Yesterday, Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, released the report of his investigation into the Penn State scandal. Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach under the legendary Joe Paterno, was convicted last month of 45 charges related to his abuse of young boys, and Freeh was retained by the university’s board of trustees to find out exactly what happened and why.
Freeh’s report is scathing. The front page of this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed in the largest headline typeface I’ve ever seen:
DAMNING
JUDGMENTÂ
Under the headline were the photos of the four Pennsylvania State University officials who the report says enabled, through their inaction, Jerry Sandusky to abuse young boys: President Graham B. Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and yes, Joe Paterno. The Inquirer reported:
Joe Paterno, former Pennsylvania State University president Graham B. Spanier, and other top administrators conspired for more than a decade to keep quiet sex-abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky, according to the findings of an internal investigation released Thursday.
Fearing bad publicity, the head football coach and the president, along with athletic director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, a former vice president in charge of campus police, “repeatedly concealed critical facts” and exhibited a “callous disregard for child victims,” enabling the former assistant football coach to prey on boys for years, said Louis Freeh, a former FBI director commissioned last year to lead the investigation.
“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh said at a news conference Thursday in Philadelphia. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect children whom Sandusky victimized.”
Multiple times, while reading the news coverage, I gasped. Even after years of writing about people’s extreme capacity for evil, and the ability of institutions and individuals to turn a blind eye, I found some of the revelations to be shocking.
Read: Louis Freeh report: Joe Paterno, Penn State officials conspired for silence, on Philly.com.
If you want to read the full report, the Inquirer has an interesting annotated version of it online:
Giant sucker
When Sandusky was convicted—on the same day that a Catholic Church official was convicted of failing to protect children—I wrote about the real value of the verdicts: They were a warning that big, powerful institutions could no longer sacrifice the innocents to protect their reputations.
Here is the real value of the Freeh report: Millions of people now know what it feels like to be hoodwinked, deceived, betrayed, and to have their ideals shattered—just like all of us have experienced with sociopaths.
All those fawning football fans of “Nittany Nation.” All those Penn State students who rioted when Joe Paterno was fired. All those alumni who were furious at the board of trustees for the impersonal way that they cut the coach loose. All those people who believed in Joe Paterno’s motto, “Success with Honor.” Today, they are all sick to their stomachs.
Here’s what Stewart Mandel, a Sports Illustrated blogger, wrote:
Today, I feel like a giant sucker.
Amid the media firestorm that followed the release of the Jerry Sandusky Grand Jury report last November when it seemed like every columnist, blogger and talking head in the country was racing to see who could get the angriest; when Joe Paterno morphed from coaching legend to devil incarnate in the course of a bye week; when all manner of Penn State cover-up allegations skipped straight past conspiracy theory to universally accepted fact I took a cautious stance. While the charges against Sandusky were indisputably vile, the details of how Paterno and Penn State administrators handled Sandusky over the years were still vague and incomplete. Surely more information would provide some sensible explanation for why Sandusky was not apprehended sooner; surely the leaders of an esteemed university could not be so nakedly negligent and sinister.
The facts came out Thursday in the meticulously sourced Freeh Report, and boy do I feel naïve. It turns out what really happened was even worse than the most caustic cynics could have imagined.
Here’s what Gene Wojciechowski wrote on ESPN.go.com:
Joe lied. It’s that simple. And that heartbreaking.
Joe Paterno, who for so many decades represented all that was good and honorable in college athletics, lied. Through his teeth.
Even I wanted to believe—six months ago, I wrote an article postulating that maybe Joe Paterno really didn’t know what Sandusky was doing, that he couldn’t conceive of such evil in his midst. Obviously, I was wrong.
And here’s what the Penn State student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, wrote:
We put our faith in these men. We put our faith in our university. Others did the same.
But, as it’s becoming painfully clear, so much of this mess was allowed to continue because too many people clung to the belief that individuals and institutions were idyllic so much so that they were either blinded to the mistakes right in front of them or flat-out refused to deal with the ones that were brought to their attention.
And that weight that we’re collectively carrying now, with the wake-up call provided by the fallout since last autumn and the report issued this week, is largely a lesson in the dangers of blind faith.
View of the world is shattered
Emotionally, the horrified Penn State faithful are experiencing what we’ve all experienced in our interactions with sociopaths.
The most crushing aspect of tangling with these predators is how, once it ends, once we are devalued and discarded, once we learn the truth—that they never loved us and it was all a scam—our entire view of the world is shattered.
We cannot conceive that someone who continually professed undying love was lying through his or her teeth. We cannot believe that the sociopath may very well get away with all the abuse committed against us. We feel like we can never trust again, and the world as we knew it is gone.
The idyllic “Happy Valley” of Penn State is gone. But perhaps the Nittany Nation, and people in general, can grow from the disillusionment, as we have grown from the betrayals that we experienced. With healing, it’s possible to replace idealism and naïveté with perception and wisdom.  That would be good for all of us.
Sadly, Donna, I don’t think much will be changed in the long run.
That hasn’t been my experience with Ps. They continue to get away with things and they continue to be believed. People just don’t care. It’s somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s issue. And then there are the fencesitters.
This might take a little longer to fade away than other stories, but my guess is that people are going to use Penn State as a scapegoat to avoid any focus being put on them.
Penn State now becomes the “as bad as” standard for organizations which will undoubtedly claim, to deflect focus off of themselves, “But we’re not as bad as Penn State. That was really bad.”
My hope doesn’t lie with schools and other organizations coming clean. They risk lawsuits. It’s a financial matter for them, just like this was ultimately a financial issue for Penn State.
My hope lies with parents who will become relentless about demanding investigations and answers.
It’s like that case in LA were there are three lawsuits of various parents against the school system for not going after a sex abuser in an elementary school. The latest lawsuit was made up of 14 parents.
The US now has a corporation vs. the little guy society. Corporations are going to duck and hide and continue to focus on making money and keeping what they have. To beat those Goliaths, the Davids of the world are going to need to speak up and not let up on demanding investigations and explanations.
For the record, I was very wrong about this report. I honestly thought it was going to be self-serving and whitewash Penn State’s involvement.
Never in my life have I ever been so happy and delighted with being so wrong.
Thank you Donna, for having the guts to say, “I was wrong.”
You are our leader against spaths and yet, even you didn’t want to believe that Paterno could have chosen Sandusky over the child-victims.
It takes a strong stomach to see the red flags and just admit that they are what they are.
I think the book, “Mistakes Were Made, But not by me. Why we justify foolish beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts.” is the most important book we can read. If people who have been conned, had their lives turned upside down, study spaths day and night, dedicate their lives to this fight against spaths… can be conned AGAIN, then we have more work to do. The work is on OURSELVES.
Personally, I believe that Paterno lied to HIMSELF and believed his own lies because he had to. He was in complete cog/diss. He KNEW what he did wrong and he continued to justify it. This is exactly what spaths do. They feel entitled to hurt others. The only difference is that Paterno didn’t see himself as evil. The spaths I’ve known do realize they are evil. They told me so. My own little spath sis said that it’s, “ok, to be evil, everyone is evil.”
Until we, the victims, can put aside our rose colored glasses forever, we are vulnerable. We have to use those red flags, not just talk about them.
Donna, thank you for this article – it is, indeed, pathetic that a conspiracy was uncovered. Now, that’s not to say that these people got together in a Boardroom and discussed how to continue to throw lambs to the wolf without rocking the proverbial boat, but who knows? When it comes to ATHLETICS in ANY school – high school OR collegiate – it’s the “integrity” of the reputation of the PROGRAM that comes first, and foremost. NOT the true integrity of the institution, as a whole.
This has been going on for as long as mankind has sent their children off to be educated. Whether in the Boy Scouts or wilderness programs or universities. Whenever there is an opportunity, predators will pounce and enablers will shift into overdrive to conduct damage control. After all, if we do away with someone with a “winning record,” we won’t fill our stadiums and garner huge contributions and bequeathments from wealthy alumnii.
What Penn State supporters are now experiencing is just a nan0o-fraction of what spath victims feel across the Globe. NOW is the time to wake the world the fark UP about sociopathic predators.
Paterno and the rest not only experienced cog/diss, but they FED that nasty monkey in the name of the athletic program – not even an academic program, but a violent game that spawns and cultivates spath behaviors in its participants! I have NO pity for those men who are now standing in front of the world, NAKED and COVERED IN MAYONAISE.
Wake up, world! Even “great institutions” are frought with predators, and they are subject to the same consequences for their inaction.
I can’t wait for the day when everyone figures out that it’s cheaper to fold your cards and throw the spath under the bus.
Jayzus criminy………FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!! In nearly every case, simply follow the stinking money.
Holy cow, if it’s that easy to excuse culpability and get MONEY from it at the same time, no wonder spaths skip away from their victims so easily! Next mess, please? Next potential mess in line, please step up!
Morning Truth,
Fine, follow the money. If his estate got 5.5 million, that will fit nicely in the lawsuits the victims file against the culprits.
How will the victims split that private plane use? LOL.
Skylar, maybe they’ll set up a schedule to use the private plane to get them to their THERAPISTS APPOINTMENTS to help them recover from their experiences?!
(snarl, hiss, spit) This SO pisses me off….
I can’t imagine hundreds and hundreds of people of Penn state walking around in cog/diss. I hope they wake up and truly realize what happened. Lawdy!
Ana,
yeah, cog/dis is what people experience when facing the truth means accepting a huge loss of what they BELIEVED was real.
Often, it means losing a source of money, too.
No, they won’t wake up. People don’t come out of cog/diss easily. It took me 25 years and only happened because my life was on the line.
I imagine some people may not want to believe the truth, but many, many of them are outraged at the betrayal. I listened to Philadelphia sports talk radio yesterday morning, and the host was practically apoplectic, as were all the callers. My husband has the radio on now, and people are still raging.
Here’s another article from yesterday’s Inquirer, about the response on campus:
On campus, mixed reactions, but concern
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20120712_On_campus__mixed_reactions__but_concern.html
I think the Penn State scandal may actually have more of an effect than the Church scandal – possibly because it is so focused, with a clear villain and clean enablers.