Quote:
Originally Posted by RomaGoth
You really should do some research then before coming in here and spouting off.
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Sorry if I haven't spent the day obsessing over this witch hunt (the Paterno part, not the Sandusky part) but I'm still left looking for the part where it says Paterno knew anything about what's in that story you linked.
I'll go slow, maybe I'm missing that part somewhere.
Police listened in on a conversation - check
Prosecutor closes the case - check
Story indicates no charges (current charges cover thru 2009) filed over the next 11 yrs - check* (I mean, unless he was arrested at some point then released to continue or something)
**Am I missing the part where we find out whether Paterno knew about this conversation? I believe I've read where he was "aware of some allegation" prior to the GA visit but nothing I've read/heard has talked about the amount of detail on the earlier claim he was privvy to**
The accompanying timeline in the linked article includes various items but none of them mention Paterno until 2002, when the GA "reports what he had seen". We don't seem to know what was said by the GA to Paterno, nor really what Paterno said to the GA.
Paterno does what he's responsible for doing, reports something (accurately? inaccurately? we don't know as far as I can tell) to the AD. The AD & another admin talk to the GA, they (sometime later) tell the GA that they had taken away Sandusky's keys & reported something to Second Mile.
The rest of the timeline gets even further away from Paterno, so I assume I can skip that part for our purposes here.
The closest thing I see to anything that could (reasonably) land on Paterno is the conversation with the GA but I don't know what that was exactly. Was it specific & graphic? Was it vague & uncertain? The more important question though - as I've said from my earliest comments in this thread - was it credible?
That's the only place I see any possible moral outrage could reasonably come from (since there's no claim of any legal wrongdoing by Paterno, moral outrage is all that's left): If Paterno believed Sandusky was abusing the kids, then I can go along with directing some anger at him. That "if" is what I'm stuck on: I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe Paterno thought that was the case. Does he think so now? Maybe. But what he thinks "now" isn't the question here.
You want to tell me that a reasonable person readily believes (what I gather was) a close co-worker & friend is raping children? That's a hell of thing for most people to imagine of most random acquaintances, but to believe it of an actual friend? I mean, if you readily believe it, what kind of company are you keeping?
(Please, spare me any shit for this next bit, it's nearly 2am & I'm working with what's handy. I like analogies & whatnot, they help more often than they hurt, so I'm gonna use it. There's no intention of comparing the offenses, I'm looking at the reaction of others here, this is the closest personal parallel).
I couldn't convince my own mother that a cousin had a teenage drinking problem, not even when he passed out in class & crashed to the floor. I was an eyewitness, she heard it from other eyewitnesses, no dice. It wasn't what I'd call denial either, it was utter & complete disbelief. She had more confidence in him than she had in my lying eyes. She was completely convinced that we were misinterpreting what we saw. It was probably 20 years later when he acknowledged the problem himself before she believed it.
Now if someone has a hard time accepting that sort of thing, it seems pretty rational to me to imagine that an staggeringly more disturbing & serious accusation would be even more difficult to believe ... which is the point of that story.
Bottom line: until I believe Paterno
believed that Sandusky was doing anything remotely close to what he's charged with, the only responsibility I can find him having is the legal one, and it seems the prosecutor in PA has already addressed that (and doesn't appear bashful about charging whoever has turned up in the investigation).
And now, with this novella complete, I got some work that I've got to finish.