Governor Corbett Responds to Child Protection Questions

Governor Corbett now advocates an independent Office of Child Advocate that was stonewalled by DPW and The PA Task Force on Child Protection.

Cathleen Palm

To

contact@c4cj.org

Friends of Children:

Late last night, Governor Tom Corbett’s campaign staff provided his responses to the 12 child protection questions shared with him and Mr. Wolf on September 3rd. 

Upon receiving the Governor’s responses last night, I outreached to the senior policy staff for Mr. Wolf and they responded that he also intends to answer the questions. 

It is heartening that we are half way there for PA’s at-risk and abused children.  It will be great to soon share Mr. Wolf’s responses as well! 

Before sending Governor Corbett’s responses, I did ask his campaign to place his answers on his letterhead so that it was clear that the answers were his.  I just received the updated document on Corbett letterhead and am sharing it with you now. 

Governor Corbett’s responses provide a positive reflection on his service in law enforcement.  Also pride is evident that, as Governor, he signed 20+ pieces of child protection legislation put on his desk over the last year, including dedicated funding for children’s advocacy centers (CACs).   While he technically answered all the questions, he remained silent on any actionable plan to reduce child abuse fatalities and near-fatalities and in outlining specific strategies to improve the safety and well-being of young children birth to age three.  He indicates that in a second term he will support: 

1.      Evidence-based prevention programs and services by directing a portion of the fees, paid by potential employees/volunteers for criminal and child abuse background checks, into prevention services/programs. 

2.      Independent auditing of ChildLine – the state’s child abuse reporting hotline – to analyze staffing trends and the implementation of modern technology.

3.      Legislation establishing an independent Child Protection Advocate (he notes it is his “belief” that such an office “would require legislative authorization”).  He writes that a Child Protection Advocate “will serve a critical function in coordinating and implementing child protection programs across agencies.” 

4.      Changes to the criminal and civil statute of limitations (SOLs) in child sexual abuse cases. 

By way of background, both #3 and #4 were issues that the Task Force on Child Protection, which was chaired by the Governor’s appointee intentionally opted against addressing.  Legislation on both fronts (Child Protection Advocate and SOL reform) have been introduced in the current legislative session.  

The independent Child Protection Advocate effort, via legislation sponsored by Republican Representative Scott Petri in multiple legislative sessions, always hits a wall with officials in the Governor’s Budget Office and Department of Public Welfare (now the Department of Human Services).  Hopefully the tide is turning on that front.  With regard to SOL reforms, this has been an extremely contentious issue in the legislature with bipartisan leaders of the House Judiciary Committee working to limit action, including opportunities for objective and civil debate.    

Please review the Governor’s responses for yourself and trust that when (underscore WHEN) Mr. Wolf’s responses come they too will be shared.

Thank you, thank you for being a VOICE for PA’s at-risk and abused children.  If we had not joined together (and so quickly last week), it is possible that this gubernatorial election would have forced abused children into the shadows and permitted silence to win out!

Be well,

Cathy

Cathleen Palm

Nurture, protect, listen to and speak up #4PAKids

The Center for Children’s Justice

www.c4cj.org

On Twitter @ProtectPAKids - Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/centerForChildrensJustice

$60 Million in Fines Should Be Used To Establish An Office of Child Advocate

Eckel and others in Gang of 19 are turning blind eyes to DPW and CYS failures in believing that the $60 million in fines for child protection programs would help PA's children

By

Ray Blehar

Like the 11/9/11 trustees did with the victim settlements, the Gang of 19, which includes nine holdovers from the from the 11/9/11 group, continued to overlook the failures of DPW and CYS in its haste to "help the victims of child abuse."  The PSU BOT must acknowledge these failures and should propose (to the legislature) that the best use of the funding would be to establish an independent Office of Child Advocate to oversee DPW.

At the 15 August meeting of the Governance Committee, Keith Eckel confirmed that the Gang and their predecessors have promoted that Penn State Athletics was to blame for enabling Sandusky and therefore, decided to saddle them with paying the $60 million in fines to help children. Make no mistake, the larger University isn't paying a dime of the fine money.  

Eckel:  Revisionist history about
PSU's desire to keep money in PA

"My recollection from the beginning is that our Board and our leadership always supported the concept that the $60 million be spent in Pennsylvania for the benefit of abused children in this state.  I believe, as I understand it, the resolution presented positively deals with that aspect, and I think that's critically important, and I do not like to see that money in any type of reserve fund instead of being used by Pennsylvania people for the benefit of our children. So I am strongly in support of that concept." 

Eckel wasn't being truthful that the Board desired that the money be kept in Pennsylvania from the beginning, as there was never anything other than a complete roll-over on the NCAA Consent Decree.  It wasn't until the Corman/McCord lawsuit in January 2013,  that the idea of keeping the money in PA surfaced, and, at that time, PSU and its Board didn't voice its support for Corman. Instead, it did what it has typically done in the Sandusky affair and didn't comment on the case.

The fact of the matter is that PSU became forced litigants in the lawsuit when Judge Anne Covey decided information from PSU was needed to determine if the Consent Decree was entered into legally.  As we saw at the Governance Committee meeting, as well as in the Paterno v. NCAA lawsuit, PSU and its General Counsel, Steve Dunham are doing everything they can to avoid providing information for discovery.

However, more importantly, Eckel wasn't being truthful that the Board is genuine about its concerns over Pennsylvania's abused children.  The willingness to settle with the Sandusky victims, child abuse reporting training for PSU employees, and now the desire to support the aspects of the lawsuit that keeps the fine money in state have been strictly public relations moves to provide the appearance of contrition, again -- all not costing PSU a dime, with a tad of corruption mixed in.

Board Refusal to Acknowledge 1998 DPW failures

Frazier:  Gave DPW a pass for its
failure to recognize abuse in 1998

As I've noted many times previously, when trustee Al Clemens stated that the rift between the board's position on the Freeh Report and the alumni's position, he mentioned the DPW's failed investigation of Sandusky in 1998 and that the state should bear some responsibility for enabling Sandusky's abuse.   Former Special Investigations Task Force co-lead, Kenneth Frazier shot back that he wasn't concerned about the state's failures and actually concluded that PSU officials should have known more than the DPW agents who investigated the case.  

Frazier, like nearly everyone else in this case except many concerned PSU alumni and friends, have given the 1998 DPW investigation a pass in the Sandusky case, based on an incomplete record.  

Louis Freeh did not include critical information about signs of possible sex abuse known to investigators in the text of his report.  However, the most critical information Freeh withheld were five e-mails that showed Centre County CYS's involvement in the case up until  May 27th.  CYS received the damning psychological report about Sandusky from Dr. Alycia Chambers, therefore the press reports that the investigators were unaware of her report were false.  

The DPW investigator, Jerry Lauro, claimed never to see either Chambers report or the Seasock report -- which he helped to arrange according to the 1998 police report.   Lauro stated that had he seen the Chambers report, he would have made an abuse finding.  

“The conclusions she had drawn in her report were pretty damaging,” Lauro said. “I would have made a different decision. ... It’s unbelievable, and it gets my blood pressure going when I think about it.”

A real investigation, not a phony one like Freeh conducted, would have rightfully condemned the 1998 DPW investigative failures  and could have put the focus were it belonged in terms of improvements needed to protect children -- better investigations.  

A History of Failures

DPW Secretary Mackereth:  Her 1982
failure caused the death of a child 

Sandusky's 1998 failure was not unique in any sense, but part of a history of DPW failures to properly intervene and protect children dating as far back to 1982.  The 1982 case involved the current Secretary of the Department of Public Welfare, Beverly Mackereth, who was then a caseworker in York County.  Mackereth investigated the case of Aleta Bailey who was abused by her mother's live-in boyfriend, Larry Hake.  When she examined Aleta, she noted two sets of bruises from beatings and took the child to be medically examined.  The doctors informed her that the beatings were severe and the child in no way should have contact with Hake.

Mackereth, who contacted police to escort her to the home because Hake had a reputation as a violent individual, put Aleta back into the Bailey home with the provision that Hake should never be left alone with the child.  Five weeks later Aleta was dead -- raped, tortured, and beaten to death by Hake.

Fast forward to 1998.  Sandusky was placed under investigation by the University Park police and Centre County CYS was called to perform the child abuse investigation.  The Public Welfare Code required CYS to contact The Second Mile to inform them of the investigation, but more importantly to work with the charity to ensure Sandusky had no contact with children while under investigation.

That didn't happen.

The police report revealed that Sandusky was accessing Victim 6 and another boy during the investigation by visiting them at their Little League baseball practices.  In addition, Sandusky continued contacting Victim 6 by phone during the investigation.  Trial verdicts also revealed that Sandusky was accessing and abusing Victim 4 during that time frame.  All of this information is a matter of public record.

In 2008, Clinton County CYS repeated the same mistakes as Centre County CYS in 1998.  They did not work with the charity to ensure Sandusky did not have access to children, and despite claims by TSM's Executive Director Dr. Jack Raykovitz that Sandusky was immediately banned from all programs involving children, the evidence proves otherwise.   

According to press reports, Sandusky was allowed to attend a TSM Clearfield banquet involving families in March 2009 and also was permitted to participate in the 2010 Second Mile Summer Challenge camps.

Just like the Board's statements that few of them were aware of the grand jury investigation of Sandusky when the news broke in March 2011, the Board apparently is continuing to pretend they are unaware of these other widely reported DPW failures.

August 2014: The Tutko Case

On August 4, 2014, news broke that 9-year old Jarrod Tutko Jr. was reported dead and that his father, Jarrod Tutko Sr. had been charged with child endangerment, abuse of a corpse, and concealing the death of a child.

The news report also included the fact that Dauphin County CYS had been called to investigate a prior abuse complaint at the Tutko home.   According to Kimberly Tutko, the mother, she believed Jarrod's older brother Aaron called in an abuse complaint December 2013, stating that his father threw a bottle at Jarrod's leg causing him harm.

Unseen by CYS? The feces
covered room of Jarrod Tutko, Jr.

Dauphin County CYS investigated and determined no abuse took place.  It would appear that a more thorough investigation by CYS could have prevented this tragedy.  Cathleen Palm, a principal at the Center for Children's Justice,  opined that sometimes child abuse investigators will only investigate the allegation at hand and "can be blind to what may be occurring throughout the rest of the house."   

Based on reports from neighbors, the CYS agents investigating this case were willfully blind.  The neighbors reported that Jarrod's older brother looked malnourished - that they could see Aaron's ribs through his skin.

This practice has also been confirmed in Centre County, where one complaining parent referred to his child's case as a "drive by investigation."  The 1998 investigation by CYS could also qualify as a "drive by" based on the 1998 police report.  There was considerable foot-dragging by CYS to investigate Sandusky and, after they punted the case to DPW, it appeared Jerry Lauro spent more time driving back and forth to State College than he did in actually investigating the case.

The Tutko case was back in the news this past week with the release of the autopsy, which determined Jarrod Jr. died from starvation and dehydration.  County coroner Graham Hetrick stated the condition of the body and the condition of the home was "horrendous."

Is the PSU BOT paying attention to this case?

PSU's Misguided (and Corrupt) "Prevention" Efforts 

While the Center for Child Abuse Prevention at the Milton Hershey Medical Center will provide a holistic approach to the broader scope of child abuse, other steps the University has taken appear to be misguided -- focused on reporting -- and fail to address the real problems in PA's child protection system.

First, PSU used the proceeds from the 2012 Ticket City Bowl to provide funding to the Centre County Women's Resource Center and two other organizations for child abuse prevention efforts.  The decision, in part, has the appearance a conflict of interest, as PSU VP for Administration, Tom Poole, is married to Anne Ard, who is the Executive Director of the Center.  The training for adults in the community (to recognize and report child abuse) was planned to be conducted by the Centre County YMCA's Stewards of Children Program. 

PCAR: Rushed to judgment on Paterno
and the events of February 9, 2001

In January 2012, PSU provided a $1.5 million grant to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (PCAR) to provide training and education on child abuse reporting and prevention. In the wake of the Sandusky charges, PCAR made a statement concluding that Joe Paterno's reporting "failure" was to blame for Sandusky's abuse was a premature judgement. 

In another effort, PCAR called what happened at PSU the "mother of all teachable moments" about by-standers failing to report.   There should be little doubt that PCAR was simply reinforcing the narrative resulted from the BOT's 11/9/11 decisions.

PCAR provided training on how to identify and report child abuse to 10,000 PSU employees.  While this may have been born of good intentions, it appeared to be overkill to take this type of action based on a single incident.  In addition, through my access to PSU as an alumni "volunteer," I was able to take the training program and found that while it heightened awareness in recognizing abuse, it clearly omitted some critical signs of child abuse that were also omitted in the Freeh Report (i.e., those that were ignored by DPW investigators).  I don't think that was just a coincidence.  However, the bottom line of all of the training is that it doesn't prevent child abuse for occurring, but only recurring.

Child sexual abuse on college campuses is rare and this grant money would have been better spent on age appropriate child sexual abuse prevention programs for children.  This is a truly preventive effort. Training children to recognize signs and talk to their parents about it before abuse happens them is definitely preferred over waiting until adults recognize the signs -- then reporting it to a system that fails much of the time.

PSU's Promise to Be A Leader

PSU officials promised after the Sandusky grand jury presentment broke that the University would become a national leader in child abuse prevention.  It is incumbent on PSU to recognize the Commonwealth's failures in the Sandusky case and in other cases, and as the state's flagship University, demand that improvements be made at "home" first.  

Just throwing money at the state agencies and the so-called victim's advocate groups isn't the answer.

One of the biggest disappointments in the Sandusky scandal has been the quick rush to judgment by the victim's advocates against PSU and their collective silence about the failures of DPW.  This silence is driven, in part, because of these group's reliance on the Commonwealth for grant money to fund their efforts.  

If a settlement is reached in the Corman lawsuit and the PSU football program is saddled with paying the fines, the Board should make recommendations to the legislature regarding the best use of the funding, rather than just letting the legislature slice, dice, and distribute monies to various groups across the state.  

While I am not a fan of government bureaucracy, a number of child protection advocates believe that Pennsylvania would greatly benefit from the establishment of a state-level independent "Office of Child Advocate."  AG Kathleen Kane also voiced her support for this office while campaigning (shown below).  

The Office would provide oversight and review of DPW, ensure protection of children during child abuse investigations, and provide PA's families with an "ombudsman" to resolve issues and complaints related to child protective services.  

Based on the history of Sandusky, Tutko, and other failures, this would be money well spent.

Patriot News, Part 5 of 9: Chapter 5, The DPW Cover-Up

The Patriot News went as far as to pretend the 1998 investigation of Sandusky didn't exist in order to cover up the failures of the PA Department of Public Welfare.

By

Ray Blehar

The cover-up of the failures of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW) and Centre County Children and Youth Services (CYS) originated in the November 4, 2011 Sandusky grand jury presentment.  The PA Office of Attorney General’s (OAG) version of the incident involving Victim 6’s allegations of abuse in 1998 made little mention of DPW’s (Jerry Lauro’s) role in investigating and deciding the outcome of the case.  

The Public Welfare Code clearly states that investigations by law enforcement and child welfare officials may be joint, however, the welfare agency is solely responsible for determining if abuse took place.  The grand jury presentment obfuscated that fact and gave the public the impression that the 1998 investigation was conducted exclusively by the PSU campus police with the final decision of Sandusky’s fate in the hands of District Attorney, Ray Gricar.

The P-N dutifully reported the OAG’s deceptive story line, blaming Gricar for closing the child abuse investigation.  Later it would go a step further and treat the 1998 DPW investigation as if it never existed.  

It seemed that DPW was in the clear for not identifying Sandusky’s 1998 abuse for over a decade.  However, on March 23, 2012 the 1998 police report and the evaluations of Victim 6 were revealed to the public by NBC.  Remarkably, the P-N just so happened to conduct pre-emptive strikes about those reports in the two days leading up to NBC releasing this critical information to the public.   I hardly think this was a coincidence.

The Pre-emptive Strikes

On March 21, 2012, Ganim penned a column opining that Ray Gricar had closed the 1998 Sandusky investigation because of the evaluation of Victim 6 by unlicensed counselor John Seasock.  Seasock’s ’98 report would be released two days after that article ran.  Again, the timing of Ganim’s column was uncanny – as if she was told the Seasock report would soon be leaked to NBC.

Her assertion that Gricar closed the case based on Seasock’s report had flimsy support by the speculation of an unnamed source.   Conversely, DPW’s Jerry Lauro clearly told Ganim (in that column) that he had decided not to make an abuse finding because of a lack of evidence. 

  

“At that time, the information that we had wasn’t sufficient enough to substantiate a case,” Lauro said. “I don’t want [the mother] to think we didn’t believe their kid back then. We did, but we didn’t have enough.” 

However, the P-N ran the misleading story under the following headline:

Patriot-News exclusive: Psychologist's report might be reason Ray Gricar declined to bring charges against Jerry Sandusky in 1998

The column broke many rules of journalistic ethics, including: biased reporting, a sensational headline, the use of unnamed sources, reliance on speculative evidence, and reporting of known falsehoods.

At the time he evaluated Victim 6, Seasock was not even a licensed counselor, let alone a psychologist.  And, Lauro made it clear that it was his decision to evaluate the evidence to make the case or not against Sandusky.

However, Ganim and the P-N didn’t stop there.

Her March 22, 2012 column featured an interview with DPW’s Jerry Lauro who denied any knowledge of either evaluation of Victim 6.   But, Ganim had possession of the 1998 police report early in 2011 which revealed Lauro had actually arranged one of the evaluations.  Yet, she never called Lauro out for his patently false statement.  Instead, she knowingly regurgitated Lauro’s lie. 

Again, the P-N ran a further story under another misleading headline – this time blaming the PSU police for not sharing the reports with Lauro.  

Patriot-News Special Report: 1998 Jerry Sandusky investigator would have pursued dropped case if he had seen hidden Penn State police report

In familiar fashion, Ganim was one day ahead of the NBC leak of the police report to the national media.  And, as a result, the other media outlets absolved DPW and CYS of any responsibility for enabling Sandusky’s 14 year crime spree -- based on her (false) story that Jerry Lauro didn’t see any of the evaluations.

Interestingly enough, the evaluation by Dr. Alycia Chambers, which stated that Sandusky's behaviors appeared to be the "grooming" process typical to pedophiles, was never reported in any detail by the P-N.  In fact, the newspaper only mentioned Chambers by name twice during the scandal -- once in May 2012 when she was served a subpoena and in July 2011 when her car struck a deer.

Between the omissions in the grand jury presentment and the P-N’s false reporting, DPW made it through the scandal unscathed.  

The public never learned about DPW’s failures in 1998 and, as a result, believed that it was the lack of a PSU phone call in 2001 that enabled Sandusky to abuse children for 14 years.  The PSU “failure to report” story was strongly promoted by the P-N in op-eds regarding the strengthening of child abuse reporting laws.  These editorials also managed to avoid any mention that DPW had been called in three years earlier to investigate Sandusky and determined he was not a child molester.

As a result of the P-N’s reporting on the scandal, the public and the PA Task Force on Child Protection never learned about the true system failures that enabled Sandusky’s abuse.  None of the solutions offered by the task force attacked the problem of lack of adherence to procedures, which caused children to be harmed both times Sandusky was under investigation and which has led Pennsylvania to have one of the nation’s lowest rates of investigations per reported incidents of child abuse.

Go here for full report (18 pages). http://www.march4truth.com/ray-blehar.html

Next: The CYS Cover-Up

Paterno Subpoena Seeks to Discover What Else Freeh’s Team Covered Up

The July 2013 Preliminary hearing revealed that Louis Freeh covered up the evidence that would have exposed DPW’s failure in 1998.  The Paterno lawsuit may find out what else Freeh hid from the public.

By

Ray Blehar

On May 19th, please direct your attention to the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte. Paterno, Et Al will make its arguments for discovery of the 3.5 million documents allegedly used by Louis Freeh to construct his work of fiction known as the Freeh Report.

Penn State is siding with the NCAA, Freeh, and Pepper Hamilton to fight release of this information because discovery will ultimately bring us closer to the truth -- and that's something that PSU wants desperately to remain hidden.  Many suspect that "something worse" lies beneath the the surface and it is that "something worse" which will ultimately explain why the PSU Board of Trustees rolled over so easily in November 2011 and July 2012. 

Discovery should also reveal that the well-publicized story that  3.5 million documents were used to create a “thorough and comprehensive” report is a myth.  Evaluations of the Freeh Report have shown it to be of little substance, poorly constructed, and of little evidentiary value.  While the evidence to support the Freeh Report is scant, I suspect there is a lot of other valuable evidence about "something worse" in that pile of documents.

The judicial process has already revealed that Freeh lied about his independent discovery of the emails and his co-discovery of the Schultz "secret file." We have also learned that the flow of evidence was NOT from Freeh to the Office of Attorney General (OAG), but in the opposite direction. Freeh was the recipient of information gathered in response to OAG and Federal subpoenas.
 

A Federal subpoena issued in February 2012 required PSU to provide the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District with correspondence and financial transactions between the PSU and The Second Mile.  It's a pretty safe bet to assume this is some of the information that the PSU General Counsel is attempting to preclude from discovery.

Ganim & Patriot News Continue Cover-Up for TSM, DPW - Turn Back Clock on Crimes, Sandusky's Access

Recent columns by CNN's Sara Ganim and PN's Charlie Thompson turned back the clock on the crimes committed against Victim 9.

By
Ray Blehar

As the lawsuit for Victim 9 splashed into the news last week, the Associated Press reported that Victim 9 had been abused past his sixteenth birthday into the Fall of 2009.  The Collegian reported that Victim 9 met Sandusky in 2005 and his abuse spanned four years.

Those media accounts match the trial testimony, which also stated that Victim 9 was sixteen when the abuse finally ended. Victim 9 was born on July 29, 1993, which places his abuse into late 2009.

However, Patriot News staffer Charles Thompson wrote on November 22nd,  that Victim 9's attorneys were suing for abuse that took place between 2005 and 2008, shaving the last year off the time frame of the crimes (my emphasis added).

The new plaintiff's attorneys, asserting that their client suffered among the worst of the injuries inflicted by Sandusky on any boy through a period from 2005 through 2008, disagree.

Former Patriot News staffer and Pulitzer Prize winner, Sara Ganim, now reporting for CNN, also truncated the years of Victim 9's abuse in her November 21st article, stating that his abuse ended "about the time that another victim's allegations started a police investigation."  (Hat tip, JimmyW)

Ganim was referring the the Aaron Fisher investigation that began in November 2008.  Victim 9's abuse continued at least 8 months past that date.   Ganim who won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting on the Sandusky case, also made it a point of emphasis that she sat "through that trial every single day" when she appeared on Piers Morgan, opposite John Ziegler, in March 2013.

Obviously, Ganim was not being completely truthful with her statement because she fled the courtroom right before she was to be called as a witness in the case.  As a result, the attorneys stipulated that Ganim had passed the contact information for an investigator to the mother of one of the victims in the event the mother wished to contact authorities.

But more to the point, if Ganim sat through the trial every single day and listened to the testimony of the victims, then she had to know that Victim 9 stated his abuse occurred up until he was sixteen and thus into 2009.

So, the million dollar question is why do the Patriot News, Ganim, and Thompson, continue to obsfuscate the end date of this crime?

Are they protecting DPW?  Who should have insisted that The Second Mile put a protection plan in place to keep Sandusky away from children.

Or are they protecting The Second Mile?  Who knowingly let Sandusky access children after they knew he was under investigation?

As I wrote in last week's blogpost, Ganim wrote in her five part-series on The Second Mile (in August 2012) that the charity immediately banned Sandusky from interacting with children and advised him not to contact children in outside activities after learning of his investigation in November 2008.

Raykovitz, a well-known and respected child psychologist in central Pennsylvania, immediately removed Sandusky from all events involving children, and strongly urged him to stay away from children outside of charity functions, too.

However, that passage has been debunked because several news reports from The Progress, a local news outlet serving Clearfield, Curwensville, Philipsburg, and Moshannon Valley, reported that Sandusky would be speaking at the Clearfield County Chapter of The Second Mile's all sports banquet to be held on March 1, 2009.  From the article....

Dinner will follow at 5:30 p.m. in the high school cafeteria before those in attendance move to the auditorium where The Second Mile founder Jerry Sandusky will speak, and the players will share stories about their journeys to becoming collegiate student-athletes.


The evidence is clear in this case.  The Second Mile kept the Sandusky investigation under wraps and did not immediately prevent Sandusky from future access to children.

It's also clear that the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare did not have an effective policing or enforcement method in place to ensure Sandusky's access was cut off.

The other thing that's clear is that some people in Harrisburg, the Patriot News, and Ganim don't want you to know about it.

"Hack" investigator Freeh, the OAG, and Sara Ganim Covered Up DPW's & TSM's Disregard for Child Protection

DPW and The Second Mile put children in harm's way after Sandusky lost his clearance to work with children.  The OAG, Freeh, and Sara Ganim all worked to hide that fact from the public.

By
Ray Blehar

According to the trial transcripts in the Commonwealth v. Sandusky case, Jerry Sandusky was indicated for child abuse on or about 15 January 2009.  As a result, Sandusky had an "indicated" report of  child abuse on his record and did not have a clearance to work with children.  Sandusky appealed the report on February 27, 2009 and eventually withdrew the appeal.  Under the Public Welfare Code, appeals are adjudicated in 30 days, thus Sandusky should not have been interacting with children after March 27, 2009.

The trial testimony also revealed that Gerald Rosmilia, the director of Clinton County Children and Youth Services contacted TSM on 20 November 2008 to inform them of Sandusky's investigation and that Clinton County CYS was severing ties with the charity.   Also, on November 20th, Clinton County CYS psychologist, Mike Gillum contacted Central Mountain High School (CMHS) and informed them to ban Sandusky from school property while he was under investigation.  Gillum's notification conforms with Pa. 055§ 3490.53 (b) which requires protection of children while Sandusky was under investigation.  While there is evidence that protective steps were taken with regard to CMHS, no evidence exists that those steps were taken by The Second Mile (TSM).

According to two board members of TSM, Sandusky abruptly resigned from the charity in November of 2009 without providing a reason for doing so.  According to press reports, the majority of the TSM Board was in the dark about Sandusky's investigation and the charity continued to use Sandusky for fundraising past his "official" public retirement in the Fall of 2010.

However, the primary issue at hand was that TSM and DPW did not limit Sandusky's access to children after he was indicated for abuse after January 2009.  Although the charity has made various statements about Sandusky's role with the charity after the Spring of 2009, there is evidence he continued to interact with children and that the OAG, hack investigator Louis Freeh, and Sara Ganim (and other reporters) did their best to obscure that fact from the public.

Sandusky's Access to Children After Being Indicated 

It bears repeating that access to children, not facilities, is the critical access that enables child sexual abuse.  The organizations who provided Sandusky with access to children during his 14 plus years of committing abuse were TSM, CMHS, and Pennsylvania DPW.  Those three organizations had knowledge that Sandusky was indicated as a child abuser but let him continue to access children.  There is no evidence that PSU was ever told about the abuse finding in January 2009.

Spring/Summer 2009.  Victim 9, whose date of birth is 7/29/93, testified during the trial that he stayed at Sandusky's home starting in 2005 and ending in 2009, when he was 16 years of age (ref. Commonwealth v. Sandusky, 6-13-2012, pps 230-231).   He joined TSM at age 12 or 13 and remained in the organization until age 16, thus the charity did not prevent Sandusky from interacting with him after they were notified about the investigation in November 2008 or after Sandusky was indicated in January 2009.  Victim 9 also testified (page 236) that he continued to be sexually abused by Sandusky up until the age of 16, which means Sandusky was in contact with him after he was indicated for abuse.

June 26, 2009.  Sandusky quit his coaching position at Central Mountain High School, joking "I didn't want to play against State College."  While Gillum recommended Sandusky be banned immediately from CMHS on 20 November 2008, it appears that he stayed involved with the football program until the summer.

January - July 2009:  Sandusky continued contacting Aaron Fisher by telephone during this period, according to OAG Agent Anthony Sassano (page 5, November 2011 Grand Jury Presentment).

July 12-15, 2009*.  Sandusky Associates, his private company, held a football camp for children in grades 4 through 9 at PSU Behrend Campus.  See enclosed brochure here.
*requires additional information to confirm.

September 2011:  Sandusky was observed by a member of the State College media attending a Bellefonte High School football game with two children as his guests.

September 2011. Victim 9 (then 18 years old)  and a friend attended a PSU football game with Sandusky in September 2011 (Commonwealth v. Sandusky, pps. 241, 242).

These are the handful of incidents where Sandusky's interaction has been documented.  Given that Sandusky did not officially announce his retirement from TSM until September 2010, it is likely that he accessed children at various TSM fund raising events and other activities while remaining the "face" of TSM.

The OAG's Cover-Up

Aside from the notoriously false grand jury presentment that inflamed the public against PSU for allegedly enabling Sandusky's abuse and then omitted DPW and Centre County CYS's roles in the 1998 Sandusky investigation, the OAG also modified the May 18, 2012 Bill of Particulars to change the ending of time frame of abuse of Victim 9 from 2009 to December 2008.  See exhibit below.

Victim 9 testified that his abuse occurred up until age 16, which confirmed that it happened past December 2008, past when Sandusky was indicated for abuse (January 2009), and past when Sandusky lost his clearance to work with children (circa March 27, 2009).  It appears the December 2008 date was contrived by the OAG to cover-up Sandusky's access to children provided by TSM and DPW after he was indicated.

However, what is indisputable in this case is the inordinate amount of time it took for a grand jury subpoena to be issued for the TSM's records.  While every victim in this case met Sandusky through his work with TSM, the subpoena for TSM's records was not issued until January 2011 -- 25 months into the case.  After the subpoena was issued, it was reported that the records from 2000 to 2003 were missing.  The grand jury issued a contempt motion over the missing records but dropped it in October 2011.

To date, no charges have been filed against TSM.

Sara Ganim's Cover-Up

There were a number of instances in which Sara Ganim slanted her reporting away from placing any responsibility on TSM or DPW.  I analyzed one of her most biased articles here, which accused Penn State of hiding the psychology reports of John Seasock and Alycia Chambers from DPW program representative, Jerry Lauro.  The 1998 police report proved that Lauro set up the second evaluation, therefore he obviously had knowledge of the evaluation.  Also, Dr. Alycia Chambers reported she released her report (orally) to the DPW on May 7, 1998, thus PSU did not "hide" that report from Lauro.

However, where Ganim reveals her complicity in the cover-up is when comparing her earlier writings, that referenced Sandusky's retirement occurring in Fall of 2010 and her August 2012 series on TSM, where she states Sandusky was not permitted by TSM to access children after the finding of abuse in November 2008.

From the article:

On Nov. 25, 2008, Jerry Sandusky told Second Mile leader Jack Raykovitz that he had been accused of something inappropriate by a Clinton County boy.

Sandusky said the accusation involved touching, over clothing, and he insisted he was innocent.

Raykovitz, a well-known and respected child psychologist in central Pennsylvania, immediately removed Sandusky from all events involving children, and strongly urged him to stay away from children outside of charity functions, too.

For months, Sandusky told Raykovitz he was going to fight that Childline ruling. But when Sandusky dropped the appeal later in 2009, Raykovitz knew Sandusky needed to cut off all ties with The Second Mile.

If he did not resign, Raykovitz told Sandusky, he would go to the executive board members and have them do it on his behalf.

The evidence I provided earlier in this article proves it really didn't happen this way at all.  Sandusky continued to have access to Victim 9 (at a minimum) and continued to interact with children outside the charity.  By August of 2012, numerous press articles detailing Sandusky's activities had been published, some of which highlighted Sandusky's access to children after he was indicated.  And Ganim herself reported that Raykovitz and a small circle of TSM board members decided to not communicate the allegations of abuse to other members of the board.

However in Part 4 of the 5 Part Series, Ganim does some sleight of hand by using an irrelevant link that recounted the 1998 investigation (rather than the 2008 investigation) when discussing TSM's requirement for putting "safety plans" in place -- ignoring TSM's repeat offense of not putting a safety plan in place.

More from Ganim:

But in 1998, when a six-week police investigation took place on Penn State’s campus after a boy — now known as Victim 6 — and his mother told police that Jerry Sandusky hugged him during a shower.

The state Department of Welfare got involved and conducted an investigation simultaneous to the criminal one. Both ended with no finding of wrongdoing after then-District Attorney Ray Gricar decided there wasn’t enough evidence.

Regardless of how it ended, there is a state law that says that if anyone associated with a child care agency is under investigation for child abuse, the agency and the welfare department are supposed to work together to develop a written safety plan until the investigation is complete.

That never happened.

Nowhere in this series does Ganim make mention of TSM working with Clinton County CYS to put a protection plan in place as required by the PWC in 2008.   At best, she made a single, unsupported, and provably false statement that Raykovitz immediately removed him from all events involving children.

Freeh's Cover-Up

Chapter 7 of the Freeh Report contains several references to Sandusky holding camps, but truncates the years to end Sandusky's participation in them by 2008, which would support that TSM and DPW did their jobs and kept Sandusky away from children.   However, Freeh may not have been accurate in his first attempt (page 105) to truncate the end year to 2008 for the camp held at PSU Behrend.

The year 2008 is referenced with endnote 594 that stated:  "Sandusky was scheduled to conduct a camp in 2009, but his wife called the campus and cancelled the camp."

That is a rather unusual footnote because it does not reveal the source of the information, such as an interview or e-mail and the title of the person who provided this information.  However, that is a consistent practice throughout Freeh's bogus report.  The person or persons at PSU Behrend who would have known this information are the Athletic Director, Brian Streeter, or Assistant Athletic Director, Stacy Pondo (who is referenced as the contact in the ad at right).

Athletic Director Brian Streeter told GoErie.com that "After 2009 is the first we heard of it."  Later articles that followed and that didn't quote Streeter said the camps ran until 2008.  At the time this article went to print, I was awaiting confirmation via a check of billing records.

Freeh also stated (on page 108) that TSM held summer camps on the PSU campus from 1998 to 2008.  However, the IRS 990 forms for TSM ending August 31, 2009 and 2010 show that TSM paid $119,592 and $124,587, respectively,  for food and lodging to PSU for its camps. 

Clearly, those camps took place on PSU's campus in 2009 and 2010.  For the year ending August 31, 2011, TSM paid $149,690 for camp food and lodging, however it did not state where the camp took place or if Sandusky was involved.  Thus, it appears the 2008 cut-off may also have been to protect TSM from  liability for allowing Sandusky to interact with children in the event lawsuits are filed from victims for those years.

Finally, the paragraph (page 108) regarding Sandusky's participation in the Friend Program, stated that a TSM  program director last saw Sandusky participating in any TSM activities in 2008.   While this statement may be true for this unnamed program director, many other people saw Sandusky participating in TSM golf tournaments in 2010 and 2011.  Thus, the program director's knowledge appears to be trumped by the people who witnessed Sandusky at the golf tournaments.  

Conclusion

Sandusky's continued access to children after he was indicated for child abuse demonstrates how Pennsylvania's child protection system lacks an effective method to keep perpetrators like Sandusky away from children.   However, what is equally disturbing is that the former occupants of the PA OAG, Louis Freeh, and Sara Ganim (and the media) were complicit in attempting to keep this information from finding its way into the public.

Incentives?
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania avoided embarrassment and having to establish a victim's fund.
Sara Ganim got a Pulitzer Prize...and a new job at CNN.
Freeh got $8.8 million (and counting) plus free advertising for his phony investigation racket.

https://www.pennstatesunshinefund.org/donate/

Read more here: http://www.centredaily.com/2013/10/17/3842964/sandusky-victims-lawyers-request.html#storylink=cpy

Victim 6 Case's Discovery Materials Could Reveal True Sandusky "Cover-ups"

While Judge Anita Brody ruled the claims of "vicarious liability" were not substantiated, expansive discovery could prove that a "civil conspiracy" took place

By
Ray Blehar

Recent headlines in the Victim 6 lawsuit against PSU trumpeted that the judge ruled against the University's request to delay the lawsuit and went on to discuss the broad range of documents requested for discovery.   

However, the ruling that could tell the story - and perhaps get the media's attention - will be the ruling on the claims of civil conspiracy and the associated discovery.

Victim 6's lawyer, Howard Janet said Penn State officials gave Sandusky access to campus facilities where he abused children. 

Janet argued that their client suffered from “the fruits of an unlawful conspiracy” that was designed to conceal the shower incident and shield the university from negative public reaction.

“Permitting Sandusky to remain as a coach with unrestricted access enabled the abuse to continue and strongly supports an inference that inappropriate sexual relations were condoned by Penn State,” Janet wrote.

The Law

 A plaintiff bringing a civil conspiracy claim is required to aver “material facts which will either directly or inferentially establish elements of conspiracy.”  Id. Additionally, a plaintiff must allege (1) the persons combined with a common purpose to do an unlawful act or to do a lawful act by unlawful means or unlawful purpose, (2) an overt act in furtherance of the common purpose has occurred, and (3) the plaintiff has incurred actual legal damage.  Id.  Importantly, absent a civil cause of action for a particular underlying act, there can be no cause of action for civil conspiracy to commit that act.

Janet Is Arguing the "Wrong" Conspiracy

First, Janet is trying to shoe horn this into a civil conspiracy by stating the abuse occurred due to an unlawful conspiracy at PSU based on the scant evidence in the Freeh Report.

If Victim 6's abuse occurred in late 2001 or later, he might have an argument but 1998 was the first known incident of Sandusky showering with a child to be reported to PSU officials. 

Next, there was absolutely no effort on PSU officials Schultz, Spanier, Curley, or Paterno to conceal the 1998  incident.    Prosecutor Frank Fina is on record that there is NO evidence Paterno was involved in a cover-up, however he is pressing on with his charges of "endangerment" based on the 2001 incident, not the 1998 case.

The report of abuse in 1998 was fielded by University Park police and jointly investigated with caseworkers from the Department of Public Welfare. The investigation was joined by the State College police and had involvement the Centre County District Attorney's office.  

To make an argument of concealment of the 1998 incident against Spanier, Curley, and Schultz is a losing argument.

Penn State's Senior Vice-President for Business and Finance, Gary Schultz, was informed by then-Chief of Police Tom Harmon that there was no criminality to the incident, thus neither Schultz nor any other University official could have believed there was inappropriate sexual relations, let alone condoned it. 

Janet is simply grasping at a straw, much like Kenneth Frazier did, to conclude Schultz believed there was "inappropriate behavior" based on a few words written on Shultz's note.  However, those words were most likely attributable to Tom Harmon, but also could have come from Detective Ron Schreffler or caseworker John Miller.

If Janet wants to win this case, he is going to have to cast a wider net and use something more that the faulty conclusions emanating from the fake investigation of Louis Freeh -- specifically, that the PSU BOT influenced the 1998 case.

Casting a Wider Net at Penn State

According to press reports, the legal team of Victim 6 made 33 discovery requests for a wide range of information from Penn State, including the names of everyone Freeh interviewed, the entire police file from 1998, and every single document the university gave the grand jury investigating Sandusky.

Freeh stated his team reviewed 3.5 million documents.  As Eileen Morgan pointed out, that was mathematically impossible to cull through that much information in the eight months Freeh's team got paid for not investigating the case.  

We also know that key word searches were performed for Paterno, Spanier, Schultz, Curley, and McQueary.  It is unclear what other search terms were used or if the PSU IT department or OAG computer forensics teams searched on other names.

However, if Howard Janet wants to prove a "civil conspiracy," he may want to use the chart below for the list of names to search in those 3.5 million records.

As you can see, some of the people who were around in 1998 were still on the BOT in 2011 as trustees or emeriti trustees, including Joel Myers, Cynthia Baldwin, Ted Junker, David Jones, Ed Hintz, Al Clemens, Anne Riley, Robert Metzgar, and Barry Robinson.  Janet may want to search those names and see what he comes up with.

Note that Schultz's name appears as Treasurer of the BOT.  His role on the BOT may be unfortunate for the other members if he instructed PSU's IT department to transfer the BOT e-mails (as he did his own) during the 2004 system switch-over.

Casting the Net At The Second Mile

Janet also filed suit against The Second Mile (TSM), however TSM's lawyers denied any knowledge of the 1998 incident, claiming that Penn State "concealed" evidence of that incident from their organization. TSM also continued to repeat the false story that none of Sandusky's abuse occurred during any programmed activities of TSM.  

TSM's claims are quite tenuous regarding its knowledge of 1998 -- and they made a similar claim when the story of the Sandusky investigation broke in March 2011.

 As I pointed out at Upon Further Review on November 9, 2013, TSM's Executive Director, Dr. Jack Raykovitz was being untruthful about TSM's knowledge of Sandusky's activities when he wrote the charity was "shaken" when it learned of the allegations in the March 2011 Sandusky grand jury.   A number of press reports and the testimony of Clinton County CYS Supervisor, Gerald Rosamilia, made it clear that TSM was informed of the Sandusky investigation at its outset on November 20, 2008.  Sandusky lost his clearance to work with children and abruptly resigned from the charity in the Fall of 2009.   Yet TSM continued to use Sandusky in their fund raising efforts and did not announce his "retirement" from the charity until September 2010. 

In the same op-ed, Dr. Raykovitz repeated the claim that the charity received no reports of abuse related to any official TSM activities.  

"Throughout our history, there have never been allegations made with regard to misconduct occurring during any Second Mile program."

That claim just doesn't hold water for the 1998 incident (and the 2001 incident).

First, TSM's 1999 Annual Report (not available on-line) shows that $75.242 was spent on the Friend/Friend Fitness program and that 48 "kids between both the State College and Indiana sites" were served by the fitness program by 36 mentors.  In the 2001 incident, the Annual Report shows $95,334 spent on the program and 40 participants.  Reasonable people (i.e., a jury) would probably conclude that Sandusky was using the Friend Fitness program as a means to take showers with youths.  Howard Janet's discovery request should include the Friend Fitness program records for all years there were victims.


As I noted in Report 1, Centre County Children and Youth Services (CYS) was required under the Public Welfare Code to notify TSM of the initiation and closure of the 1998 investigation, as well as work with TSM to put a protection plan in place during the investigation.  While it's clear the latter was not performed, it is unclear whether or not CYS made the notifications.  Despite the fact no records from an unfounded report would be available, Mr. Janet should utilize the provisions of the Public Welfare Code to make his case against TSM. 

Finally, the search terms for PSU's records should use the names of Board Members and key donors at The Second Mile, which can be obtained from their 1997 IRS 990 Form (for year ending 8/31/1998) and 1998 Annual Report.   Searches of data are cheap, so why not run these names on the PSU data and see what comes up (Moulton and the Feds do should do the same).

Freeh Whiffed on TSM and PSU BOT Nexus and Protected TSM

Report 2 exposed that only 12% of Freeh's findings related to the NCAA sanctions held water, however, one of the few that I found to be correct was that Spanier, Curley, Schultz, and Paterno did not interfere with the 1998 investigation.  

What is not certain is if any of the members of the BOT interfered or pulled strings to ensure Sandusky was not indicated as a child molester.   While the Freeh Report erroneously faults Spanier and Schultz for not informing the BOT about the 1998 case (clearly a duty that belonged to the PSU General Counsel, Courtney, under the Standing Orders of the BOT), the Freeh Report did not consider other means in which the BOT may have learned of the investigation -- namely from TSM, the police, or from CYS.  

In other words, the BOT may not have gotten official notification but certainly could have learned of it through unofficial channels.  And that is where the relationship between the PSU BOT and TSM comes into play.


Chapter 7 of the Freeh Report, titled "Sandusky's Post-Retirement Interactions With The University," fell woefully short in identifying any of the PSU BOT members, past or present, that had ties to TSM. 

The TSM Annual Reports from 2005 to 2010 showed that USSteel and Merck, both with high ranking officials on the PSU BOT, were donors to TSM.  In addition, other BOT members such as Lloyd Huck, James Broadhurst, Paul Silvis, Anthony Lubrano, and Linda Strumpf were donors.  Trustee Ira Lubert sat on the Southeast Region Board of TSM for several years.  Again, this information was available on public records and should have been identified in Chapter 7, but was conspicuously missing.  

Full, fair, and complete investigation?  Not by a long-shot.


Freeh Attempted to "Cover-up" for TSM
There are numerous other errors describing the relationship between PSU and TSM on page 107 to 109. but what is particularly notable is the last paragraph on page 109, which appears to provide a "cover-up" for TSM by making no mention of the Friend Fitness program.

"Second Mile also offered a "Friend Program," a mentorship program that matched a college volunteer with an at-risk elementary student.....Friend Program events included picnics, holiday parties, swimming, and bowling.  Sandusky sometimes participated in the Friend Program at the Altoona campus.  When he did, Sandusky often arrived accompanied by a boy for Second Mile who was not part of the invited group.  According to a Director of Programs at Second Mile, the last time he saw Sandusky participate in any Second Mile activities was in 2008."

The Freeh Report also states that TSM's summer camps on the PSU campus took place from 1999 to 2008, but TSM's Annual Reports ending August 31, 2009 and 2010 show that TSM paid $119,592 and $124,587, respectively,  for food and lodging to PSU for its camps.  Clearly, those camps took place on PSU's campus through 2010.  I suspect the 2008 cut-off was done to protect TSM from criticism or liability for allowing Sandusky to interact with children after he was indicated for abuse.

(Note:  Similar tactics were used in later news articles written by Sara Ganim in the Patriot News)

Conclusion

For Howard Janet to succeed in the "civil conspiracy" case, he must widen his scope past the false allegations made in the fake investigation conducted by Louis Freeh.

Janet must use the discovery materials to dig into the areas that the original Sandusky investigation and the fake Freeh investigation failed to explore -- specifically, the PSU BOT, TSM, and DPW.  


Given the power and influence of the PSU BOT and TSM Board members, particularly their associations with government officials, I find it curious that the 1998 investigation was taken over by an investigator from Harrisburg, rather than the office that had jurisdiction, in Cresson.  

If there is a civil conspiracy in this case, it spans at least these three organizations, and possibly a few others.

https://www.pennstatesunshinefund.org/donate/

Read more here: http://www.centredaily.com/2013/10/17/3842964/sandusky-victims-lawyers-request.html#storylink=cpy