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	Child Abuse Inquiry Put Governor in Tough Spot The World-Herald November 12, 2011 http://www.omaha.com/article/20111112/NEWS/711129893 For months, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania had reason to suspect that a sexual abuse scandal was going to explode at Penn State University. He also had no way to talk about it, or to prepare for it. Before Corbett became governor in January, he was the state's attorney general. In that office, he had begun an investigation in 2009 into allegations that a former Penn State assistant football coach had abused young boys and that university officials might have covered up the scandal. He had convened a grand jury, and his prosecutors had taken testimony. But when he ran for governor, and even after he took office, he was obligated to keep the investigation secret, even as he saw the university officials at the center of the investigation doing little to address the substance of the inquiry. "He was upset about the inaction," said Kevin Harley, a longtime aide who worked with Corbett in the Attorney General's Office and is now his press secretary. "He knew what witnesses were going to the grand jury even though he was running for governor. So then he became governor, and he knew at some point that this day would be coming. He just didn't know when it would be." That day came a week ago Friday, when the charges became public against the former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, and two senior university officials. Suddenly, though, Corbett faced a new challenge: As governor, he was effectively a member of Penn State's Board of Trustees, the body that would decide how to handle the crisis, when to act and who, if anyone, to fire. But he also knew information about the investigation that he could not share with anyone, including other trustees, and was still bound by rules prohibiting prosecutors from making possibly prejudicial statements. Over the next four days, then, Corbett, a Republican, kept his public statements spare, calling on trustees to act quickly and aggressively. But privately, he worked to move the board in what he believed was the right direction. He called multiple members, including Vice Chairman John P. Surma, the chief executive of U.S. Steel, and told them that the country was watching, that a change at the top was needed and that the issue was about more than a football program, according to a person with knowledge of his efforts. Corbett eventually decided to send a public signal: He formally announced that he would attend the scheduled meeting of the trustees Friday, something he had never done before. "It was indicative of him putting a thumb on the scale," said a person with direct knowledge of the governor's deliberations. Frank Noonan, the commissioner of the state police, said: "You couldn't have kept him away from that meeting with a troop of Marines. He has very strong feelings about this case." At an emergency meeting Wednesday night, the board removed both the university president, Graham Spanier, and Joe Paterno, the football coach. Afterward, the trustees said they had acted independently. But they conceded, without being specific, that the board had received some unsolicited encouragement about what action to take. With Corbett on hand, the board began the process Friday of repairing Penn State's image by forming a committee to investigate the university's failures in the case. New President Rod Erickson plans to appoint an ethics officer, and he said the school will review all standards, policies and programs to ensure that they meet "not only the law, but Penn State's standard." Thursday evening, Corbett addressed reporters in State College, Pa. "Their actions caused me to not have confidence in their ability to lead," he said of Spanier and Paterno, who on Friday hired a high-profile criminal attorney even though he is not the subject of any criminal investigation. Raised in blue-collar Shaler, Pa., a hamlet of 28,000, Corbett spent most of his career as a prosecutor. A Roman Catholic, he was struck early on in the Penn State investigation by the similarities between the university's failure to report allegations of sexual abuse involving Sandusky and the church's failure to report pedophile priests, according to several people who work with him. The Penn State case also had echoes of a prosecution Corbett had led as a young assistant district attorney. Sandusky is alleged to have used a foundation he created for disadvantaged children, called the Second Mile, to prey upon young boys. In the case earlier in Corbett's career, he prosecuted a serial pedophile who ran a club for troubled children called the Children of the Wind. In 2004, Corbett was elected attorney general and created a special unit to investigate child predators. He privately cited the Children of the Wind victims as the reason, saying he remained haunted by victims in the case, Harley recalled. So when the Penn State case landed in Corbett's lap in 2009, he did not hesitate, colleagues say, pressing forward on the investigation even as he ran for governor. Clinton County high school officials had told the local district attorney that Sandusky had molested a boy there, but, citing a conflict of interest, the prosecutor passed it on to the Attorney General's Office to investigate. "Here, he had a wildly popular football coach and a program which in Pennsylvania was revered, and this case lands in his office and, without flinching, he went down that path," said David Urban, a prominent Pennsylvania Republican lobbyist who was once former Sen. Arlen Specter's chief of staff. The more the Attorney General's Office investigated, the more victims it found. "At first, the sensitivity was, 'Oh, my God, is this really happening?'" said Noonan, who at the time was Corbett's chief investigator. Noonan said the thinking soon evolved into disbelief at the university's lack of action. "We talked about how this would be a real shock to people, and how shocking it was to us," he said. When Corbett was elected governor in 2010, "he found it very difficult to let go of the case," Noonan said. The only people he could talk to about it were the few people he had brought with him from the Attorney General's Office; grand jury secrecy laws barred him from discussing it with outsiders, including university trustees he had appointed. From the outside, the governor's main interest in Penn State appeared to be budgetary: He and Spanier were at odds over deep cuts made to the state's higher education budget. Noonan, who remained involved because the governor had appointed him state police commissioner, was one of the few people in his administration in the know. "He'd ask me, 'How is it going?' and I'd say, 'Good, it's going well,' though I couldn't share any details with him," Noonan recalled. "I know that this case was always on his mind and that he's been waiting for it." On Friday Nov. 4, the governor finally got the word. The grand jury indictment had been filed under seal, but because of a computer glitch it had mistakenly been made public. Soon the Governor's Office was inundated with calls. Harley, Corbett's press secretary, reached the governor in his car. Corbett took it in and said simply, "OK."
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