May 1, 2014
This is the final week for voting in the board of trustees election, and one of the issues of debate is that candidates who want to revisit the Freeh report aren’t focused on the best interests of Penn State.
Those who don’t want to revisit the Freeh report must have forgotten that the board promised to make the university the nation’s leader in child abuse prevention, research and treatment. While the university has taken many initiatives in that regard, the one thing it has not done is recognized how the Freeh report whitewashed the failures of the commonwealth’s child protection system.
One of the many things it omitted was the failures of CPS in 1998 and 2008 to put protection plans in place to ensure that Jerry Sandusky did not have access to children while he was under investigation. In both instances, Sandusky accessed and abused children.
Conversely, Louis Freeh spared no quarter when it came to levying blame for enabling Sandusky’s abuse on Penn State officials — and for that he received more than $8 million in compensation while costing the university hundreds of millions.
However, the worst thing about the Freeh report is that it drew the media’s attention away from the true cause of the Sandusky scandal — the failures of CPS. As a result, the needed improvements to CPS have not materialized and children are still at risk.
When alumni cast their votes for new members of the board of trustees, they should remember that moving forward leaves Pennsylvania’s children in harm’s way.
RAY BLEHAR
ANNAPOLIS, MD
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