Paterno Gets Fired, Football Fans Riot. But Where's the Outrage Over the Rape of a Child?
I get that football programs are major money makers for many colleges. Really, I do. But why are some people more outraged that a football coach lost his job than they are about the fact that a 10-year-old was raped and no one helped him?
On Wednesday night, about 2,000 football fans rioted in the streets of State College, Pennsylvania, protesting the firing of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. They chanted "We want JoePa," "One more game" and "F*** the media!," among other things, ABC News reported. The crowd of students flipped over a CBS news station television van and kicked out its windows. They knocked a lamppost onto a car, threw rocks and bottles at the police and set off fireworks-all in support of a person who reported the rape of a child to his superiors, but who has admitted that he didn't do anything to help the victim or stop the rapist, his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, from harming others. Sandusky has been accused of assaulting eight boys over the course of 15 years.
You can (and probably should) read the entire Grand Jury report here, but be warned: it's graphic, and you can't un-read it. It details what 28-year-old graduate assistant Mike McQueary saw when he went into the locker room that night in 2002-and how he walked away from a 10-year-old boy who was being held against a wall and raped by a grown man. How he called his own dad for advice instead of calling for someone to help this child. How Paterno heard what McQueary had to say and reported it to his own boss, Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, who dismissed the rape of a child as "horsing around." How Paterno also reported it to Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, who was also in charge of the University Police and who called the rape "not that serious." And how Paterno didn't do anything else.
What's worse is that Sandusky had been investigated for sexually assaulting another child four years earlier. The University counsel at the time, Wendell Courtney, who had approved the 1998 investigation, "was then and remains counsel for The Second Mile," the organization Sandusky founded in 1977 to help "troubled young boys," according to the Grand Jury report.
"People on the outside probably think we're just a bunch of crazy kids acting stupid," junior Andrew Ezzart told ESPN.com while the riot was going on. "But for us, it's so much more than that. We definitely don't like the way they handled the situation. Everybody thinks they made Joe a scapegoat and this was all pinned on him."
Curley has stepped down. Schultz has resigned. University President Graham Spanier was fired. All men high up in the chain of command-higher up, in fact, than Paterno. How does that make Paterno the scapegoat?
Perhaps loyalty to a school and its football team has affected the way people are reacting. Even Ben Andreozzi, an attorney who has been advising some of the alleged victims and their families, told The Patriot-News that the Penn State Board of Trustees moved too quickly to fire Paterno.
"The board of trustees got it wrong," he told The Patriot-News. "They should have considered these victims watch TV and are aware of the students' reaction and may not want to be associated with the downfall of Mr. Paterno."
"The school let the victims down once, and I think they owed it to the victims to at least gauge how the immediate termination decision would impact them as opposed to Mr. Paterno's resignation at the end of the year," he added.
But parents disagree. Former NFL fullback Heath Evans is the father of two daughters and the founder of the Heath Evans Foundation, which counsels survivors of child abuse. "One of the most troubling aspects of this Penn State scenario is the fans who remain loyal to the university and Joe Paterno," he wrote in an article on Yahoo! Sports. "There is no neutral ground in fighting childhood sexual abuse. You either stand against it or stand for it."
"The call to action is now," the father of two continued. "Ask yourself: If that was my son, my brother or my grandson that Jerry Sandusky allegedly had in a dirty college locker-room shower being viciously raped, how would I have wanted Joe Paterno and the administration to respond?"
The outrage over Paterno's firing is misplaced. No one is shutting down Penn State's football program; the money maker will still be able to bring in the bacon. There's plenty of blame to go around; many people failed many children here. That's what is outrageous. Firing a person who could have helped those kids but chose not to? That's not.
Also on Shine:
