sandusky's arrest, without telling Freeh's team his account of what happened.
The report concluded that "in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity," Curley, Paterno, Schultz and Spanier "repeatedly concealed critical facts related to Sandusky's child abuse" from the authorities.
"Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky's victims," the report says.
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However, the truth is out, and by continuing to deny the truth, they just make themselves look ever more foolish and callous.
My real question is how did they all manage to discuss and have this deep knowledge of a situation they say didn't exist?
Paternos just say he made poor decisions that regrettably led to these heinous crimes but we still love our father and walk away. You won't do that because you are worried about all that money JOPA left the family and that's the facts.
Maybe Joe should have done more but maybe my ex step brothers best friend should have done more for me! Maybe the school should have done more, maybe my family should have understood what was going on and done more!
This is what happens with cases like this, it's hard to believe someone you know and trust would ever do these kinds of things. I believe Joe understood what was going on in the end but I don't think he did back in 2001, I think he was trying to give Sandusky the benifit of the doubt due to what Joe thought Sandusky was doing to help these children! Joe was wrong just as many people are wrong when it comes to believing someone they love would ever do something this horrible to anyone!
To this day I believe people knew what was happening to me and my sister when we were kids but I don't blame anyone for what happened to us except the ones that did it to us! They did it and they know they did it and they are the ones that have to live with themselves for the rest of their lives knowing what they did to 2 little girls way back when! As does Sundusky!!
BTW the rumors back in the 1990s about child molesters was on the news everyday, many were accused and went to jail when in fact they never did anything to the child! People were using this as a way to get back at other people!!
However, it is well-known that a very large number of abused children become abusers themselves, as adults. One could suppose there's some chance you are now an abused abuser. But this phony letter discloses you to be a zealous faker on a fool's mission to protect those who protected the abuser.
The Paternos are low-lifes and they have now proven that beyond all doubt. Those who defend them are low-lifes and their brain-dead non-sequitur arguments reveal as much.
Educated people who possess a conscience now have such a low regard for the cesspool sports-jock mentality that the sports World will never be the same again. Nor will the Catholic Church, where these same abusing creeps also like to hang out -- because they know the ranking political hierarchy at both places will staunchly protect and shelter them there. So these sleazy, decrepit creeps just love sports venues and catholic churches.
Sports-jocks are brain rot.
But let's be absolutely clear about what the Paternos are actually arguing (advocating). Profiteering Mentalities like the Paternos believe that "ignorance is bliss" and that ignorance can and should be cleverly, strategically, opportunistically 'orchestrated' and contrived so as to maximize 'opportunities' (profits) and to minimize (if not obliterate) "responsibilities" and liabilities. It's a sociopathic corporate America model -- maximum profits and exclusively allocate it to the corp, while shifting all risks, liabilities and responsibilities to others (like the taxpayers). This is achieved by carefully concocting a shell-game conundrum of confusion as to HOW moral\legal responsibility is 'allocated' in the corp structure via 'job descriptions.'
In short, the sociopathic, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing "Paternos" of the corp world want to be able to argue that "moral responsibility" was not part of MY job description - that responsibility was strategically 'allocated' to someone else - for the specific purpose of shielding ME from potential liability.
Our legal system takes the position that "Ignorance may be 'bliss' - but it won't stand-up in court - YOU WILL be held responsible - contrived ignorance of convenience is NOT true ignorance - moral\legal responsibility canNOT be 'shirked' or allocated to someone else." We should be enormously grateful that our legal system is not so easily duped and defrauded. But we should also be profoundly ALARMED that the greed of the corp mentality is so militantly determined to undermine and decimate the regulations, laws and rules that hold them responsible.
Read the investigation report buddy. Joe Paterno was the person who convinced others to cover up.
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Freeh's report found that Curley, Schultz and university president Graham Spanier initially planned to report the 2001 shower incident to the state Department of Public Welfare only to back off after Curley had a conversation with Paterno. The three officials then agreed to tell Sandusky "we feel there is a problem" and offer him "professional help." The officials also agreed to report Sandusky if he didn't cooperate.
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NOBODY knows what that "conversation" was about. Joe Paterno would have wanted to protect those victims but ALSO would have needed proof before making accusations.
In his own words: "I didn't know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was," Paterno told The Washington Post after the scandal broke, according to the report. "So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did." So where do you get off saying that Joe was the one who did any "convincing"?????? BS!
Curley, Schultz and university president Graham Spanier had probably already talked amongst themselves about trying to save the school's reputation. I still think the "godfathers" of the school are to blame but not Joe Paterno. And most of all "McQueery", who should have actually DONE SOMETHING since HE was a witness.