Saturday, March 15

Joe and Sue Paterno's Wisdom Guides the Search For The Truth

The words of Joe and  Sue Paterno remind us of why the search for the truth is important

By
Ray Blehar

Every now and then, it's good to take a step back from what you are doing and assess the situation.  It's easy to get caught up in the news of the day and follow the hot story.  As a result, you get distracted from the primary objective and waste time on trivial matters and sideshows.  

In order to reset the investigation's priorities, I reread Sue Paterno's letter of February 8, 2013.  The last paragraph says it all:

"Joe Paterno's legacy wasn't a statue, a winning record or public adulation. He was grateful for the many accolades he received but he never believed they defined his life. His legacy is his family and you his players. How you live your life speaks louder than any report. The great fathers, husbands and citizens you have become fulfill the dreams Joe had. All that we want - and what I believe we owe the victims, Joe Paterno and everyone who cares about Penn State - is the full record of what happened. On this point, I know the advice Joe would give. Don't give up. Don't be afraid. Do the right thing. And make sure your actions serve the greater good. This is the path I will continue to follow."

In the interest of full disclosure, I would not be a Penn State graduate if it was not for Joe Paterno.  However, it was the "other" things about Joe Paterno, and not his success as a football coach, that made me admire him so much.  Specifically,  it was those life lessons that I read in his autobiography, Paterno By The Book.

If there was a single thing that Joe Paterno said that changed the way I approached my life, it was this:

“There are many people, particularly in sports, who think that success and excellence are the same thing. They are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success is perishable and is often outside our control. If you strive for excellence, you will probably be successful eventually. People who put excellence in the first place have the patience to end up with success. An additional burden for the victim of the success mentality is that he is threatened by the success of others and he resents real excellence. In contrast, the person that is fascinated by quality is excited when he sees it in others.” 


In the search for the truth in the Sandusky scandal demands patience.  

There are ongoing investigations by the Attorney General Kane's special investigator Geoffrey Moulton and by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District.  In addition, the Paterno v. NCAA lawsuit as well as the fantastic efforts by BOT candidate Ryan Bagwell are sure to uncover much of the behind the scenes information about the PSU BOT and its dealings with the Freeh group and the NCAA.

The aforementioned investigations and activities will reveal much about:
-- The 2008-2011 Sandusky investigation
-- The 1998 Sandusky investigation
-- The roles of DPW, CYS, Penn State, and the police in both investigations
-- The role of The Second Mile
-- The interactions of the PSU BOT, Louis Freeh, the NCAA, the PA Department of Education, and the Big Ten Conference.

The SMSS efforts have uncovered or highlighted much information that the media has ignored or not sought out.  While we have covered the broad base of topics in our investigation, undoubtedly the "greater good" that will be served by our efforts is the rooting out of the corruption in the child protection system, as as a result, better protection for children.

The were many unintended consequences of the Sandusky Scandal and it is my belief that, in the mind of Governor Corbett, the outing of the failures of PA DPW and of The Second Mile to protect children from Sandusky were among those he was attempting to cover-up.

The Governor and his sycophants at the Patriot News attempted to paint the Sandusky Scandal as an isolated problem that occurred on PSU's campus.   We know that story is false.

We know that the PSU BOT, for reasons yet to be revealed, aligned with the Governor and took every step to promote this false narrative, including the hiring of Louis Freeh, the acceptance of his report, and the subsequent agreement to draconian sanctions by the NCAA.

We know that accepting this nonsense of a Penn State cover-up and "moving forward" does not serve the greater good and leaves the children of Pennsylvania at risk.

In closing, I'll repeat the two most important goals in the aftermath of the Sandusky scandal:

1. To find the truth.
2. To ensure Pennsylvania's children get the protection they deserve.



















10 comments:

  1. Thanks again Ray. This is a good and noble fight worth fighting. I believe the BOT underestimated the damage they did. It's not the money, it's not the wins and it's not the sanctions. It's about our family and its been attacked. I'm just amazed how many people piled on our University especially the media. If we Penn Stater's must find the truth, so be it. Shame on everyone else.

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  2. Ray,
    You hit it out of the park again. I must tell you again how glad I am for the work you are doing with this. It means a great deal to me, and I'm sure many others. I wish you the strength to continue fighting.

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  3. Very well said ray ...its about time we get Corbett involved in this lol THANK YOU !!!!!!!!! I am still!l curious as why you and john split up ???? You can't say for a fact the Sandusky was rushed to trial. To be a team you two need to work as a team. I feel u distancing yourself from that side of story , you don't want be made out as a bad guy like john IS NOT AFRAID of. I love what u r doing but seeking the TRUTH means the WHOLE TRUTH whether u like it or not. Keep up the good work ray and think about what I said.. We all know JOE PA innocent but we can only an innocent man isn't behind bars for a rush to his judgment and not JOE PAS !!! THINK ABOUT IT. It makes sense. You need john and john needs you. If you are afraid to have people mad at you, then you are doing this for all the wrong reasons. Look at THE WHOLE PICTURE. I can GUARANTEE there was a rush to judgment on both men. You are only defending the so called good guy so u look good, john zeigler feels different. He is not a COWARD ray! Keep up the good work but remember what u just wrote here !!!!!!!! Practice what your preaching. Sandusky WAS RUSHED TO TRIAL !!!!!

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    1. Kirby,
      No one has pointed out more problems with the Sandusky investigation and trial than I have. I wrote over 50 pages about it in Report 3, however, those problems did not do anything to disprove the fact that Sandusky is a pedophile and a child molester.

      The problems with the trial were mostly a slanting of evidence against Penn State and had little or NOTHING to do with Sandusky. Highlighting crimes on campus over crimes which occurred in Sandusky's home or off campus does nothing to disprove Jerry's guilt. In fact, if the prosecutors desired, they could have gotten the records of hotel stays and trips, pinpointed times and dates, and filed separate charges for those instances rather than using the "course of conduct" method of trying the case. If done that way the charges would have numbered into the 100s or 1000s.

      The fact of the matter is that I have separated from John Ziegler because he does not feel that DPW failed in 1998, that Second Mile didn't cover up Sandusky's crimes, that TOM CORBETT has no role in this scandal (other than being the AG when it started), and that the PSU BOT simply panicked and had no other motivation to throw JVP and the PSU Three under the bus.

      I am PROUD to disagree with every one of John's assertions. It doesn't take courage to side with Tom Corbett, corrupt government agencies, a corrupt charity, and a corrupt board.

      It takes COURAGE to stand against all those things.

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    2. John Ziegler has gone off the deep end. Cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and a dash of sociopathic behavior festering in a cauldron. Add a bit of tabloid Paparazzi. He has done some great work, but cannot put the data together to produce a self consistent model. He insults those who have differing views. I have chided him several times about getting into pissing battles with skunks, but now I think that John is the Lord of the Skunks.

      Yes, the trial was a Kangaroo Kourt and a mockery of due process, jurisprudence, and an affront to the 14th Amendment. That is something for the good people of Pennsylvania to address.

      I now think of John as like the British Colonel in "The Bridge over the River Kwai" who suddenly realized that his engineering masterpiece was about to be blown to pieces. JS has the same psycho-sexual disease that Micheal Jackson had. They loved boys and had no sense of what inappropriate behavior was. If Matt Laurer asked MJ's mother the same questions he asked Dottie, he'd get the same answers and her family would defend her. The Neverland Ranch was just a wonderful place to take 12 year old boys for overnight stays. They don't even thing that MJ was at least in part responsible for his own demise...an evil concert promoter was to blame for everything!

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    3. Kirby Hengst,

      To persuade others of your views on the Sandusky case, you may want to slow down, carefully review the analyses and reports produced by notpsu contributors, and proofread your written arguments to see whether or not they make sense.

      For example: Corbett has been a focus of notpsu investigations from the beginning, certainly not a recent turn. Also "We all know JOE PA innocent but we can only an innocent man isn't behind bars for a rush to his judgment and not JOE PAS !!!". Huh?

      Why should any professional researcher spend a moment considering whatever points you've tried to make here?

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    4. For one reason why there is not only a split between Ray and JZ but between Eileen Morgan and JZ and my own request to be removed from JZ's website and any association with him.

      look first at the link on JZ's site that proclaims:
      Ray Blehar Forced to Admit that Yet Another of his Conspiracy Assertions is False - this was JZ's written headline to a link where Ray retracts a post concerning the employment of the janitor in the Victim 8 case. Ray got information that the janitor was not a full time employee of PSU at the time of the accusation he had seen JS performing oral sex on a child. This would have cleared JS of one charge. But JZ offered information that potentially showed the janitor in question might have been a part time employee. Ray then retracted his previous assertion based on the new found information. JZ chose to present this as "Ray Blehar "FORCED" to Admit Yet Another Conspiracy Assertion is False"
      That is exactly the kind of media malpractice JZ says he despises. JZ's headline links to Ray's retraction. No "OTHER Conspiracy Assertion" is mentioned or listed and presenting evidence that janitor was not a full time employee isn't about any conspiracy.
      The odd thing is that Ray's discovery of the employment records would have bolstered the JZ claim about JS innocence.

      So you tell me ' Why would JZ attack Ray with such a misleading headline on his site over the introduction of unknown evidence changing his view after previous evidence had resulted in that view - that the janitor was not a full time employee.

      Ray did the right thing - he wrote a correction based on new evidence. But JZ attacked Ray. Why is that I wonder.

      JZ also launched a serious attack on Eileen Morgan after she posted her disagreement with JZ's claims about JS. Many people asked her if she believed JS was innocent - She does not and said so on her FB page to people who thought JZ was proclaiming that JS was innocent. JZ then called Eileen "one of the 2 or 3 worst people he had dealt with". That's a direct quote from his FB page.

      Well we here at SMSS have not made any public attacks on John Ziegler despite his public attacks on Ray and Eileen. We disagree with many things JZ now claims he supports. We believe that The Second Mile is guilty of several things - JZ does not. We believe that DPW and CYS failed the children of the Commonwealth - JZ does not We think that while Sandusky was subjected to some prosecutorial over-reaching that there is little doubt he engaged in deviant inappropriate behavior with several of the victims in the case. Naked showering, hugging, touching, and fondling as certainly as anyone can be without actually being there. He was convicted and has the right of appeal. We certainly do not believe as JZ seems to, that trying to exonerate JS will benefit the case for Due Process for JVP and Penn State. Not because we have any fear of taking that stand but because we don't believe in it.

      You are free to think of JZ as some brave truthseeker - but he has chosen to launch public attacks on people who were once his allies because we chose to differ with his views on some very substantial issues. The involvement of DPW, CYS and TSM among them. We could have continued to work together on things on which we agreed but JZ made that impossible when he chose to attack us.

      That's about as clear and simple as I can make this. We are no longer part of JZ's website - he has called us "insane horrendous frauds, cowards, and conspiracy nuts". We of course disagree with that assessment. Even though he calls us that he still has over 60 links to our work on his website. Perhaps he should remove those links but they are such a huge part of it maybe he doesn't wish to rid himself of our "insane fraudulent conspiracy theories" - those are JZ's words about us. We have nothing to say about JZ except WE DISAGREE.

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    5. Barry, agree with the vast majority of the above. Have personally shouted down JZ several times over his antics(tactics?). I vacillate with JZ between fullblown support and headshaking disbelief. The blog entry in question that was directed at denegrating Ray was one that most drew my ire, and I let him know. Nobody is perfect, and increases in volume do not raise your accuracy percentage. Ray did as he should, and as any PROFESSIONAL person would, and corrected an error. In two and a half years, for anyone to not have come across a mistake is unthinkable. Thumbs down to JZ for trying to open an unecessary new front in this fight instead of staying focused on the bigger picture. That being said, Ray and John have always served different segments of this battle. Neither can do what the other does, No one knows one hundred percent of the truth in this case, and probably ever will. There were massive failures up down and amidst every step of the last 30 months, and attacking each other is pointless and momentum sapping. overload us with facts(like Ryan) and the truth will become evident. Save the drama and the screaming for Dr Drew. John is right about one thing. This case does not fit into the 140 character box that the general public has now been trained to consume. Does volume get through better? I don't know, I don't consider myself to be one of the sheeple. I do know that the casual person suffers from sandusky fatigue and is willing to let the story stand as is. Thanks to ALL of you who are not allowing that to happen.

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    6. Thank you pkbpsu89 for your thoughtful remarks. I fully agree that JZ and we served different audiences in this effort. That is why it was possible for me to 'suffer' some of JZ's over the top outbursts that would strain most working relationships for quite some time. John is not the easiest person to work with but that's ok.

      But when we got to the past couple of weeks his open rancor toward us made it impossible to continue. We - Ray, Eileen, and myself - did not want to separate in anger - in fact Ray has a post further down the website announcing the split up and thanking John while wishing him well. We don't wish to do anything to diminish our effort for Due Process for JVP and PSU. But JZ seems to thrive on confrontation with a need for anger management. We would prefer to have continued mutual assistance on the things where we agree. But some of JZ's new positions on TSM and DPW and the nature of the BOT's role are just fundamental to our effort. We are certain of the failure of these groups to protect the children. - and in the end we care most about two things. 1) discovering the TRUTH and 2) Protecting the children.

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  4. Words of wisdom, thanks Ray.
    It's very frustrating for those of us on the outside, not seeing as much as you do of this, to wait for it all to happen. But you are right. We should strive for excellence. That said, I hope you continue to have patience with those of us who only are able to get our info from you. :)
    Thanks for all you do.

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