By Jan Murphy
The Patriot-News
November 8, 2011
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_states_joe_paterno_and_gr.html
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| Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno is under fire for not taking more action when a graduate assistant reportedly told Paterno in 2002 that he saw former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky acting inappropriately with a ten-year-old in the showers at the Lasch Building on the Penn State campus. |
Todd Frey said he was 13 when he was sexually abused by his priest.
Frey told a senior priest and school counselor, but both doubted his word and dismissed him.
Mark L. Rozzi said he also was 13 when his priest sodomized him in the shower. The abuse continued for months.
Watching the unfolding of the Penn State University sexual abuse scandal involving former football defense coordinator Jerry Sandusky, Frey and Rozzi have one overriding thought: Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier failed in their moral obligation.
Paterno and Spanier might have gone through proper channels, but they failed to do all they could to ensure children were protected, Frey and Rozzi said.
“[Paterno] absolutely did not do his moral duty,” said the 43-year-old Frey, of Lancaster County. “He knows the system. He’s been in that school for many years, he knew the channels. I think Joe Paterno should’ve taken it further — just for humanity, not just for what the handbook reads.”
Neither Paterno nor Spanier has been charged in the ongoing grand jury investigation.
Attorney General Linda Kelly said Monday that Paterno is not a target of the probe. She was not as clear-cut about the status of Spanier, stating only that she could not comment beyond what is in the grand jury presentment because the case is still active. The grand jury says Spanier testified he was told Sandusky had been seen “horsing around” with a boy.
On Monday, former Senior Vice President Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley were charged with perjury in their grand jury testimonies and failing to report suspected child sexual abuse.
‘They need to be held accountable’
“If that was your grandson, you would’ve gone .... to police,” said the 40-year-old Rozzi, of Berks County. “I love how he’s playing how ‘I did my job.’ Bull crap. These people don’t realize until it happens to someone in their family, someone they love. Then they realize how damaging the effect.”
Rozzi, who was abused in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown in 1984, said he and other abuse victims now refer to the Division I school as “the Archdiocese of Penn State,” in reference to the sweeping sex abuse scandal that has rocked the church for years.
“You take the collar off the priest and put it on the Penn State people and everyone is interchangeable,” Rozzi said. “Everyone has a chance in life to do the right thing. When they have information and don’t do the right thing, they need to be held accountable.”
Frey said the eight boys who authorities say Sandusky assaulted would have looked to the adults around them at Penn State for some help.
“You are overwhelmed with your surroundings. You are overwhelmed with the honorary positions these people are holding — assistant coach at a good school,” Frey said. “But as a child, you can’t defend yourself. You feel somewhat privileged in a very negative sense, but even at 10 you feel that something is not right.”
A 10-year-old boy, who prosecutors say Sandusky sexually assaulted in 2002 in the showers in the Lasch Building on the Penn State campus, didn’t have anyone protecting him.
The state’s Child Protective Service law is supposed to provide that protection, requiring individuals who suspect that a child is being abused to report it to the child welfare authorities or to a supervisor designated to report it to authorities.
"The whole crux of the mandated reporter law is somebody needs to stand up for the kids, and [in the allegations against Sandusky] nobody stood up for these kids,” said Tina Phillips, director of training at the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance, a Harrisburg-based child welfare agency.
She and Tammy Lerner, an advocate for the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, agree that the graduate assistant met his legal obligations under the Child Protective Services law by telling Paterno what he saw in the shower that night. Paterno, in telling Curley, met his legal obligations, they said.
But by not taking further action when it became apparent that law enforcement wasn’t investigating the incident, Phillips said, “they didn’t do right by the child morally or ethically.”
Scott Paterno, a Harrisburg lawyer speaking on behalf of his father Joe Paterno, said his father complied with the mandatory reporting law. He would not speak on his father’s behalf about the questions of whether he fulfilled a moral obligation.
Spanier and his vice president for university relations, Bill Mahon, did not return emails or phone calls seeking comment for this story. Lawyers for Curley and Schultz offered a statement that their clients did exactly what they were supposed to do and refused to answer any questions.
Report abuse, commissioner urges
Kelly declined to comment about the moral obligations of the two Penn State administrators at a Monday afternoon news conference at the Capitol.
But with an in impassioned tone, state police Commissioner Frank Noonan addressed any adult with knowledge about sexual predators and crime: “What I want them to know is as a human being they have a responsibility. If you have that information, I believe it is your obligation to bring it forward.”
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| Former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, center, and Gary Schultz, interim senior vice president for finance and business at Penn State University, left, enter District Judge Wenner's court room for their arraignment on perjury charges stemming from the Grand Jury investigation of former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. JOE HERMITT, The Patriot-News |
Lerner said instances of suspected child abuse need to be reported directly to legal authorities to prevent cases from falling through the cracks.
“The onus needs to be put on individuals to report the crime to legal authorities, bottom line. Either you are for the protection of children or you are not,” she said. “What they did by passing the buck didn’t protect that child.”
Lerner is pushing for the Legislature to remove the immunity that educational institutions enjoy that doesn’t compel them to make a report to authorities. She also wants to see Penn State apologize to the victim of the 2002 sexual assault and offer an explanation to taxpayers.
“Our tax dollars are going to fund a large portion of that educational institution. I want to know from Penn State why wasn’t this addressed sooner and are there others that weren’t addressed? And I want to know what steps they are going to take ... to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” she said.
Adults who learn of ongoing sexual abuse of minors at the hands of someone they know and trust often have a hard time dealing with that information.
“It’s painful and difficult to accept that someone we know or love or care about or work with could be a child molester, but the bottom line is they are,” said Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“We all probably know someone who is a child molester. We probably just don’t know they are,” Blain said.
Officials say that in 2002, after Penn State officials learned of the alleged abuse, they banned Sandusky from bringing children on campus. But their failure to report the incident to police or child-protection officials was a major moral and ethical blunder, said one victims rights advocate.
“No one stepped up to protect this kid. They were more interested in protecting Penn State football,” said Jennifer Storm of the Dauphin County Victim/Witness Assistance Program. “As a result, there are so many more victims.”
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