NCAA FootballPolice Blotter

The Sexual Assault Case Against A Former Penn State Football Assistant Got Even More Disturbing Yesterday

On Friday, we wrote about the horrific charges against longtime former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was indicted on counts of “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of someone under 16, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault of someone under 16, indecent assault of someone under 13, and corruption of minors.” It was clear from there that it was really, really bad, but yesterday, when the findings of the grand jury that investigated Sandusky were released, it got even worse.

For one thing, Sandusky founded (and for a long time ran) a “charitable” organization dedicated to “helping” kids in need called The Second Mile. On Friday, we said, “[H]opefully, their work isn’t, and was never, adversely affected by [Sandusky].” Well, with the grand jury’s findings (and this summary of them – fair warning that as you might expect, this is difficult stuff to read) available, we can toss that idea out the window, thanks to this line:

It was within The Second Mile program that Sandusky found his victims.

So according to the investigation, Sandusky took kids in need, supposedly to help them – and instead, used his power to abuse them. This is awful on pretty much every level imaginable. We’ll leave the details to the report, mostly because we don’t even want to type the specific stuff this guy is accused of doing by multiple people, many times over.

But that’s not the only reason all this is very bad news for Penn State. We also said on Friday that Penn State fans have to be relieved that Sandusky left the program – whether or not he was asked to – at the relatively early age of 55. And while it’s true that every second a guy like this isn’t an official member of your program is a good thing, Sandusky was still around the program even after his tenure as an assistant was over.

He was around the program so much, in fact, that one of the most squirm-inducing alleged incidents in the whole grand jury report happened on Penn State property – in 2002, three years after Sandusky’s coaching tenure ended. Since it happened on Penn State’s property (indeed, it was witnessed by a Penn State football graduate assistant), it was Penn State’s responsibility to deal with it properly.

The school didn’t. Police were never notified, and while legendary head coach Joe Paterno informed the school’s athletic director, Tim Curley, of what he heard after the graduate assistant notified him, the grand jury found that Curley understated the severity of what he’d been told – so much so that he and another Penn State higher-up were charged with perjury. And if not quite calling for his job, plenty of people are understandably hoping that Paterno – the real most powerful person in Penn State athletics – explain why he himself didn’t do more beyond the bare minimum when presented with the then-graduate assistant’s story.

Ultimately, the conclusion to be drawn is the same as what we said on Friday: this is just sad. There’s compelling evidence that many lives were damaged by a predator who set up an elaborate ruse to make it look like he was helping the very people he abused. Then, there’s evidence just as compelling that when presented with one of the most eye-averting, can’t-unhear-it stories in the grand jury’s report, many people failed to respond adequately.

A lot of people at Penn State have a lot to answer to, and some, we suspect, won’t be around for long. But the damage is done. Penn State brass barred Sandusky from bringing kids on campus, but since police never got involved, he could – and according to the grand jury’s findings, still did – take horrible advantage of them elsewhere. Thankfully, the legal process is finally taking over. But whatever the result, thanks in large part to the inaction of some of the most important people at the university Sandusky called home for three decades, it’ll arrive too late.

Photo by Andy Colwell for The Patriot-News