The Lesson of Hillsborough: Refuse to Tolerate Injustice

“People's views remain tainted by allegations made by the police, politicians and an often hostile media in the immediate aftermath. It shaped people's understanding and played to their prejudices, until the powerful 2012 Hillsborough Independent Panel Report finally blew away the myths and exposed how manipulative those in authority had been.” – Daniel Gordon

By

Ray Blehar

Recently, ESPN ran the story of the Hillsborough soccer tragedy as one of its 30 for 30 Soccer Stories and it is quite accurate to say it parallels the Sandusky scandal.  Previously, I compared the Sandusky scandal to the Duke Lacrosse case, calling the Sandusky scandal, “Duke on Steroids.”  I also compared the treatment of Joe Paterno to the treatment of Richard Jewell, which was also featured on 30 for 30.

However, the Hillsborough tragedy blows both of those incidents away in terms of comparisons.

The Hillsborough tragedy occurred on April 15, 1989 and resulted in 96 Liverpool fans losing their lives and hundreds injured during an overcrowding crush behind a soccer goal during an FA Cup match.   The police blamed the tragedy on drunk and ticketless Liverpool fans breaking through a gate and overcrowding the end, causing deaths and injuries.  The story was not at all true, but the media reported it that way.  Liverpool fans had to fight the injustice for 24 years, until an independent panel reviewed the incident and revealed that police failures to manage the crowd caused the tragedy.

I watched the seven part series on YouTube (before it was removed by ESPN), then followed that up by watching the BBC Panorama Hillsborough – How They Buried the Truth documentary and found many parallels between Hillsborough and Penn State.  To wit:

·         Big Lies:  A top government official made false statements about the cause of the tragedy;

·         Failure to Protect:  Authorities did not employ appropriate plans to protect life;

·         Blame:  Innocent people were blamed for the tragedy;

·         Prior Act:  A related past incident was used to bolster a case against the innocent;

·         Lapdog Media:  The media ran with the illogical false reports by government officials;

·         Official Reports Were Wrong:  Evidence was altered and omitted;

·         Credible Reports Dismissed: The media dismissed reports revealing errors in official reports;

·         Persistence: Those wronged by media and government did not move forward;

·         Unsealing of Documents:  Finally seeing the evidence;

·         The TRUTH:  Results of independent reviews.

Big Lies

David Duckenfield

Hillsborough:  As the tragedy at Hillsborough was unfolding, the Football Association’s Head of Communications, Glen Kirtin, went to the police to find out what was going on. The Chief Superintendent of the South Yorkshire Police, David Duckenfield, told him that drunken and ticketless Liverpool fans had broken down a gate and the in-rush flooded the end, leading to the crush behind the goal.  Duckenfield had been newly appointed as the Chief Superintendent 
and was unfamiliar with crowd control and procedures for big FA Cup matches.   An experienced officer would have delayed the start of the match to allow for orderly entry into the facility and would have instructed closure of the tunnel that led to the area behind the goal.  He did neither.  Instead, he blamed Liverpool fans for the crush. Within minutes of his explanation, the BBC was broadcasting the Big Lie over the airwaves, linking it to hooliganism. The report caused public outrage at Liverpool fans.

Linda Kelly

Penn State: Attorney General Linda Kelly released a grand jury presentment that falsely stated Mike McQueary had “witnessed a ten year old boy being subjected to anal intercourse” and Penn State officials covered up that incident and other crimes.  The charge that caused the media firestorm resulted in an acquittal  - just one of only three acquittals among 48 charges.  The alleged charge of a cover-up was also false.  There is no dispute that Joe Paterno reported the incident to the administration and that it resulted in a confirmed report (outside the University) to The Second Mile (TSM) charity.  TSM was Sandusky's employer and was legally responsible for reporting the suspected abuse. Despite these facts,  the media repeated the AG’s narrative accusing PSU officials of a cover-up of many crimes, which caused the public to be outraged.

Failure to Protect

Hillsborough: Police failed to implement a major incident plan for all the emergency services to swing into action and get to the scene to assist the injured.  Instead, only three ambulances ever made it into the stadium, while scores were parked outside.  Liverpool fans tore down advertising signs for use as make-shift stretchers to carry fans to waiting ambulances.  The first ambulance arrived at 3:15PM, which would later be the time used by the coroner as the time of death for 95 of the 96 fans (one would die at a hospital later).

Penn State:  In both 1998 and 2008, the officials of the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) and Children and Youth Services (CYS) failed to institute a protection plan to stop Sandusky from accessing children while he was under investigation.  Trial testimony revealed that children were abused both times while Sandusky was being investigated.  Also, the highly specialized child predator unit of the Attorney General's office was not called in to investigate the abuse claims in 2008.  Instead, regular state police handled the early part of the investigation until it was transferred to the Attorney General’s office.  Once in the AG’s office, the case was assigned to a narcotics agent who had investigated fewer than ten child abuse cases.  That investigation would lag for three years and at least one child (Victim 9) was abused during the investigation.

Blame

Hillsborough: On the night of the incident, Chief Constable Peter Wright corrected Duckenfield’s allegation that the Liverpool fans had broken down the gate.  Wright stated “the gate was opened at police direction” and there was “no connection between opening of the gate and the crush of people.” The latter was false.  Wright blamed the crush on the “late arrival of large numbers of people.” The next day, the police’s new version of events would place the blame on “tanked up” Liverpool fans.  Wright called them “animalistic.”  The police told their officers that they were going to place the blame for the tragedy on the “drunken, ticketless, Liverpool supporters.”  In short, Liverpool fans were blamed for killing their own.

Penn State:  After Sandusky's trial, former FBI Director Louis Freeh completed an alleged investigation into the incident at Penn State.  Freeh was hired by the Penn State Board of Trustees, who were being criticized for acting rashly when they fired Joe Paterno and then-PSU President Graham Spanier.  Their contract with Louis Freeh specified that Freeh investigate PSU officials and determine, not IF there was a failure, but to identify the failures and their causes in reporting the incident.  Freeh’s report concluded PSU officials knew about Sandusky’s behavior in 1998 and actively concealed his abuse. The report also blamed the PSU “culture” (its students, alumni, faculty, staff, and fans) for placing football ahead of the welfare of children.

Prior Act

Hillsborough:  The media incorporated the Heysel Stadium disaster (Brussels, Belgium) to bolster the story that drunken Liverpool fans were the cause of the disaster. On 29 May 1985, approximately 1 hour before the Juventus-Liverpool final was due to kick off; a large group of Liverpool fans breached a fence separating them from a "neutral area" which contained mostly Juventus fans. They ran back on the terraces and away from the threat into a concrete retaining wall. Fans already seated near the wall were crushed; eventually the wall collapsed.  39 people were killed, mostly Juventus fans, and hundreds were injured.  The event was said to have occurred during the height of hooliganism on the soccer terraces.  As a result, British soccer teams were banned from European competitions for five years.  Liverpool received an additional three year ban.

Penn State:  The 1998 investigation of Sandusky was used as corroborating evidence that Penn State knew about Sandusky’s behavior earlier and purposely covered it up. This was not the full story of the incident, however, as the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare had investigated the case and their agent, Jerry Lauro, did not make a finding of abuse.  Penn State Detective Ronald Schreffler believed there should have been charges, but speculated that District Attorney Gricar couldn’t press charges because of Lauro’s decision.  Schreffler noted,   "It'd be a little hard for them to prosecute, when you have the state saying there wasn't any abuse."  As a result of the skewed reporting of the 1998 incident by Louis Freeh, who used one non-specific (and possibly altered) email as evidence of Paterno's knowledge of the incident, Penn State had its football wins vacated back to 1998.

Lapdog Media

Hillsborough:  The Sun ran with the initial reports of the police that drunken, un-ticketed Liverpool fans caused the disaster.  Police embellished the story of the fans misbehavior by accusing them of kicking emergency responders as they were administering aid to the victims, urinating on the police, and pick-pocketing the dead.

One Liverpool fan confronted the media over its characterization of the fans' behavior, asking “would you do something like that?”  The media responded negatively, to which the fan responded, “Then why would you think I would do something like that?”  In other words, the media had accepted outrageous and illogical stories as true.  The watchdog media had become the lapdog media, accepting the police and government's stories without question.

Penn State:  Pulitzer prize winning reporter Sara Ganim explained that the Patriot News held a meeting with local prosecutors, who agreed using the word “rape” (instead of the actual charge of Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse) in the publicity surrounding the Sandusky case would be helpful to them in their pending rape cases.   The Patriot News then ran a story a week after the grand jury presentment broke, which repeated the Big Lie (anal rape), omitted individuals involved, misquoted the grand jury testimony, took it out of context, and placed the testimony out of order to make it appear that reports of the incident were purposely watered down.  The article was representative of much of the biased reporting on the scandal, which I will detail fully in an upcoming report.

From the article:

According to the grand jury, then, here is how McQueary’s eyewitness account became watered down at each stage:
    
McQueary: anal rape.
Paterno: something of a sexual nature.
Schultz: inappropriately grabbing of the young boy’s genitals.
Curley: inappropriate conduct or horsing around.
Spanier: conduct that made someone uncomfortable.
Raykovitz: a ban on bringing kids to the locker room.

Omitted: John McQueary and Wendell Courtney

Correct order: M. McQueary, J. McQueary, Paterno, Curley, Curley and Schultz, Wendell Courtney, Spanier, Raykovitz

Out of context:  Schultz said he got an impression it may have been grabbing of genitals, but his testimony was McQueary did not provide any details.

Misquoted: Spanier said horsing around; Curley told Raykovitz it was horsing around and inappropriate conduct in the shower.

Had the Patriot News put John McQueary second in the order, as he should have been, then the public may have raised questions about why a person with medical training, told of a child rape just after it occurred, only advised his son to report the incident to his coach.  Similarly, showing that McQueary directly spoke to Curley and Schultz, rather than the deceiving version of the “telephone game,” would have also raised more questions because FOUR direct reports of “anal rape” would have been ignored.  Is it really credible to believe that four men would just turn a blind eye to a report of Sandusky raping a child, when they all knew he ran a charity that gave him continued access to children?

Excluding that PSU lawyer, Wendell Courtney, was involved in the decision process was also a serious omission  in the article.  The argument that a medical professional, three executive level administrators, a lawyer, a graduate assistant coach, and a coach with an impeccable record all agreed to cover-up the rape of a child would have been a very difficult sell.  But that story wasn't written.  Instead, the story put forth in the grand jury presentment, was that three PSU administrators made a decision to cover up a heinous crime in order to spare Penn State's reputation.

Like the media in the Hillsborough disaster, the Patriot News readily accepted the grand jury presentment’s dubious allegations and then continued to report on the scandal under that pretense. To ensure Penn State remained the "villian," the Patriot News biased its reporting by:  failing to report lax oversight of Sandusky at Central Mountain High School and its foot-dragging when confronted about Sandusky's abuse;  failing to report about the lax oversight of Sandusky by The Second Mile charity; failing to discuss business agreements between Penn State and key members of The Second Mile board; and omitting information about the failures of the Pennsylvania government to properly investigate Sandusky’s child abuse and crimes.   

There was certainly no government watchdog in Harrisburg.

The Official Reports Were Wrong

Hillsborough: There was more than one official report in the aftermath of the tragedy, however, both reports were tainted by evidence that was altered and/or omitted.  First, Lord Justice Taylor’s report put much of the blame on the police, but the full story was not really known because the police were allowed to conduct their part of the inquiry.  In doing so, they had the policemen who were at Hillsborough handwrite statements, and then the supervisors edited those reports to remove negative remarks about poor crowd control, poor communication, and other actions that led to the disaster.  Lord Justice Taylor’s report inexplicably stated that the emergency responders had performed well, when it was obvious to anyone who was in the stadium that day that the emergency responders essentially failed to act.  Liverpool fans and the police became the emergency response.

An investigation by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was undertaken because of South Yorkshire policeman Mark Lewis's allegation of a conspiracy between Lord Justice Taylor and Chief Constable Jeffrey Deer. The police federation called the Taylor Report a whitewash and told the press that the coroner's inquest would prove their allegations of drunken, ticketless fans causing the disaster.  The DPP investigation’s report determined the conspiracy complaint was not sufficient grounds for action against Taylor or Deer and it also ruled there were insufficient grounds to prosecute police for causing wrongful deaths.  

The third major “report” was the coroner’s inquest.  That too was tainted by an arbitrary decision by the coroner, Dr. Stefan Popper, to use 3:15 PM as the cut-off time for all of the deaths to have occurred. The time was based on the arrival of the second ambulance on the scene.  That too was false. A third ambulance arrived on the scene at 3:35 PM as an off-duty policeman was administering first aid to a still-living victim.  To no avail, the coroner ruled all deaths to be accidental and to have occurred prior to 3:15 PM.  In keeping with the narrative of the tragedy, the coroner took blood samples from every man, woman, and child killed in the disaster to check their respective blood alcohol content (BAC).  Those who registered a BAC were then subjected to criminal background checks.  The accidental death verdicts were unacceptable to the Liverpool families, who believed their loved ones were unlawfully killed.

In 1998, Lord Justice Stewart Smith was asked by Home Secretary Jack Straw to look for new evidence for which to base an inquiry.  Smith ruled that the altered police reports were not enough reason to open a new inquiry and the matter was closed.

The judicial system and the police appeared to have decided that Liverpool’s citizens would have to live with the injustice and were expected to move on.

Penn State:  The official reports at Penn State went from bad to worse each time in succession. The initial November 2011 grand jury presentment – allegations accepted as facts by the media – painted a picture of a failure at Penn State that enabled Sandusky to abuse an untold number of children.   Penn State officials were accused of a failure to report the abuse to proper authorities and placing an unenforceable ban on Sandusky’s use of Penn State facilities with children from The Second Mile charity.  The Patriot News, in a Pulitzer prize winning story, mischaracterized Penn State's report to the The Second Mile about the incident, providing cover for the charity. The Second Mile was not charged for failing to report and escaped The Patriot News’ scrutiny after the first week of the scandal.  Similarly, Central Mountain High School  was praised for their "quick action" in the Attorney General's press release,  despite that they gave Sandusky unrestricted access to children, were aware of his unusual behaviors, and then attempted to dissuade Victim 1 from going to the authorities when he reported abuse.

Amazingly, no one in the media realized that the grand jury presentment they were reading told a completely different story than they were reporting.  The chronology of the crimes in the presentment revealed that Penn State’s unenforceable ban had worked and stopped the crimes on campus.  This fact would never be reported by the media. In fact, the opposite occurred. The Patriot News ran a front page editorial that implied the eight victims were abused because of Spanier and Paterno’s failure to report in 2001 (despite the fact that seven of eight victims were abused before they got the report in 2001).  The editorial was like most of their Pulitzer Prize winning reporting – biased, incomplete, and inaccurate. That didn’t stop the Poynter Review Project from praising the Patriot News, while chastising others for not reporting with enough “moral outrage" (over allegations).

On November 18, 2011, the University hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an independent investigation into the Sandusky scandal.  The investigation was proclaimed by the PSU Board of Trustees as being full, fair, and unbiased, with no one above scrutiny.  As it turned out, the trustees proclamations were untrue.  The Freeh Report omitted a considerable amount of evidence that would have revealed the failures of the 1998 and 2008 DPW investigations of Sandusky.

In July 2012, Louis Freeh released his report without prior review by PSU officials and held a widely publicized pressconference to announce the findings.  Freeh reported that Penn State officials had concealed Sandusky's abuse dating back to 1998 and that it was in need of an "open and compliant culture which protects children, not the adults who abuse them." 

Freeh had indicted every Penn State student, employee, alumni, and fan for being part of this culture.  The allegations by Freeh were “reasonable conclusions” drawn from scant evidence, but they were accepted as fact by the media.  Legitimate reviews later found Freeh’s report to be biased, incomplete, devoid of legal and evidentiary standards, and full of innuendo.  

Most egregiously, the Freeh Report had whitewashed the failures of the Pennsylvania agencies who are chartered to protect children from abuse, as well as the failures of the The Second Mile charity.  The two organizations who granted Sandusky access to the children he abused, got away unscathed, while Penn State was castigated for giving Sandusky access to buildings -- even though the trial verdicts revealed crimes on campus had stopped after 2001.

Unfortunately, the media repeated Freeh's press conference statements without first reading his report of investigation. An alleged technical glitch caused the report’s distribution, scheduled to occur one hour prior to the press briefing, to be delayed.  Instead of a full report being distributed, the media received copies of only the executive summary.  Few verified statements that they published, instead relying on Freeh’s reputation as the former FBI director as the only "evidence" needed to support the veracity of his report.  The Patriot News’ coverage was a prime example; with half of the statements it reported being erroneous or having no evidentiary support.

Eleven days after the release of the Freeh Report, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) held a press conference to announce penalties for Penn State.  Essentially, NCAA President Mark Emmert repeated many of the false allegations made in the Freeh Report, which was used in an unprecedented manner as a replacement for the required NCAA investigation.   The NCAA’s penalties were some of the harshest ever inflicted, yet there was not one violation of NCAA rules identified in the Freeh Report or the NCAA’s Consent Decree with Penn State.  However, Emmert called the situation at Penn State a case of the values of the University being out of balance, where athletics took precedence over academics.  This statement was absolutely false to anyone who knew the history of Penn State football under Joe Paterno.  Under the NCAA Consent Decree, Penn State had surrendered its appeal rights and had no recourse. 

University officials, as they had after the release of the Freeh Report, urged the PSU Community to “move forward.”  Local media, such as the Patriot News and the Centre Daily Times also urged the community to move forward and not fight the injustice.

Credible Reports Dismissed

Hillsborough:  In 1999, Scraton's book Hillsborough: The Truth was published.  It is now widely accepted as a definitive account of the disaster and its aftermath.  The book focused on the inadequacies of the police investigations, official inquiries and inquests, and uncovered new evidence of systematic review and alteration of South Yorkshire Police statements. The book garnered newspaper headlines for a day or so, but it did little to change the prevailing narrative that the Hillsborough disaster was caused by drunken, un-ticketed (hooligan) Liverpool fans.

A second edition was published in 2000, in the aftermath of the private prosecution of two senior South Yorkshire Police officers responsible for crowd management and safety at the stadium on the day of the disaster. It also included a new section revealing for the first time the events surrounding the appointment of Norman Bettison as Chief Constable of Merseyside and the significant role that he had played yet described as "peripheral" in the aftermath of the disaster.  There was little to no impact on the narrative from this update.

A third edition of the book was published in 2009 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the disaster.  The book did little to change public perception of the tragedy; however, 2009 marked the year that the Independent Panel was established to review the disaster.

Penn State:  In February 2013, a panel consisting of former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburg, former FBI-profiler, James Clemente, and renowned psychologist Dr. Fred Berlin released reports regarding Joe Paterno’s role in the Sandusky scandal.  Thornburg’s account was critical of the Freeh Report’s failure to interview key witnesses, its lack of legal and evidentiary support, and called it fatally flawed.  Clemente remarked that Freeh had not viewed the scandal through the proper “lens” of understanding how "Pillar of the Community, Nice Guy offenders" operate and for not understanding the concept of compliant victimization.  Clemente found the report to have reached incorrect conclusions regarding Paterno’s knowledge and understanding of the crimes.  Dr. Berlin found that the Freeh Report had completely overlooked the exemplary character of Paterno as an educator and humanitarian, instead describing him as “callous” and uncaring towards children.   

Despite the credentials of these individuals, the media dismissed their findings on the grounds that they were compensated for their work by the Paterno family and that they did not provide smoking gun evidence that overturned the findings in the Freeh Report (about Paterno).  Ironically, the media was willing to accept the findings of Freeh, who was compensated with over $8M by his client, the Board of Trustees, yet also found no smoking gun evidence in 
his investigation. 

Persistence

Hillsborough:  The Hillsborough Family Support Group (HSFG) was founded in May 1989 by a majority of the families who lost loved ones in the disaster. A few families met while traveling to and from the Lord Justice Taylor Inquiry, and decided that they should contact every next of kin and form a group. By July of the same year, they had elected a committee and held their first committee meeting.  It became very clear to the HFSG at an early stage that a strong group was needed if a campaign to bring out the truth and ensure justice was to succeed, however none could have ever imagined that they would have to fight for 24 years and face hurdle after hurdle, denial after denial, before the truth would be known.  

­Penn State: In the immediate aftermath of the November 2011 firing of Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier by the Penn State Board of Trustees, the group Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship (PS4RS) was formed with the goal of electing responsible individuals to the board as representatives of the alumni.  Other groups such as Re-BOT formed to work on reforming the charter and by-laws of the board using legislative channels.  The Second Mile Sandusky Scandal (SMSS) Freeh-dom Fighters formed with a similar goal as the HSFG, which was finding the truth and seeking justice for Penn State, Joe Paterno, and most of all, the children of Pennsylvania.  NFL Hall of Famer, Franco Harris, took the lead as an advocate for due process for Penn State and Joe Paterno.

Approximately one year after the scandal broke, Board Chair Karen Peetz remarked that "by the time someone gets here in 2014, it will be a distant memory."  Peetz's reference to "someone" was to the hiring of a new president, and "it" to the scandal.  Her statement only steeled the resolve of Penn State supporters, who have vowed to continue their efforts until their objectives are reached.

Unsealing of Documents

Hillsborough: In 2009, at the 20^th anniversary celebration of the disaster, the crowd interrupted Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport,  Andy Burnham’s speech, chanting “Justice for the 96!” for a prolonged period of time.  Burnham was so taken with the crowd’s message that he stated that the people of Liverpool (Merseyside) should know the facts and moved to have the Hillsborough documents unsealed (in advance of the 30 year limit) for review. 

Penn State: Multiple efforts are underway to get access to the documents that underlie the decisions that were made in the aftermath of the Sandusky scandal.  Alumnus Ryan Bagwell established the Penn State Sunshine Fund in an effort to obtain documents that are covered under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know laws.  In addition, the plaintiffs in the Paterno v. NCAA lawsuit have filed a subpoena to access documents shared among the Freeh group, Penn State, the NCAA, the Big Ten, the law firm of Pepper Hamilton, and other entities.

The TRUTH

Hillsborough:  The Hillsborough Independent Panel, chaired by Phil Scraton, reviewed the documents and three years later provided the definitive report on the scandal, which exonerated Liverpool fans of wrong-doing, identified safety problems at Hillsborough stadium, found that police failed to properly manage the crowd, determined there was inadequate emergency planning and response,  and determined that the coroner’s 3:15PM cut-off for deaths was incorrect.  The panel reported that many lives could have been saved if proper emergency plans and response had been employed that day.

Penn State: There are two ongoing investigations related to the Sandusky scandal.  Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane appointed a special investigator to conduct an investigation of the Pennsylvania State Police and Attorney General’s investigation of Sandusky’s sexual abuse.  The U.S. Department of Justice is continuing its investigation into the role of The Second Mile in the scandal.  Finally, a number of lawsuits are ongoing, including one against former FBI Director Louis Freeh that will undoubtedly uncover more of the truth about the Sandusky scandal.