When the news of the Sandusky charges and grand jury presentment were released, the public believed that Mike McQueary reported a rape to Joe Paterno. Instead of interviewing McQueary and finding out what he actually said, the PSU BOT put its trust in a one-sided prosecutorial document.
By
Ray Blehar
The most frustrating thing about the Sandusky scandal and its affect on Penn State is that the entire situation could have been avoided if our BOT had conducted just one interview. If on Saturday, November 5th or any other following day, had they reached out to Mike McQueary to find out what he actually told Joe Paterno in February 2001, the course of history could have been changed.
Instead of interviewing McQueary, the PSU BOT put its trust in the Sandusky grand jury presentment. This was quite an astonishing thing, considering numerous members of the BOT had legal degrees and obviously knew that a grand jury presentment is a one-sided prosecutorial document containing summaries of testimony. Even those who were not lawyers on the Board at the time deserve no reprieve for not understanding what a presentment was -- it was one google search away.
To be clear, the grand jury presentment didn't contain not a single quote from Mike McQueary. It also did not report any quotes from Joe Paterno.
Conversely, it contained partial and full quotes from Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, and Graham Spanier, none of whom stated that a rape or anything sexual was reported to them by McQueary.
So on one side, there were no quotes from Paterno and McQueary, who were said to have reported something of a sexual nature and sexual intercourse, respectively. On the other side, Curley, Schutlz, and Spanier were all quoted and among those quotes were "inappropriate conduct," "horsing around," and "disturbing." Obviously, there was a gap here between the two parties that required some explanation.
That explanation didn't come until December 16, 2011, when Mike McQueary testified that the preliminary hearing of Curley and Schultz. It was then that the world found out that he had "never used the words anal or rape in this -- since day one." McQueary also stated he never used the term "sodomy" with Coach Paterno. He then stated he didn't see Sandusky's genitals touching the boy. Similarly, McQueary testified that he did not use those specific terms with Curley and Schultz and was often uncertain (using the term, "I would have told them") about what he actually said.
Those very facts could have been used by the PSU BOT in a statement defending University employees Curley and Schultz against the perjury charges and challenging the veracity of the criminal allegations against contained in the grand jury presentment.
The course of history could have been changed.
But rather than gather facts (according to John Surma, the BOT didn't conduct a legal review), the 11/9/11 BOT just went along with a presentment that has, like the Freeh Report, been severely discredited by the information that has come forth since then.
The bottom line is that the 11/9/11 BOT not only didn't act responsibly when faced with some of the most serious allegations in the school's history -- they did less than the absolute minimum.
With no connections to PSU and no awareness of Joe Paterno, even, the McQueary/ Sandusky story caught my attention in early Nov 2011 and has not yet let go.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the riveting investigations being reported via notpsu and framingpaterno, I will never understand how ANYONE connected with PSU and its community could not likewise be following every line of inquiry. If only in a basic attempt to understand how the Mike McQueary incident was able to 1) happen, and 2) bring down a highly regarded university and coach.
Do so many people really lack the fundamental curiosity to try to make sense of something terrible that has happened in their own backyard? That lack of curiosity would have likely cost their ancient ancestors their lives.