How could American culture grow so corrupt as to value a game over protecting children?

Absolutely horrific. They should have their program taken away forever and sued with impunity.

If true, this is beyond horrific and the PSU football program (and PSU itself) should be penalized in such a way that they / we never recover.

I'm also very aware that this is a claim the insurance company made and that Judge Glazer's passing reference to it did not include any reference to evidence or testimony that the insurance company presented to back up that claim.

It wouldn't terribly surprise me if this were true and covered up for 30 years.
It would surprise me even less if the insurance company was throwing spaghetti at the wall just to try to get out of paying.

Since my wife is an insurance defense attorney, I was dubious about the significance this one line, and what it was. It looks more like PMA is claiming this is true as part of their case, not that it is substantiated or proven.

It could very well be true, and if so, ought to, at the very least, force The NCAA to reinstate all of the punishments on PSU's football program. The NCAA should also consider adding to the punishment.

But I think we should be careful not to overreact to a claim that is not actually settled, and that PSU and its lawyers would argue.

The danger in these kinds of blogs is that a person with a specific point of view will grab something and blow it out of proportion. I think we already knew that there were claims that Parerno knew. But I have yet to see it substantiated. But that is what the courts are for.

Jayhawker wrote:

But I think we should be careful not to overreact to a claim that is not actually settled, and that PSU and its lawyers would argue.

Overreact? We already know that Paterno was a tremendous piece of sh*t who looked the other way why his friend raped children for years to protect a stupid college football team.

All this claim does is let everyone know Paterno was very likely a much larger piece of sh*t.

So the judge doesn't believe the allegations have been proven, as he writes in said document, but you want us to ignore that and focus on the single line. Do I have that right?

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...

Pennlive.com's review of the case file, which remains under seal, found that all the alleged incidents are described in victims' depositions given as part of the still-active insurance coverage case for Sandusky-related claims.

"There is no evidence that reports of these incidents ever went further up the chain of command at PSU," Judge Glazer wrote.

Jayhawker wrote:

I think we already knew that there were claims that Parerno knew. But I have yet to see it substantiated. But that is what the courts are for.

Then why are Pennsylvania's court necromancers just sitting on their hands?

To my post, the NCAA doesn't need the courts. They can investigate this themselves and should. If this is an institutional failure to protect 4 decades of children from rape the school should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

There is no way that a lot of people in that program didn't know what was going on. Sports teams are too intimate for that kind of knowledge not to get out.

What the school learned from this, from the punishment they received, was that hiding the abuse was the smartest possible thing to do. They won. They won huge. They had an excellent chance of not being caught at all, and when they were caught, the punishment wasn't that bad.

Any university that focuses on the bottom line, presented with a similar situation, will do exactly what Penn State did, knowing that employees' personal and the overall University's fiscal health will be best protected by doing so.

Jayhawker wrote:

So the judge doesn't believe the allegations have been proven, as he writes in said document, but you want us to ignore that and focus on the single line. Do I have that right?

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...

Pennlive.com's review of the case file, which remains under seal, found that all the alleged incidents are described in victims' depositions given as part of the still-active insurance coverage case for Sandusky-related claims.

"There is no evidence that reports of these incidents ever went further up the chain of command at PSU," Judge Glazer wrote.

The judge made no statement about the truth of the allegation that a child told Paterno about being molested in 1976. His simply said that there was no evidence that Paterno informed Penn State officials about it if the incident happened. In other words the judge said that if the incident happened then Paterno kept the information to himself (i.e., he's a bigger piece of sh*t than we already know him to be).

Besides that there's no 'good guy' in this legal fight. Penn State is trying to weasel out of paying the nearly $100 million of settlements it has made so far and their strategy to limit their liability seems to be play dumb and throw Paterno under the bus. And Paterno's family is fighting to protect the reputation of a man who sat back and let 10 children be molested (and likely many, many more considering Penn State has settled lawsuits from 34 different claimants so far).

Hell, even the insurance company is shady considering that they added a "single perpetrator provision" to Penn State's policy in 2005. That provision stated that no matter how many people were actually abused that year that they would all be treated as a single incident.

Wait.. the Husband is the head coach and is staying on... that sounds like a complete sh*t show.. Are we to believe he had nothing to do with it or any knowledge either?

TheGameguru wrote:

Wait.. the Husband is the head coach and is staying on... that sounds like a complete sh*t show.. Are we to believe he had nothing to do with it or any knowledge either?

Yeah, that seems suspicious as hell. The release from Penn though looks stupid as hell. "She did so many wonderful things and was such a great coach" which is why an entire grade/year level of recruits quit the program before they finished? Seriously? With that many allegations and that many people speaking out, kind of seems like Penn should have just shut the hell up. They're literally setting themselves up for "we don't see the problem".

It's starting to sound like that school's entire athletics program just needs to be burned to the ground and salted over, then paved over and maybe put up a parking lot and be done with it forever.

It's starting to sound like that school's entire athletics program just needs to be burned to the ground and salted over, then paved over and maybe put up a parking lot and be done with it forever.

They can't hear that over the money.. the money is loud.

TheGameguru wrote:

Wait.. the Husband is the head coach and is staying on... that sounds like a complete sh*t show.. Are we to believe he had nothing to do with it or any knowledge either?

The first allegations made it clear that both Rachelle and her husband were abusive towards the student athletes, with one Freshman nearly committing suicide over their treatment.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

demoted the school president

Who happened to be Ken Starr.

What is wrong with people? Seriously, wtf!

Not sure if this was the best place; didn't want to necro the Steubenville thread to call out another example of small town American values.

I don't usually give content warnings, and I usually don't flinch from putting stuff out there. But I'm going to spoiler-tag the Washington Post's perfect headline.

Spoiler:

White high school football players in Idaho charged in rape of black, disabled teammate with a coat hanger

Unsealed Court Documents: Sandusky Abuse Allegation Was Reported To Joe Paterno In 1976:

[T]he report appears to have unearthed four new cases that were not publicly known:

A 1976 incident where one alleged victim made a report to Joe Paterno.
A 1987 instance of improper sexual contact between Sandusky and a minor that was witnessed by then-assistant coach Joe Sarra.
A 1988 instance of improper sexual contact between Sandusky and a child that was witnessed by then-assistant coach Kevin O’Dea.
A 1988 incident, the report of which was referred to then-athletic director Jim Tarman.

Get this:

The victim, who was identified in court records as John Doe 150 [squicky details removed for GWJer benefit; it's in the linked article] .... and the victim asked to speak with Paterno about it. Doe testified that he specifically told Paterno that Sandusky had sexually assaulted him, and Paterno ignored it.

“Is it accurate that Coach Paterno quickly said to you, ‘I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff, I have a football season to worry about?’” the man’s lawyer asked him in 2014.

“Specifically. Yes . . . I was shocked, disappointed, offended. I was insulted. . . I said, is that all you’re going to do? You’re not going to do anything else?”

Paterno, the man testified, just walked away.

Again, as I said way back when I first heard about the pretty much non-punishment that the college received for this: they won. By hiding all this stuff, they won huge.

A lot of people at Penn State knew what was going on. There's no way they wouldn't; teams are too tightly knit for the knowledge to stay hidden. The entire program should have been dismantled, stem to stern, top to bottom, and the college should have been banned from football for at least five years.

Not, let me stress, for the abuse, which they couldn't directly control. But, rather, for hiding the abuse, for putting the University's pocketbook ahead of the welfare of their students.

What they actually learned from their punishment was that hiding the abuse was the right thing to do. Other universities will have taken note of this, and they will be doing the exact same thing.

I think you are assuming that other Universities aren't already. Or that they haven't been for years...
I doubt Penn State is the first or last. And now it seems being the "one that got caught" has no repercussions either.

If Penn State had been punished with sufficient severity, they absolutely would have been the last. If hiding abuse were vastly riskier than revealing it, universities wouldn't hide it.

As is, the risk/reward ratio tells them that hiding abuse is the correct response. If they get away with it, they lose nothing. If they fail, they only lose a little more than they'd have lost by revealing it. It's a small additional risk for a huge potential payoff.

1976. That makes the whole thing even worse somehow, that it went on that long.

Don't punish the fans, though, by talking away their program...

DSGamer wrote:

Don't punish the fans, though, by talking away their program...

Multiple children being abused over decades is bad, but that tailgater you went to that one year was *really* awesome.

My biggest frustration is that literally no one was punished in any meaningful way for the cover-up. It's frankly ridiculous and screams of all sorts of privilege and government corruption. There are loads of individuals that are alive unlike Paterno that have escaped what should have been years of jail time.

Weren't a couple of the higher ups charged with crimes?

Malor wrote:

If Penn State had been punished with sufficient severity, they absolutely would have been the last. If hiding abuse were vastly riskier than revealing it, universities wouldn't hide it.

As is, the risk/reward ratio tells them that hiding abuse is the correct response. If they get away with it, they lose nothing. If they fail, they only lose a little more than they'd have lost by revealing it. It's a small additional risk for a huge potential payoff.

I kind of agree but it is complicated.

What if this happened in 1967, all the people who participated in the cover up have left, and the new administration really honestly works to stop/report/prevent these crimes? Do we still punish the university?
To what end? They are already working to prevent problems.

farley3k wrote:

Do we still punish the university? To what end? They are already working to prevent problems.

To make such an example out of Penn State that every other college and university cleans up their acts out of the pants-sh*tting fear that their institution will get treated the same way when their next rape/abuse/whatever scandal breaks.

While I thought some of the punishments people suggested here were more than necessary, I also think they let PSU of way too easy. Then the NCAA doubled down by easing up on their punishments later.

I didn't want to see the football program ended. But I would have liked to seen a two year ban on play, and a four year ban on recruiting. That would have effectively rebooted the program.

I think at this point, I'd do the same to Baylor. sports can't be the positive influence on student life it is supposed to be if the schools allow this kind of culture to go unchecked.

And Stanford, Florida State, Ohio State, Colorado... My memory is hazy but these scandals are nothing new. It is endemic to modern sports even down to the high school level.