With the benefit of hindsight, maybe I should have done more when I found out a ten year old boy was anally raped by my employee. Also, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps I should stop saying HINDsight.
All day today I have been hearing people defend him. Saying that he “did what was required by law”. And he has said he “might” retire? Why is he getting a choice? Let’s lay some things out. Please do not remove from your mind the fact that this is about a 10 year old boy being held up against a wall and anally raped by a grown man. This is not about a “kindly old man”.
- THE GUY WHO SAW THE GROWN MAN RAPING THE 10 YEAR OLD BOY DIDN’T STOP IT.
- That guy told the coach. The next day. Not the cops. He told the coach. I bet the 10 year old boy’s ass was still bleeding when they called old Joe.
- Joe told “his boss”. That was what he figured he was legally obliged to do.
And he never did another thing. And the rapist kept working there. The rapist kept his children’s charity going, too. And the guy who didn’t stop the rape still works there to this day.
Did anyone ever check on the kid? You know, the kid who got anally raped by a coach at Penn State and the staff and the school administration never did anything about it. At all? No? And now they are considering letting him retire? And people are defending this? Because why? He won a bunch of football games?
If someone came to you and said: “I can make you the winningest coach in College Football history. All you have to do is knowingly employ a child molester and not say a thing when that guy rapes kids in your locker room.” Would you say yes?
If so, then let me come punch you in the face. But if you answered no and still try to defend Joe Paterno, I’ll smash your face in. And seriously. The kid was 10 in 2002. That means he is what, 19 now? Is anyone helping him?
Can everyone who wants to help Joe Paterno kind of stop and make sure all the kids that Mr. Paterno’s employee destroyed have some help? They are still young. Think about them. Think about how awesome it must have felt for a ten year old underprivileged kid when he found out he was going to get to go to the Penn State locker room? Are you kidding me? And then he got raped. So seriously. Stop talking about anything that can possibly defend anyone who let that guy stay at his job or around kids.
Don’t. They should all be fired. And then anally raped. And then probably shot out of cannons. And all the students who went to the coach’s house to support him should get expelled. Ahh, they are just idiot kids so don’t expel them. Just rape them.
Feel free to argue with me in the comments if you want. I have yet to perfect my “punch you through the Internet” device. So have at it.
Had a much longer response to this, but deleted it because I think I’m just most pissed right now that they fired him on the phone.
This was absolutely an institutional failure and I’m saddened as a PSU grad.
Your post is irresponsible in points and the rush to rise Paterno on the list of villains in this instance has been absurd. Not just by you, obviously. But, it’s a bad situation and I don’t want to defend it. All I’ll say is that the only facts out there are from the grand jury indictment. The idea that this was a decision made without hearing from Paterno is also sad.
I looked for you on IM before I published it. The phone thing (which happened afterward) was shitty, considering that I feel the administration is as culpable as anyone in keeping that monster in the company of children.
I’m sure there are a million things we don’t know and never will. But paterno said he could have done more. I agree.
I’m sorry this happened at your school, though.
of course he could have done more. He also put out a statement saying he didn’t know the information in graphic detail and was “surprised.” I think it’s a big deal to learn exactly what he was told and then exactly what he did do. If he wasn’t told the details AND he consistently followed up by asking the higher ups what was going on/were the cops called and they kept brushing him off or lied to him, that seems like a big deal.
Now, granted, Tuesday morning I fully believed there was very little chance that that would be the case after they investigated the circumstances. And, was even OK with them cancelling SEASONS of football, because bottomline, this only happened because the football program and university were way too intermingled. But, they needed to investigate it first and they haven’t.
A grand jury report with very little revealing information on the specifics of the cover up just isn’t enough. If someone wants to burn Sandusky off that report, that’s fine, kind of hard to fake 8 victims. But, regarding the cover up, it’s just a normal grand jury report.
People are horrible creatures. You are aware that it is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of children bought, sold, and traded as sex slaves in the world, right? So if this is something that has us as upset as we tell ourselves it does when something like this happens, then where was the outrage before the Penn State scandal? We’ve spent trillions of dollars fighting a war to ‘protect freedom’. How about the war to protect the innocent children. Did I miss that one?
What about about the millions of children dying from malnutrition, clean drinking water, and shelter? Oh yeah and what about all of the human beings who aren’t children too?
Iodine deficiency is the cause of mental retardation and brain damage for 1.9 BILLION people in the world. Apparently we can send unmanned probes to Mars and operate them remotely for years but we can’t figure out a way to distribute iodine if it will preserve the value of billions of lives.
I could go on and on.
What’s my point? We stand idly by because these things are inconvenient or so horrible that we don’t like to think about them — so we don’t.
If we’re going to start expanding the circle of blame here you had better be willing to ask yourself why you’re doing so little. Anyone with a internet connection and a web browser cannot claim to be ignorant of this stuff.
I don’t care about Paterno or anybody else associated with this situation.
However comments like this…
> They should all be fired. And then anally raped. And then probably shot out of cannons. And all the students who went to the coach’s house to support him should get expelled. Ahh, they are just idiot kids so don’t expel them. Just rape them.
…would seem to suggest that the author is every bit as capable of the sort of cruelty that we’re talking about here — if properly motivated. So I’m confused, rape is OK given sufficient justification? And who exactly should decide what amounts to sufficient justification? Kids are off limits right. What about adult woman? What if they are dressed provocatively — are they asking for it? What’s the cut off anyway, is there an age of non-consent, that is to say an age at which someone is rapeable? OK, let’s say none of that sounds right. Maybe rape is only OK if it’s punitive — is that it? So it’s OK to rape a woman if she’s a real bitch, or maybe a criminal… is it like an eye for an eye thing? Maybe it’s only men then?
Why don’t we just decide that either it’s OK to rape people or it’s not OK and leave it at that. Anything else seems a little… unjustifiable. If we’re voting, I vote for no rape.
Cheers
The amount of cruelty and horror in the world is truly staggering. But my site is not a cruelty watchdog. This case hit home because I have a friend who went to the school (see above), the people involved were so high profile, and because the facts of the case were so egregious.
As for the rape reference, I kind of think you skimmed over the “and shot out of a cannon” part, which sort of implies that was maybe a wee bit of hyperbole?
Anyway this post has generated more thoughtful comments than anything else I ever wrote. Four. Four thoughtful comments. Sigh.
> Anyway this post has generated more thoughtful comments than anything else I ever wrote. Four. Four thoughtful comments. Sigh.
Feels good though right? Actually engaging with people in a way that seems meaningful. It feels good to think that people are not only reading, but actually thinking about what you have to say, and investing themselves by composing a response. Reacting without dismissing — You know, engaging in actual discourse.
We desperately need more of that kind of thing at every level.
That has always been, and continues to be, the real promise of independent blogs. They provide a powerful platform with global reach and empower people to express themselves. It turns out that’s a fundamentally important thing to be able to do. It’s not a question of reaching the maximum number of people, but instead reaching the few who are interested.
For the vast majority of people in this planet, popularity is the problem not the solution.
Think about 7 billion people on this planet, and the billions who have never used the web, and it easy to see that the web and independent websites are incredibly important, now more than ever. The genius of the web is the architecture of the web, it’s loose knit interconnectedness. It was, and still is, utter unique. Today’s social networks are a step back. I’m not the first person to say it but Facebook and Google Plus are more AOL than WWW, in terms of architecture, business model, and terms of service.
This was a pretty sweet post. Too bad it was such a crappy topic. Well, next up, Friday 90’s!
Having a night to think about it, I just want to raise two things and then comment.
1. Joe Paterno says he wasn’t told about what happened in a graphic nature.
2. The person who he did report it to, Gary Schultz, is in charge of oversight of the University Police.
To me, those are important things that at the very least more information should be known about. Neither of those things is addressed in the Grand Jury indictment.
I’ve felt from the start that this will get worse before it gets better. I just want full disclosure, even if it means burning the football program to the ground and starting over (hyperbole! I don’t actually want anyone burned!).
But, with the two points I made above, as a PSU alum and knowing all of the good that Joe Paterno has done, the facts deserve to come out. If they come out and they are bad for him, and most likely they will be, then I have no problem with his firing or anything like that. People want to make it easy. Saying “Paterno knew a 10 year old got raped and did nothing about it” is easy, even if it doesn’t match the released facts of the situation.
How there has been no reporting on what exactly Schultz’s job as oversight of the police entailed seems silly to me. Was he just someone who signed off on a budget? Probably. But, was he someone who would be thought of as police? If so, doesn’t that change things? If Paterno went to the police and then nothing happened, doesn’t that change things for Paterno?
Clearly something fucked up happened at the University that is reprehensible and inexcusable. My comments are in no way trying to avoid that or make an excuse for that. The issue is how they’ve made Paterno the center of all the negativity.
Jesus. I saw a bunch of people whining about Paterno online but didn’t know what they were talking about and because I don’t give a shit about football I didn’t bother following up. Now reading this I’m more than a little disturbed.
First, in general I hate when people opine on court cases when they are not in the courtroom. However, when certain facts are released it is hard to ignore. I still haven’t read an original source on this so I’m just going on what I’ve read here.
1. The University fucked up. There should be consequences for that.
2. I don’t give a shit how many football games you won or what a great guy you are (not just Paterno, anybody involved), if you are aware of something like this going on and you don’t do everything you can to stop it, then losing your job should be a given, and there should be a lot of other things that happen to you too.
3. The fact that there is horrible shit everywhere and people are awful is a fact that I am well aware of. In general I do admit that I try not to think about it because if I thought about it all the time I’d be miserably depressed and I don’t know how I could get through a day. So I do the best I can not to contribute to the human condition of awfulness. To do the right thing and make the right choices. However, given that I am living in the US with relative plenty compared to much of the world, I probably am not really doing enough.
Sounds like Paterno is getting the shit kicked out of him in the media over this and that’s probably just because he the person the general public cares about the most, he’s the most recognizable. Blame should be laid appropriately at everyone’s feet, and they should be treated accordingly.
Holy fuck I give up.
> According to a 1998 study on child sexual abuse by Boston University Medical School, one in six boys in America will be abused by age 16. For girls, it’s one in four by the age of 14.
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7208581/rick-reilly-penn-state-scandal
OK so the old man and the president are out but the one guy who could have stopped the little kid from getting raped more gets to keep his job? Like? How would they not suspend him?
If I were on the team and that guy told me to take a lap I would tell him to…not be a wimp and go back in time and save a ten year old from getting raped.
Also I wouldn’t do the lap.