Update, 11/8/11, "Paterno was not the only one under fire Tuesday night. University President Graham Spanier is also facing a lot of criticism over his handling of this child sex abuse scandal.
Both of those names are likely to be on the agenda when the board of trustees meet face-to-face in public session Friday. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett says he will be there."...
11/8/11, "Exclusive: Victims Double In Penn State Case," myfoxphilly.com
"The university is paying legal costs for Curley and Schultz." Penn State allowed the perpetrator Sandusky continuous use of campus facilities and only moved to ban him on Sun., 11/6/11.
11/7/11, "Petition Formed To Fire Penn State President Graham Spanier," Sportsology, B. Messink
"Penn State University President Graham Spanier has serious questions to answer about an apparent cover up of the sexual abuse of children by former Penn St. football coach Jerry Sandusky.
According to a Grand Jury report on a criminal case against Sandusky and two Penn St. administrators, Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley,
- in 2002 Curley banned Sandusky from bringing children on campus after he
- received testimony from a Penn State football graduate assistant
- that Sandusky had molested a naked boy in team showers.
Column: Any One Person Could Have Stopped Sandusky's Abuse
Curley reported the ban to Spanier, who testified to the Grand Jury that
- he (Spanier) approved of Curley's handling of the situation.
Schultz and Curley denied to the Grand Jury that the graduate student reported "sexual conduct" "of any kind" by Sandusky. The Grand Jury did not find that testimony credible, and
- both are charged with perjury.
But this is the question that Spanier must answer, and that he has thus far hid from: if Spanier knew of a situation serious enough to ban Sandusky from bringing children on campus -- whether or not Spanier had explicit knowledge of sexual abuse --
- why was there no additional action or investigation taken by Spanier
- and the University?
At best, it appears Spanier is guilty of profound stupidity. At worst, he appears to be guilty of willfully protecting and enabling a child molester.
A petition has been drawn up urging the Penn State Board of Trustees to fire Spanier, and a Facebook Page called "Fire Graham Spanier" has been rapidly accumulating "likes."
Late Sunday, Curley stepped down from his position as Athletic Director so he could devote himself full time to defending himself against the allegations. Schultz is stepping down to re-enter retirement.
After charges were announced against Curley and Schultz, and after Sandusky's arrest,
in which he unequivocally stood behind Curley and Schultz, and indicated no concern for possible rape and molestation victims on his campus:
"The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance.
With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee.
Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.
Graham Spanier""
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The two men Spanier praises above have been convicted of perjury. Spanier knew a case of child rape was not being reported to the police, that the perp. was merely told not to bring children on campus. Spanier opted to let the perp roam free to commit more crimes against children. ed.
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11/7/11, "Curley, Schultz arraigned and released on $75,000 unsecured bail," CollegianOnline
Collegian Online contains an excellent timeline of events including:
4/1/11, "Penn St. Pres. Spanier speaks to Grand Jury, still didn't know
- identity of the graduate assistant
- who reported the shower incident with Sandusky in 2002."
"The university is paying legal costs for Curley and Schultz because the allegations against them concern how they fulfilled their responsibilities as employees"...
This matter did not come to light via anyone at Penn State, rather via a mother whose son spent the night at Sandusky's house and told her of molestation. The mother told the Clinton County, Pa. public school district. A state investigation was then launched.
Penn State allowed the perpetrator continuous use of Penn State facilities, only moving to ban him as of Sun., 11/6/11.
"Two high-ranking Penn State administrators failed to report accusations of sexual abuse of young boys by a top former assistant to legendary football coach Joe Paterno, and then lied about it to a grand jury, state prosecutors said Monday.
"Their inaction likely allowed a child predator to continue to victimize children for many, many years," State Attorney General Linda Kelly said of Athletic Director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, the school's senior vice president for business and finance.
Curley and Schultz appeared Monday in a Harrisburg courtroom, where a judge set bail at $75,000. They weren't required to enter pleas but they had to surrender their passports.
They are charged with lying to a grand jury investigating former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, 67, who is accused of sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years through his charity for at-risk youth.
"The children are scarred for life," Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan told reporters during a press conference with Kelly on Monday.
Kelly specifically asked that a child allegedly assaulted by Sandusky in view of a graduate student come forward and talk to detectives. Kelly said the victim was 10 years old when the alleged abuse occurred in 2002. Six of the alleged eight victims have been identified, Kelly said.
Investigators on Monday encouraged anyone who was sexually assaulted by Sandusky to step forward and talk to police.
Schultz, 62, and Curley, 57, are being released on bail after being charged with perjury and failure to report abuse. Schultz and Curley made their first court appearances Monday afternoon in Harrisburg. They weren't required to enter pleas but they had to surrender their passports. Each was being released on $75,000 bail.
Lawyers for the two men will seek to have the charges dismissed. Schultz's lawyer said his client was not among those required by law to report suspected abuse. He also argued that the two-year statute of limitations on the summary offense has expired.
Late Sunday, after an emergency meeting of the board of trustees, university President Graham Spanier announced that Curley and Schultz would be leaving their posts.
Curley requested to be placed on administrative leave so he could devote time to his defense, and Schultz will be going back into retirement, Spanier said. Both men have maintained they are innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with the probe into whether Sandusky sexually abused eight boys -- preteens and young teenagers -- over a 15-year period.
Sandusky was arrested Saturday on charges that he preyed on boys he met through The Second Mile, a charity he founded for at-risk youths. The charity said in a statement Sunday that Sandusky has had no involvement with its programs involving children since 2008, when Sandusky told the foundation that he was being investigated on child-sex allegations.
The case has rocked State College, a campus town routinely ranked among America's best places to live and nicknamed Happy Valley. Under head football coach Joe Paterno, the teams were revered both for winning games, including two national championships, and largely steering clear of trouble.
Kelly said Paterno, who last week became the coach with the most wins in Division I football history, is not a target of the investigation into how the school handled the accusations.
Paterno who testified before the grand jury, wasn't charged and the grand jury report didn't appear to implicate him in wrongdoing.
Noonan said, as far as state police can tell, Paterno fulfilled his legal requirement to report.
"But somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child," Noonan said. "I think you have the moral responsibility, anyone. Not whether you're a football coach or a university president or the guy sweeping the building. I think you have a moral responsibility to call us."
In a statement issued Sunday, Paterno called the charges shocking.
"The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling," he said. "If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers."
Sandusky, whose defenses were usually anchored by tough-guy linebackers, spent three decades at the school. The charges against him cover the period from 1994 to 2009.
Sandusky retired in 1999 but continued to use the school's facilities. University officials said Sunday they were moving to ban him from campus in the wake of the charges.
Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, told The Associated Press on Sunday that it was premature to discuss whether Paterno might testify at trial.
"That's putting the cart way ahead of the horse," he said. "We're certainly not going to be discussing the lineup of potential witnesses."
The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before a state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized.
Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.
"He's shaky, as you can expect," Amendola told WJAC-TV. "Being 67 years old, never having faced criminal charges in his life and having the distinguished career that he's had, these are very serious allegations."
Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault.
One accuser, now 27, testified that Sandusky initiated contact with a "soap battle" in the shower that led to multiple instances of involuntary sexual intercourse and indecent assault at Sandusky's hands, the grand jury report said.
He said he traveled to charity functions and Penn State games with Sandusky. But when the boy resisted his advances, Sandusky threatened to send him home from the 1999 Alamo Bowl, the report said.
Sandusky also gave him clothes, shoes, a snowboard, golf clubs, hockey gear and football jerseys, and even guaranteed that he could walk on to the football team, the grand jury said. He testified that Sandusky once gave him $50 to buy marijuana, drove him to purchase it and then drove him home as the boy smoked the drug.
The first case to come to light was a boy who met Sandusky when he was 11 or 12, and physical contact began during his overnight stays at Sandusky's house, the grand jury said. Eventually, the boy's mother reported the sexual assault allegations to his high school, and
- Sandusky was banned from the child's school district in Clinton County.
That triggered the state investigation that culminated in charges Saturday.
But the report also alleges much earlier instances of abuse and details failed efforts to stop it by some who became aware of what was happening.
Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said.
And in 2002, Kelly said, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said.
The two school administrators fielded the complaint from the graduate assistant and from Paterno. Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed the identity of the graduate assistant as Mike McQueary, now the team's wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. The two spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the names in the grand jury report haven't been publicly released.
McQueary's father, John, said his son was out of town on a recruiting trip Sunday, and he declined to comment about the case or say whether they were the two named in the grand jury report.
"I know it's online, and I know it's available," John McQueary told the AP. "I have gone out of my way not to read it for a number of reasons."
Curley and Schultz met with the graduate assistant about a week and a half after the attack was reported, Kelly said.
"Despite a powerful eyewitness statement about the sexual assault of a child, this incident was not reported to any law enforcement or child protective agency, as required by Pennsylvania law," Kelly said.
There's no indication that anyone at school attempted to find the boy or follow up with the witness, she said.
Schultz's lawyer, Thomas J. Farrell, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the mandated reporting rules only apply to people who come into direct contact with children. He also said the statute of limitations for the summary offense with which Schultz is charged is two years, so it expired in 2004.
The grand jury report that lays out the accusations against the men cites the state's Child Protective Services Law, which requires immediate reporting by doctors, nurses, school administrators, teachers, day care workers, police and others.
Neither Schultz nor Curley appear to have had direct contact with the boys Sandusky is accused of abusing.
The law "applies only to children under the care and supervision of the organization for which he works, and that's Penn State, it's not The Second Mile," Farrell said of his client. "This child, from what we know, was a Second Mile child."
Messages left later Sunday seeking comment from Frederiksen with the attorney general's office, and from Curley's lawyer, Caroline Roberto, weren't immediately returned. Farrell said it was accurate to say the allegations against Curley are legally flawed in the same manner.
Farrell said he plans to seek dismissal at the earliest opportunity.
"Now, tomorrow is probably not the appropriate time," Farrell said Sunday. "We'll bring every legal challenge that is appropriate, and I think quite a few are appropriate."
As a summary offense, failure to report suspected child abuse carries up to three months in jail and a $200 fine.
"As far as my research shows, there has never been a reported criminal decision under this statute, and the civil decisions go our way," he said.
Curley and Schultz also are accused of perjury for their testimony to the grand jury that issued a 23-page report on the matter Friday, the day before state prosecutors charged them. Sandusky was arrested Saturday and charged with 40 criminal counts.
Curley denied that the assistant had reported anything of a sexual nature, calling it "merely `horsing around,"' the grand jury report said. But he also testified that he barred Sandusky from bringing children onto campus and that he advised Spanier, the school president, of the matter.
The grand jury said Curley was lying, Kelly said, adding that it also deemed portions of Schultz's testimony not to be credible.
Schultz told the jurors he also knew of a 1998 investigation involving sexually inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with a boy in the showers the football team used.
But despite his job overseeing campus police, he never reported the 2002 allegations to any authorities, "never sought or received a police report on the 1998 incident and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002," the jurors wrote.
- "No one from the university did so."
Farrell said Schultz "should have been required only to report it to his supervisor, which he did."
Schultz reports to Spanier, who testified before the grand jury that Schultz and Curley came to him with a report that a staff member was uncomfortable because he'd seen Sandusky "horsing around" with a boy. Spanier wasn't charged.
About the perjury charge, Farrell said: "We're going to have a lot of issues with that, both factual and legal. I think there's a very strong defense here."
The university is paying legal costs for Curley and Schultz because the allegations against them concern how they fulfilled their responsibilities as employees, spokeswoman Lisa Powers said."
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11/8/11, "Pennsylvania officials: PSU brass failed kids," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"In 1998, Sandusky admitted inappropriate contact with a child to university police, but charges were never filed, Noonan said. Former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar, who disappeared in 2005, made the call on not prosecuting Sandusky. Two children reported at the time that Sandusky washed them in a shower, the Patriot-News said.
The 1998 allegations were reviewed by Child Protective Services and by Wendell Courtney, who at the time was university counsel.
"The allegations in 1998 were reported to the police, investigated by the police and ultimately determined by the Centre County District Attorney, Ray Gricar, to be unfounded," Courtney said.
Courtney said he began representing The Second Mile in 2009 because of more recent allegations against Sandusky.
Sandusky, once a board member, retired from the charity in 2010. Tax records show it paid Sandusky $57,000 annually from 2001 until 2008 as a consultant for program services, management and fundraising. He was listed as neither a director nor a consultant on its fiscal 2009 and 2010 returns.
Last fiscal year, The Second Mile posted an operating deficit of $250,142.
The nonprofit raised $1.2 million that year, more than $1 million less than the previous year and its lowest total since 2003.
Sandusky has adopted children, but Noonan wouldn't comment on whether they have been questioned."
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The DA working on the Sandusky case, Ray Gricar, disappeared mysteriously in 2005. His car was found abandoned, his laptop was found submerged in a river minus its hard drive:
11/8/11, "Questions on Sandusky Are Wrapped in a 2005 Mystery," NY Times, K. Belson
"On the fourth anniversary of his disappearance, investigators revealed that a search of his home computer yielded a history of Internet searches for phrases like “how to wreck a hard drive,” according to a report at the time in The Centre Daily Times."...
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Like so many others Penn State believed it was 'too big to fail.'
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