Victoria Brownworth

When Joe “JoePa” Paterno’s weekly press conference was cancelled Tuesday mere minutes before he was scheduled to speak, Pennsylvanians following the sex abuse scandal that has rocked Penn State and the national college football scene knew it was over–JoePa’s legendary career, that is.

The weekly press conference was cancelled by president Graham Spanier who is attempting to exert damage control over scandal and the subsequent arrests of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, athletic director Tim Curley and Penn State vice president Gary Schultz. The arrests were made Nov. 7 following a three-year investigation and a grand jury report that Sandusky, considered heir apparent to one of the most successful coaching gigs in college football history, had raped, sodomized and sexually assaulted young boys he was mentoring.

One of the sexual assaults was allegedly witnessed on campus, reported to Paterno who then told Curley. Paterno asserted that he followed school protocol in making a report to Curley, but said he did not feel he should contact police.

Curley did not contact police, either. No one contacted police. As a result, boys were sexually assaulted over a period of at least nine more years.

The reason Paterno’s press conference was cancelled, according to Paterno’s son, Scott, was because the 84-year-old coach intended to read a statement about the allegations and arrests and was prepared to answer questions. It is rumored that Paterno will be forced to resign in the coming days, ending what has been the longest coaching gig in college football history.

The case has become a lead story locally and nationally because Paterno has legendary status as a coach. But details of the grand jury report are repugnant and appalling. As the District Attorney for State College has made clear, this case is not about football or coaching, but about the sexual molestation of children.

The terms “sexual abuse” and “sexual molestation,” however, have become unpleasant euphemisms in American society–stand-ins for rape, sodomy and other coercive sexual acts by adults against minors. The terms sexual abuse and sexual molestation are used when priests, teachers, coaches and family members sexually assault minors. If a stranger did any of these things to a child, it would be called what it is: forcible rape and/or sodomy. These euphemisms only protect the perpetrators.

Sandusky is accused in the grand jury report of raping and sodomizing children on a regular basis. Curley and Schultz have been charged with covering up his crimes. Paterno has not been charged, but the stink of these viles crimes has stuck to him. And he is not blameless.

College sports, football in particular, has taken on the same self-protective modality as the Catholic Church when it comes to sexual assaults of minors. Victims are treated shabbily while colleges which depend on sports for funding revenue often hide or dismiss charges brought by complainants. In recent years there have been rape scandals involving basketball and football stars at many national colleges, including, locally, La Salle. Almost all of these cases have involved female students who have often asserted that they were intimidated by college officials into dropping charges or risk being accused of personal sexual mores that would smear their own reputations or even cause them to be expelled. Many young women have asserted that sexual assaults by college sports stars routinely go unreported because the victims know nothing will be done.

Sandusky coached at Penn State in State College for 32 years after he graduated from the school. Throughout that period the grand jury asserts he culled victims from the ranks of students and players. In addition, Sandusky founded a foster home, The Second Mile, in 1977, for troubled boys. The Second Mile expanded to a large, statewide charity that helped boys from dysfunctional families with absent fathers. Sandusky took a personal interest in the boys, mentoring them on many levels. Including, according to the grand jury report, in sexual assault.

Supporters of Penn State, JoePa and the Nittany Lions have been quick to assert that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and that JoePa himself hasn’t been charged. These are the same excuses Philadelphians heard about their parish priests when three separate grand jury reports were released showing a decades-long pattern of rape, sodomy, sexual assault and intimidation of minors and a concerted effort by the church hierarchy to keep the crimes covered up and out of police jurisdiction.

College sports has long been a bastion of the “boys will be boys” mentality. Excuses have been made for football and basketball stars regarding everything from poor grades to bad behavior, even when that behavior is criminal. That same attitude has also been accrued to coaches and athletic directors. Maintaining an insular society where the rules of the outside world do not apply has been a norm rather than an anomaly. The current Penn State scandal is indicative of just how normative it has become.

Paterno filed his one and only complaint against Sandusky in 2002. Nine years ago. How many kids have been sexually assaulted in the interim?

The incident that Paterno knew about wasn’t some lingering shoulder rub that might have been misconstrued by the graduate assistant who witnessed it as sexual in nature. Rather, it was a rape in progress.

According to the grand jury report, the graduate assistant entered the shower area at Penn State because he heard sounds of what he thought were sexual activity. There he witnessed Sandusky, naked, engaging in anal intercourse with a boy the graduate assistant estimated to be about ten years old. Both the boy and Sandusky saw the graduate assistant, who left, “distraught,” according to the grand jury report.

The graduate assistant called his own father, who insisted that the incident be reported to Paterno. Paterno then notified Curley. Curley had a meeting with Schultz and later the two told the graduate assistant that Sandusky’s keys had been taken away.

Neither the University police, child protective services nor any other criminal authority–like the police–were contacted about the incident. After Paterno, no one interviewed the graduate student. According to the grand jury report, President Graham Spanier was apprised of the incident, however.

Consider this: a young grad student sees an anal rape by an adult man of a child in a shower. He’s completely freaked out. (Paterno testified to the grand jury that the young man was “very upset” when he came to Paterno’s house on a Saturday to report the incident with his father.) He doesn’t know what to do because, as he testified, he’d never witnessed anything like that before. He calls his father. His father can’t imagine a grown man having sex with a ten-year-old boy in a campus athletic shower. But Paterno understands, because this isn’t the first time he’s heard this: Sandusky had been under suspicion for similar behavior in 1998. Plus, what is a grown man doing naked in a shower with a child not his own anyway? That would be inappropriate at best.

At that point, then, knowing what he knew, shouldn’t Paterno have called police, not Curley?

The grand jury report makes clear that no one wanted to indict Sandusky. Sandusky had emeritus status at the university, he was groomed to be Paterno’s replacement when he finally retired and the school had a lot invested in him. Much more of an investment than they did in a few kids from the inner city who were lucky enough to be mentored by Sandusky and brought to Penn State for athletic training.

And anal rape in the showers.

Sandusky’s alleged rape of the ten year old–listed in the grand jury report as Victim 2–occurred in 2002. Had any one of the adults who knew about the incident called police, Sandusky would have been arrested then. Nine years ago. Victim 2 would not have led to Victim 9. And those are just the number of victims whose testimony is in the report. There were other boys who testified, but they were not actual rape victims–merely victims of fondling and unwanted advances–and so they are indicated by initials in the report, not victim status.

Anyone saying this story is going to play out and Sandusky, Curley and Schultz will be exonerated and Paterno won’t be forced to resign needs to read the dozens of pages of the grand jury report. All three men who have been charged deserve prison time and Paterno should have resigned when he testified to the grand jury in 2010. Paterno could have ended his stellar career on a grace note instead of this vile and despicable taint. Because he is indeed tainted. A boy was raped while he was in charge, raped by the man he had groomed for decades to be his successor, and when he picked up the phone to called someone about that rape, it was Curley, not the police.

Rape is a crime and a college where it occurs is just another crime scene, not some sanctuary for rapists. It doesn’t matter who the victim is–if it’s a drunk college girl at a frat party where a football star has sex with her when she’s half unconscious or it’s a ten-year-old from the inner city with no dad who is thrilled to have a nationally renowned coach taking an interest in him. When a victim is taken advantage of by a perpetrator in a milieu where everyone looks the other way at the violent and criminal behaviors of either college sports stars or their leaders, it’s no different from some random guy dragging a woman into a back alley or luring a child into a car. What Sandusky is accused of isn’t euphemistic, it’s rape.

Sandusky was–is–a serial predator. He lured kids repeatedly. He used his influence to lure boys who were already vulnerable, already at risk for almost anything bad from gang leaders to drug dealers to serial child rapists. He took them to Eagles games and allegedly fondled them in the car on the way. He played sports with them, took them on trips, gave them computers, games, meals, gifts, money. He bought them and their silence and most of them–but not the victims cited in the grand jury testimony–kept that silence.

Curley and Schultz are just as guilty. They knew who and what Sandusky was–a serial child rapist–and they supported and protected him and did nothing to stop him. They reported to Spanier and he did nothing. And Paterno–the legend, our JoePa–knew and also did nothing.

Sandusky looks just like the handsome guy next door who coached your kid on a Sunday and was always smiling and slapping you on the back. But in reality, according to the details of the grand jury report, Sandusky is a truly sick and twisted guy. A serial rapist. Yet if any one of these other men had thought for a second about the children being raped, rather than their own careers and the reputation of their college, they could have stopped him early and saved countless victims.

Sandusky was a coach for 32 years. Does anyone believe he just suddenly woke up in 1998–the first reported incident where he was caught–and decided to become a serial child rapist? Rape is the most recidivist of crimes. Pedophile rape is considered almost untreatable by psychiatrists, because the disturbed desire is so ingrained in the perpetrators that it’s compulsive. The perpetrators simply can’t stop themselves. Sandusky is alleged to have been caught raping a child in the open showers of a college athletic department. That’s compulsion.

But Sandusky’s compulsion to rape young boys was fed by every adult man around him who looked the other way. Curley and Schultz may be the only ones indicted–because they lied to the grand jury under oath and subverted the criminal justice system–but they were hardly the only people who allowed Sandusky to continue his behavior.

Sandusky is married and has six kids. He brought these boys from The Second Mile to his home and they stayed over night in a basement bedroom where Sandusky is alleged to have gone and had sex with them while his wife and kids were upstairs.

The news is focused on whether Paterno can weather the storm and not have to resign. He should resign. He should have resigned the day of his grand jury testimony. Spanier should also resign. He runs the university. He is responsible for every student on campus. And every faculty and administrative member and visitor–especially the naked ten-year-olds in the showers.

Heads should roll at Penn State until the entire community of the school and State College can be assured that such a despicable and horrific pattern of criminality can never occur at the school again. Until that happens, it’s not just JoePa’s legacy that’s in question, but an entire community that allowed vulnerable children to be expendable for the sake of legacy. It’s beyond shameful. Let’s stop talking about poor JoePa and start talking about Sandusky’s many victims and the environment the school created that allowed them to be taken by a predator with impunity while the college hierarchy looked the other way.