Former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno and other top university officials acted with "total disregard" for the children sexually abused by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky to avoid "bad publicity," the university's internal investigation concluded in a report today.
The report was released at the conclusion of the investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was hired to find out why officials who knew of child molestation accusations failed to stop Sandusky or report him to police. The college's board of trustees came under fire as well for oversight failures and a culture of discouraging questions and dissent.
The report said that Paterno, along with officials Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, and former president Graham Spanier, "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities," and it blamed those four men for failing to stop Sandusky and protect other children from his harm.
Read the full Freeh report.
The four officials showed a "striking lack of empathy" for the victims of Sandusky's abuse and empowered the coach to continue abusing, the report said.
"The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky's victims until after Sandusky's arrest," the report read.
Joe Paterno's Family Denies Role in Sandusky Cover Up
Watch Video Emails released in the report show that all of the top officials in question were aware of Sandusky's showering young boys as far back as 1998, and had concerns then that it bordered on sexual abuse and could yield other victims.
In that year, the mother Victim 6 contacted the university police department to report that Sandusky had showered with her son on campus. In response to the police investigation, Schultz notified Spanier and Curley of the incident and wrote in his notes that it was "at best inappropriate, @ worst sexual improprieties." He asked: "Is this the opening of Pandora's box? Other children?"
The investigation, however, did not yield charges, with the university police chief writing in an email that he could "justify that decision because of the lack of clear evidence of a crime." The emails show that Paterno was notified of and involved in the 1998 investigation, and was "anxious to know where it stands."
A year after that investigation, Sandusky retired from coaching at Penn State, a decision that was entirely his own, according to the report. Despite speculation that Paterno had pushed Sandusky out because of the 1998 investigation, the report shows that Paterno actually told Sandusky he could continue coaching as long as Paterno was head coach of Penn State. Sandusky chose to resign instead.
Paterno even worked to get Sandusky a special $168,000 payment and emeritus status at the university, which allowed him full access to all its facilities even though a provost had said that Sandusky's low academic position didn't warrant the perk.
The officials' reactions to the 1998 allegations against Sandusky are mirrored by the reactions to the 2001 report, in which Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier are informed of that graduate assistant Mike McQueary saw Sandusky in the shower with a young boy on campus. McQueary has said he made it clear to each official that something of a sexual nature was going on in the shower.
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