A scathing assessment of how head coach Joe Paterno and other top officials "concealed" the child sex abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky for more than a decade are detailed for the first time today in the findings of Penn State's internal investigation.
The 267-page report released this morning followed an eight-month investigation and focused heavily on Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley, former vice president Gary Schultz, and former university president Graham Spanier. The report found after learning of the abuse, these leaders rewarded Sandusky with an unusual $168,000 payout and retirement perks without lifting a finger to reach out to his young victims, who were forced to perform sex acts and raped in showers at the college.
"What's shocking is that the four of them, the most powerful people at Penn State University, made the decision to conceal this," former FBI chief Louis Freeh, who led the probe, said at a press conference following the release today.
"The motivation (was) to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, and not just bad publicity, but what are the consequences? Other investigations, donors being upset, the university community being very upset, raising questions about what they themselves did in 1998," Freeh said. "Bad publicity has consequences for the brand of Penn State, university, the reputation of coaches, the ability to do fundraising, it's got huge implications."
The report also singled out the board of trustees for oversight failures and promoting a culture where dissent was discouraged. Freeh in a press conference sidestepped questions about whether the trustees who are still on the board when the incidents occurred over the 14-year span should quit.
Freeh's report revealed for the first time that all four men knew about the 1998 investigation into Sandusky showering with a young boy, and that they made a careful decision after a 2001 allegation of sexual abuse to not report it to police. The investigation included 430 interviews and reviews of 3.5 million emails and other documents.
Freeh noted that the discovery of old emails and "carefully concealed" notes found in Schultz's office were a significant key to figuring out that the men had known about Sandusky's activities with boys and decided to conceal them.
"(He) actively sought to conceal those records. We found them in conjunction with the attorney general. They are ritical notes," Freeh said. "It's an active case of trying to conceal evidence. You don't do that. It's a dumb thing to do. But we did get them, and it's very significant."
The Pennsylvania attorney general's office, which has charged Curley and Schultz with failure to report suspect abuse and perjury, said today that their investigation is ongoing but would not say if Freeh's findings would yeild more charges against officials.
Emails and notes from 1998 show that after the mother of the man known as Victim 6 contacted the university police department to report that Sandusky had showered with her son on campus, 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?"
Curley wrote an email in response to the investigation saying that "the coach" was "anxious to know where it stands."
Schultz, Paterno, and Spanier all later said that they were never informed of a 1998 incident that involved sexual or inappropriate touching.
The investigation did not yield charges against Sandusky, a result that Freeh said he wanted to discuss with the assistant district attorney who was part of that decision-making process. The woman refused to be interviewed as part of Freeh's investigation.
"What's striking about 1998 is that nobody even spoke to Sandusky, not one of those four persons, including the coach, who was 4 steps away from (Sandusky's) office," Freeh said.
Between the 1998 and 2001 incidences, Freeh noted that there was a 2000 incident in which janitors saw Sandusky molesting a boy in the showers and decided not to report it. This incident, Freeh said, showed more than any of the others that the culture at Penn State University was that no one could question or confront the all-powerful football program.
"Take a moment for janitors," Freeh said today. "That's the tone on the bottom. The employees of Penn State who clean and maintain the locker rooms where young boys are being raped. They witness what I think is most horrific rape being described, and they panic. The janitor said 'it's worst thing I ever saw.' He's Korean War veteran, and he said 'it makes me sick.' The other janitors are alarmed and shocked, but they say 'we can't report this because we'll get fired.' They're afraid to go against it. If that's the culture on the bottom, God help the culture on the top."
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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