The family of the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno released the findings of their own investigation into the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal yesterday — and it exonerated Paterno while blasting an earlier report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh as “fundamentally flawed.”
More than six months after Freeh’s July 2012 report accused Paterno and others of covering up Sandusky’s child abuse, the family’s report, conducted by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, concluded there was no conspiracy.
“Mr. Freeh irresponsibly blamed Joe Paterno in this scandal,” wrote Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers.
He accused Freeh of “offering a flawed, one-sided viewpoint” and ripped him for not interviewing Paterno.
Freeh retorted that he stood by his conclusions and specifically said Paterno refused to meet with him while still finding time to grant interviews to a newspaper reporter and his biographer before his death in January 2012 at age 85.
Freeh called the family’s report “self-serving.”