The concern lies not in whether Joe Paterno failed to make a phone call.
The concern is whether the attorney general’s office in Pennsylvania was so badly dysfunctional and politicized that a phone call would not bring a meaningful, appropriate, or helpful response.
In the relatively few months since its release on July 12, 2012, former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s report on the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal has grown increasingly irrelevant.
In an apparent rush to release his report, Freeh for example didn’t have the inclination to incorporate the copious sworn testimony of dozens of victims and witnesses at Sandusky’s trial which ended on June 22, 2012.
Nor did he include reference to victim Aaron Fisher’s book, Silent No More, released last October. The book provided a wealth of previously unknown inside information on the case, as well as a devastating account of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s stalling of the case for some three years for political reasons.
It boggles the mind that no less a personage than Dick Thornburgh, a former two time Republican governor of Pennsylvania and later United States Attorney general, should recently comment as follows:
“There was just a rush to injustice. In the case of Mr. Paterno, that injustice was palpable.”
“The Freeh report’s conclusion that Mr. Paterno lacked empathy for the victims of Mr. Sandusky’s abuse is unfounded and offensive.”
On February 10, 2013, Penn State’s Public Relations department issued a statement attempting to defend and explain away Freeh’s admittedly skewed and limited findings, and his inappropriately tiny field of investigation.
“It was not within the scope of Judge Freeh’s engagement to review the actions, motives or functions of entities outside of our University community,” Penn State’s statement reads. “This was an internal investigation into Penn State’s response to the allegations, and that is how the University has utilized the report.”
In other words, Freeh’s report did not provide a broad enough canvas for meaningful understanding of what went wrong, something that the NCAA ignored in its own rush to judgment.
The broader public in Pennsylvania has moved on, and is rightly focusing on problems higher up in the food chain than Penn State and JoePa.
While Freeh and some others are stuck in an infinite loop argument over whether Joe Paterno, or Mike McQueary, should have done more, the real question has become, Would it have mattered?
If the DA, the state’s public welfare agency, the cops, and the attorney general’s office, were all indisposed to action, it would make no difference if JoePa was on the phone morning, noon, and night complaining about Jerry Sandusky. Nothing would have happened.
Indeed, nothing did happen in 2001 when Paterno referred the matter to school higher-ups. And nothing would happen for a decade: There was no receiver down field.
What’s wrong in Pennsylvania? Beyond Sandusky, think of the Luzerne County judges who made money by incarcerating youngsters, and the Milton Hershey Trust’s self-serving board of trustees. Kids in Pennsylvania have no power, they don’t vote, and they don’t make campaign contributions.
Per writ of law, upon his election as governor, Corbett found himself an ex-officio member of the Penn State Board of Trustees, a role as an observer that other governors designated to subordinates.
Once huddled on the Board of Trustees, a conflict-ridden Corbett ham-handedly succeeded in shifting the blame and covering his own slow tracks by engineering the midnight firing of Paterno, with no due process, no open hearings, nor any real attempts at comprehensiveness or fairness.
Within a hundred days of Corbett’s throwing terminally ill JoePa unceremoniously under the truck, Paterno would be dead and in his grave.
A week after Freeh released his report, at a news conference at the Harrisburg Armory, Corbett happily boasted he’d recommended Penn State hire Freeh.
Moreover, Tom Corbett initially praised the NCAA’s sanctions.
“Part of that corrective process is to accept the serious penalties imposed today by the NCAA on Penn State University and its football program,” Corbett opined on July 23, 2012.
Yet a few months later, Corbett held his thumb to the political winds and filed a lawsuit against the sanctions.
As attorney general running for higher office, Tom Corbett not only badly hurt already badly hurt kids, but he also badly injured the offices of attorney general and later governor, Penn State, Paterno, and countless others.
At long last, Corbett’s actions and inactions will be investigated by a special prosecutor appointed by the new state attorney general, elected overwhelmingly on a promise to conduct a thorough investigation into why it took so long to arrest Jerry Sandusky.
Paterno, in his grave, cannot be raised like Lazarus. But what about Pennsylvania?
Bad politics in Pennsylvania has only spawned more bad politics. A system awash in money, special interests, and little or no accountability greatly compounded this terrible scandal. Partisans in denial keep it going.
The Lasch shower room will be cleansed and remodeled. What about the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, and the failed children and youth agencies in Pennsylvania?
