To err is human, to forgive divine, as the saying goes. And so, perhaps, it should come as no surprise that another group of men widely regarded as divinities in their little fiefdom – the leaders and coaches at Penn State – would have taken it upon themselves to forgive former coach and now-convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky his trespasses rather than admit that their trust in him was a serious error in judgment.
Of course, the details outlined in the Freeh report – commissioned by Penn State from the firm Freeh Sporkin and Sullivan and released Thursday – are all but sickening in their familiarity to anyone who kept up with the Catholic Church abuse scandal: full knowledge of the allegations, collusion with law enforcement, a transfer to another location and, to quote former FBI director Louis Freeh, "a striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims". It shows the leaders at Penn State were capable of drawing the same conclusion as anyone when informed that a powerful man was seen sexually abusing a child – there would probably be other victims – and behaving exactly as Catholic Church leaders did: ignore that conclusion and cover it up for the sake of the institution.
It's almost not shocking any more that yet another male-dominated, hierarchical institution with no effective oversight would once again believe that exposing and helping imprison a child abuser in their midst would be such terrible publicity that it would be worth hiding that abuse, and that they would somehow believe that a serial child sex abuser would never molest enough children to get caught and bring even worse publicity down on their heads. But the emails sent between Penn State's former President Graham Spanier, former Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz and former Athletic Director Timothy Curley, and uncovered by the investigations, manage to shock anyway: they reveal that not only did they know that they had a serial child sex abuser in their showers, but that they recognised that they were legally obligated to report the fact, and that not reporting it would expose them to legal risks and even worse publicity … and they did it anyway.
In 2001, after graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky sexually abusing a child in the Penn State showers, he reported it to head coach Joe Paterno, who forwarded it up the food chain on a Sunday night because he did not "want to interfere with their weekends". Spanier, Schultz and Curley formulated a plan, later discarded, to report the abuse to the proper authorities and the board of Sandusky's charity Second Mile. They changed their minds the next day in favor of a new plan by Curley – to confront Sandusky, ask him to inform his own charity of his misdeeds, offer him therapy and not report the abuse to the proper authorities. Spanier called that "a humane and reasonable way to proceed" in dealing with Sandusky's most recent molestation, even though he acknowledged not reporting the abuse could make them "vulnerable". Schultz called the plan "humane and up-front".
Sandusky's counsel told the committee that Curley never brought up rape or abuse in the meeting, and Curley said he didn't want to know the name of Sandusky's victim, though Sandusky offered to tell him. And after the meeting, no one went to the proper authorities, no one informed the Second Mile board and only Curley met with the leadership of Sandusky's charity, who also called the sex abuse a "non-incident".
Six months later, according to the report, Sandusky was sexually abusing another child in the Penn State showers.
It's easy enough to say the men were misled by Sandusky, though hard to figure why they thought a serial sexual predator of children would confess his deeds when confronted at the office. But Schultz and Curley are now facing criminal charges, and the Freeh report contends that the school is in violation of the Clery Act, a federal law that requires crimes on campus be reported.
The legacy of now-deceased coach Joe Paterno is likely permanently tarnished (the email revealing that Curley's change of plan followed consultation with Paterno contradicts Paterno's family's claim that he "never interfered with any investigation"). The three men who covered for Sandusky for more than a decade are professionally ruined. And no one knows for certain how many victims of Sandusky there really are, nor how many of them could have been spared victimization at his hands if their well-being had been of more concern to university leaders than their own reputations and the school's alumni donations.
And just to say it one more time: that leadership saw it all coming if they covered for Sandusky, but they did it anyway.
To err is human. But to err this much, for so long, for the sake of an institution's public face at the price of the lives, health and minds of so many children is anything but "humane and up-front". In fact, it's practically Catholic.