The report by Louis Freeh on the Penn State University pedophilia scandal finally makes clear what happened and why, and it also makes clear that there is only one clean path forward for Penn State. This scandal happened not because of one lone psychopath, or because a few well-intentioned Penn State leaders misunderstood what was happening, or did know what was happening but didn't understand how to deal with it; the Freeh report makes clear that the highest ranking authorities at Penn State did know what was happening, deliberately chose not to contact appropriate authorities, and deliberately chose to protect the perpetrator of horrific crimes rather than those subject to them, and they did it all because they wanted to protect Penn State football rather than the innocent, abused children.
This scandal and these horrors happened because the culture of football at Penn State had come to mean more to the school's leadership than did basic standards of humanity and morality, and the only way for Penn State to regain its human and moral footing is for it to shut down its football program, as a statement to the victims, the students and alumni and fans, and all humanity. When something as important as the safety and well-being of children is superseded by athletic prowess, the money it earns, and the false sense of prestige it imparts, it is time to start over, from scratch, not in the realm of athletics but in the realm of humanity and morality. To his great credit, Freeh began his statement where this entire horror should have begun and ended:
We are here today because a terrible tragedy was allowed to occur over many years at Penn State University, one in which many children were repeatedly victimized and gravely harmed. Our hearts and prayers are with the many children – now young men – who were the victims of a now convicted serial pedophile. I want to remind everyone here, and those watching this press conference, of the need to report child sexual abuse to the authorities. In Pennsylvania you can report child sexual abuse to the Department of Public Welfare’s ChildLine. That number – which is on the screen before you – is (800) 932-0313. It is our hope that this report and subsequent actions by Penn State will help to bring every victim some relief and support.
This is not about football or a once legendary football program or a once legendary football coach, this is about a failure to protect children from a predatory pedophile. The entire leadership structure at Penn State failed the most basic of tests of human and moral values. It did so precisely because it valued its football program more than it valued the safety and well-being of the children. (Continue reading below the fold.)
Freeh then also hit exactly the right notes in the following sentence:
Penn State University is an outstanding educational institution, which is rightly proud of its students, alumni, faculty and staff, who, in turn, hold the institution in very high esteem.
Penn State has educated hundreds of thousands of people, and anyone who understands the importance of education, both to the educated individuals and to the common good, must appreciate the great good that Penn State does. As someone who writes about climate science, and considers climate change to be the most important issue humanity has ever faced, it's particularly noteworthy to me that the great and courageous climate scientist Michael Mann teaches and conducts research at Penn State. But this pedophilia scandal threatens to tarnish the reputation of Penn State as an insitution of higher learning. This pedophilia scandal is now all that most people think about when they think about Penn State. And this pedophilia scandal happened because of the incomprehensibly misplaced value Penn State's leadership placed on their football program. As concisely summarized on pages 14 and 15 of the full Freeh report:
Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University — President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno — failed to protect against a child predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities. They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identify of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001. Further, they exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity, of what McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001. These individuals, unchecked by the Board of Trustees that did not perform its oversight duties, empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to the University's facilities and affiliation with the University's prominent football program. Indeed, that continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims. Some coaches, administrators and football program staff members ignored the red flags of Sandusky's behaviors and no one warned the public about him.
This was an institutional-level failure to protect children from a predatory pedophile, and because of it more children were abused; and its worth emphasizing Schultz's official title: Senior Vice President-Finance and Business. Because to the four men who enabled a predatory pedophile, this was about finance and business and ostensible prestige, at the expense of the safety and well-being of children. From Freeh's statement:
The evidence shows that these four men also knew about a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky relating to suspected sexual misconduct with a young boy in a Penn State football locker room shower. Again, they showed no concern about that victim. The evidence shows that Mr. Paterno was made aware of the 1998 investigation of Sandusky, followed it closely, but failed to take any action, even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years, and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno's. At the very least, Mr. Paterno could have alerted the entire football staff, in order to prevent Sandusky from bringing another child into the Lasch Building. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley also failed to alert the Board of Trustees about the 1998 investigation or take any further action against Mr. Sandusky. None of them even spoke to Sandusky about his conduct. In short, nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity.
And while some of the involved parties have made excuses about what they tried to do or why, the real intent was clear, as reported on page 16:
Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, the Special Investigative Counsel finds that it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the University — Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, the University's Board of Trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.
This was a cover-up, and its primary motive was to protect Penn State and its legendary and lucrative football program from bad publicity. It's that simple, and it's that obvious. The safety and well-being of children being subjected to horrific abuses was not even considered. From the same page:
A striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University.
A striking lack of empathy. This abominable behavior by the university's leadership speaks not only of egregious criminal behavior, but of fundamentally skewed values. And this is where Penn State needs to understand how it can move forward, and how it can make a clear break from this egregious criminal behavior and those fundamentally skewed values. And the only way it can do that is by shutting down its football program. This should not be left to the NCAA or any other external ruling body. Nothing else can possibly meet the test of proving that these institutional failures at Penn State are now understood at an institutional level by Penn State. Many fans and alumni have been defending and excusing what happened at Penn State, and many continue to reveal their own lack of values by focusing first on the protection of Penn State football and the reputation of its reprehensible former leader. At an institutional level, Penn State itself must now provide a lesson in understanding, empathy and values. The reactions of Penn State's leaders underscore that necessity. As reported by the New York Times:
But while the trustees were clear about their failings last year, officials continued to tread lightly around the role of previous trustees going back more than a decade, the role of football and the legacy of the former coach Joe Paterno, who died in January.
They still don't get it. Board of Trustees President Rodney A. Erickson, when asked if the school's football program was overly venerated:
“It’s been an important part of student life; it’s been an important part of alumni life,” he said.
In fact, these horrors would not have happened if football wasn't too important a part of too many people's lives. That's the entire point. Erickson still doesn't get it. Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees Karen B. Peetz:
“The whole topic of Joe Paterno being honored or not being honored is a very sensitive topic,” she said. “This is something that will continue to be discussed with the entire university community.”
Sensitive? How about a striking lack of empathy on an institutional level for the survivors of these horrors? A striking lack of empathy that continues to this day. Paterno was an enabler of a child rapist. Paterno's striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims allowed the child rapist to get away with his crimes and to commit more of them. For years. And even as the horrific crimes finally became public knowledge, despite Paterno's striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims, and despite his conspiring to keep those horrific crimes from coming to the attention of the appropriate authorities, Paterno in the end remained an arrogant, greedy liar, more concerned with his own legacy and vast income than with the survivors of the crimes he helped to hide and enable. Sensitive? Peetz still doesn't get it.
The football program, Mr. Freeh reported, chose not to participate in most of the university’s efforts to train people in recognizing and reporting violence and sexual abuse.
On an institutional level, the football program did not want to participate in even attempting to prevent these kinds of horrors, and then, on an institutional level, the leader of the football program and the leaders of the university chose to cover up these horrors, in order to protect that football program. The executive director of the school's Clery Center for Security on Campus, named after a woman whose rape and murder at Lehigh University inspired the federal law that "requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs to keep and disclose information about crime on and near their respective campuses," got to the real point:
“In our experience, when an athlete or coach is involved, many times it does get treated differently,” she said. “We have to change that culture.”
But given the oblivious, insensitive and unempathetic reactions from Penn State's leaders, there is no chance for that to happen. They continue to want to protect their football program, and even the man who, rather than report these horrors, actively participated in preventing their being reported. In fact, in an almost surreal display of their continued striking lack of empathy for the survivors of these crimes and of their obliviousness to the magnitude of what their demented football culture created, Penn State's leaders have announced that they will remodel the locker room and showers where the horrors took place, while retaining the statue of the man who could have stopped the horrors and brought their perpetrator to justice but instead did the exact opposite. It remains incomprehensible.
The scene of the crimes will be renovated and redecorated, but the culture responsible for these horrors will remain, right down to its very iconography. There is but one way for the culture to be changed at Penn State, and that is for Penn State to wipe that culture clean. If Penn State's current leaders won't do it, they must be replaced. The football program must be shut down. The legacy of those who by covering up horrific crimes hoped to protect that football program must be and must be seen to be the destruction of that football program. Until the university and its leaders have changed the culture such that there is no debate, discussion, or consideration of anything other than that a failure to protect children was paramount, and obliterated any ostensibly mitigating rationales, the Penn State football program must be shut down. In another New York Times article, it becomes clear that even Freeh is not immune to this toxic culture:
Mr. Freeh expressed great respect for Mr. Paterno, who was once so popular in Pennsylvania there was a movement to have him run for governor.
Great respect for a man who conspired to cover-up horrific crimes perpetrated against children? This is not only about the culture at Penn State, it is about the culture in this country. Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, who last year tweeted that although Paterno needed to be fired he was "a good and decent man," now gets it:
Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists.
Rick Reilly gets it.
Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide. Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment.
College football programs have been punished, and in one case shut down, because of repeated patterns of recruiting violations and improper payments to athletes, and some say Penn State's crimes do not meet the same standard, because they are not football-related. Such an excuse again reveals a shocking skewing of values, because such football-related crimes are trivial compared to what happened at Penn State. All previous failures of institutional control at university athletic departments are trivial in comparison. And such an excuse explicitly and particularly fails to comprehend the magnitude of what happened at Penn State. That the people involved in the crimes are gone from Penn State is no more relevant than at other universities that were dealt various forms of sanction for various forms of violations. The coaches and staffs always are fired or move on to other schools or even professional leagues, while the universities, their new staffs, and their students and alumni live out the sanctions. Rick Reilly gets it.
I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.
But the NCAA shouldn't have to step in. If Penn State doesn't do this itself, the NCAA must step in, and must shut down Penn State's football program for a particularly long time, if not forever, or the entirety of college football, and the entirety of NCAA athletics will be complicit in perpetuating the dangerously distorted values that allowed these horrors to happen; but the NCAA shouldn't have to step in. Penn State must do this itself. Penn State must finally take full responsibility. Penn State must prove that it finally gets it, at an institutional level. This was an institutional level criminal conspiracy, and it was conducted to protect a football program. No one can doubt that if these crimes had been perpetrated by a member of a staff of any of the university's educational departments, they would have been quickly reported, and the perpetrator would have been quickly brought to justice.
This was about football. This was about a profound failure of basic human values by the most powerful leaders of an institute of higher learning. The only way to demonstrate that the new and remaining leaders of that institute have their values and priorities in their proper places would be for those leaders to shut down the football program, and thus prove that Penn State is about so much more than football that it will cease being distracted and undermined by the toxicity of its previous veneration of football. Only by so doing can Penn State begin to restore what it allowed to be destroyed. And by so doing Penn State can set an example and provide a clear lesson not only for all of its students, alumni, fans, and supporters, but for all humanity.