Dear JoePa,
There is an old adage that with great power comes great responsibility. You have enjoyed the power of being a big time college football coach. You have enjoyed the pride and reverence from adoring fans. Your actions have come to symbolize doing things “The Penn State Way” indicating a way of excellence. But come to find out, not only did your way lack excellence, it lacked character, it lacked morality, it lacked common sense.
I hear your peers stating that you should be given the benefit of the doubt. That you should be given a break or that the blame does not rest squarely in your lap. They say that you did so much for people and the sport. They speak of your legacy. But I and millions of others with clear minds and loud voices are here to tell you that your legacy ain’t shit. If a man will hide a child molester, then he will definitely hide bad grades for players and payments being made to players. When the steroid scandal rocked major league baseball, many records were corrected, many legacies were shattered. Players taking steroids endanger their own bodies. You sacrificed the bodies of little boys so that you could be the all time winningest Division I football coach. You wanted to be a college football god. But your legacy is nothing but a house of cards. It has no foundation and has come crashing down around you.
Here is why your former defensive coordinator, your best friend, your right hand man for more than 30 years, Jerry Sandusky has done some things (allegedly) that I can’t forgive. According to reports, back in 1998 Penn State Police and the state Department of Public Welfare investigated an incident in which the mother of an 11-year-old boy reported Sandusky had showered with her son and may have had inappropriate contact with him. In a June 1, 1998, interview with investigators, Sandusky admitted showering naked with the boy, admitting it was wrong of him to do so and promising not to do it again, the grand jury report says. The district attorney decided no charges would be filed and the university police chief closed the case. JoePa, this is where I’m getting mad at you. JoePa, who at Penn State, who in the whole state of Pennsylvania had the power to make this investigation go away? Who Joe? We may never know if you used your power to make it go away. But, now only a damn fool would think at a minimum, after this, you didn’t know Sandusky was a pedophilia. Maybe we will never know if the campus police informed you Sandusky admitted to taking showers with little boys. But instead of using your power to get your best friend, the man who was supposed to be the next coach at Penn State, some mental help to make sure he never takes another kid in the shower, you gave him a farewell retirement in which he still has access to the school and the showers. Worst, you knew this pedophile was now working at his charity, The Second Mile, a charity for kids. One question I have for you JoePa is did you do it because he was a good friend or did you do it because you wanted to protect your legacy because you knew at your age in 1998, I believe you would been around 71, you would have been forced to retire and never gotten a chance to break Eddie Robinson’s all time coaching record. Is that the real reason you nodded your head like the godfather and made everything go away? Did you make all involved offers they couldn’t refuse?
Now let’s get to the incident that started everything, that brought everything out of the dark. In 2002, one of your ex players, Mike Mcqueary, who at the time was a 28-year-old graduate assistant, came to you and told you he saw Sandusky in the locker room shower the night before, performing a sex act on a young boy he estimated to be 10-years-old. The next day you reported the incident to Athletic Director Tim Curley, saying the graduate assistant had seen Sandusky “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy,” according to the grand jury. Later, the assistant was summoned to a meeting with Curley and the senior vice president for finance and business, Gary Schultz. The assistant later told the grand jury that he told Curley and Schultz he saw Sandusky and the boy engaged in a sex act, but Curley and Schultz told the grand jury they had not been told of such an allegation. Instead, Curley said he had the impression the conduct amounted to non-sexual “horsing around.” Schultz said he couldn’t remember details, but seemed to recall that “Sandusky might have inappropriately grabbed the young boy’s genitals while wrestling.” Regardless of what you guys heard, common sense should have told you something wasn’t right. Either way, all you guys did was confiscate Sandusky’s locker room keys and tell him not to bring his Second Mile kids to campus. In other words, it’s okay if you want to rape kids, just don’t do it on the Penn State campus! No law enforcement was called; just give me your keys. All of you are a bunch of sickos!
Here is the reason I’m writing you this letter. Because all your supporters and the media are making me sick about how they started their reference point with the 2002 incident. Many have stated that “by the strict rule of law, you did nothing wrong.” But anyone who has studied law knows that the strict rule of law falls far short of morality. And even the strict rule of law takes into account what a REASONABLY INTELLIGENT person would have done. I’m tired of hearing “JoePa did not witness the act; he was told about it. Going to the police would have done no good because it would be considered hearsay. He did report it to his boss, which is protocol, and was probably told something like ‘we will take care of this; it’s out of your hands now.’ As far as he knew there was an investigation and everything was taken care of.” JoePa, if you had no prior knowledge of Sandusky’s misdeeds with kids prior to the 2002 incident, then I might say okay well it was hearsay. I could understand you having a hard time believing this terrible information about your long time friend.
However JoePa, your knowledge of Sandusky’s sickness dates back at least to 1998. People will start talking. It’s going to lead back to the one person who had the power to make the 1998 investigation go away. JoePa, don’t you think it’s a shame that the 1998 prosecutor went missing and eventually had been declared murdered? They found his laptop with a missing hard drive in the lake. I think what happened in 1998 is that he didn’t think anything of the allegations, but by 2005 he started getting more information about Sandusky and he was getting ready to file charges. But he is not around now. But you know who is still around: an eye witness: Mike Mcqueary, the former player of yours who came to you with this information about Sandusky and kid in 2002.
At the time, why didn’t you ask about the kid? Did you even call Sandusky to see if he was still with the kid? Furthermore why didn’t you look at Mcqueary, a former player who just told you what he had seen in the shower, and say, “Son, why didn’t you go get the kid out of the shower?” Your former player didn’t do the heroic thing; he did the cowardly thing and ran and called his daddy. Is that the “Penn State Way” to be coward?
Somebody told you that a 60-year-old man is in the shower with a 10-year-old “horse playing” in a sexual nature, butt naked in the shower and all you do is the legal thing? This is why your supporters continued to state, “JoePa, legally and by the rules of the school did everything right.” Blah Blah Blah…… Mcqueary did not come tell you that he just witnessed a man stealing a jock strap out of a locker. He came with his father to reported sexual abuse to a MAN and BOSS he trusted. You’re a damn father and a grandfather. As one time boss of Sandusky, morally you could have ended this tragedy right then and there with one call to the authorities. Shame on you! You and your supporters are spewing that legal garbage while more children have lost their innocence to that piece of dog crap.
JoePa your words to Mcqueary should have been “A kid was being raped! You should’ve gone in there and grabbed Sandusky. If you were scarred of the 60-year-old Sandusky, you should have pulled the alarm, yelled “Boo!” or interrupted and gotten the kid medical attention.” That’s what a real coach would say to his former player. Then a real man would make sure the kid was okay and Sandusky was in jail. You did neither.
Now, your legacy can’t be rebuilt, no matter how many ex-players tell us how much you have done for their lives. Why didn’t you reach out to help the children who were molested? Was it because they didn’t make any tackles for you? They didn’t score touchdowns for you? The sacrifice of their innocence doesn’t show on the scoreboards or in the record books, but that is your true legacy. Either way, you get no respect from me. One cannot separate Penn State from these events. They happened on Penn State property by Penn State employees. Is this what the Penn State way has become?
JoePa, your longevity is not deserving of my respect. Old age is not an excuse. My grandmother
always told me “You don’t respect your elders, you respect your elders who are respectable.” I don’t give a damn about the legacy you think you have. This is what happens when people blindly follow or openly admire a person: everything that person does is a reflection of you.
But your shameful disregard for the safety and well being of children doesn’t reflect my ideals. In fact, the lesson here is to be careful whom you admire and set your priorities straight. My opinion of you JoePa has taken a 180 degree turn. You are a disgusting human being. You won’t go down as the winningest coach. You will go down as ruthless, egotistical, and an evil man. I know Sandusky is a ten times worse human than you. I’m not going to make excuses for him by saying he must have been molested as a kid etc. However, I do believe he is a sick individual who will never stop molesting kids. Many kids get molested and never have eye witnesses; they never have authority figures who know.
All of this could have been avoided with a simple 911 call. Instead, you allowed a child rapist to stand on the sidelines with young boys for years after being caught red-handed. The ironic part is that Penn State is a leader in the study of psychology. You could have taken a short walk across campus and found out everything you needed to know about child molesters to protect the children and do things the Penn State Way. Instead the book you were concerned with was the playbook. At this point, your players have to examine the question: “Do I want to represent a university that has brought so much shame on itself?”
Sincerely,
Nerdy
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