Metro

Penn State’s Paterno should know better

Jerry Sandusky

Jerry Sandusky ( AP)

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A story like this happens, and your first reaction is rage.

A man named Jerry Sandusky, who was a longtime assistant football coach under Joe Paterno at Penn State, stands accused now of the most unspeakable crimes imaginable.

Pennsylvania prosecutors have alleged that Sandusky — who retired in 1999 — either molested or sexually abused eight boys over a 15-year period. If convicted, he faces life in prison, and if convicted, even that won’t seem like a harsh enough penalty.

But while Sandusky is the man who allegedly did these unimaginable acts, he isn’t the reason this is a national story this morning.

It is because of where he used to work — and where, allegedly, the most galling example of abuse took place. And it is because of the man for whom he used to work.

Paterno, who turns 85 in December, has spent 60 years at Penn State, has won more Division I football games than any man ever born, has won two national championships (and easily could have been voted champion three other times), and yet when we think of him, we hardly ever lead with his football résumé. In the pockmarked land of college sports, he has always stood as a voice of both reason and reputation.

The very name — “Paterno” — means “fatherly” in Italian.

And now, at a time when he coaches mostly from the press box for health and safety reasons, when there have already been whispers that this might finally be his last season in State College (where his team is 8-1 and in first place in its division of the Big Ten), Paterno finds himself answering questions that have haunted too many public figures to count across the years:

What did he know?

And when did he know it?

The most damnable of the charges against Sandusky stems from a 2002 incident in which a Penn State graduate assistant walked in on Sandusky as he was allegedly engaged in an act with a 10-year-old boy. The grad assistant, horrified by what he saw, called his father, who told him to tell Paterno. Paterno, in turn, reported what he was told to school authorities.

He never called the cops. He never used his position as “Joe Paterno” to help put a halt to what was clearly becoming an increasingly horrific situation in his home city. Yesterday, he issued a statement through his son, Scott, and tried to offer an explanation of why he didn’t take a more proactive role in stopping this scandal.

“If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters,” Paterno said. “While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved, I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred.”

If you want to believe Paterno fully, you probably believe the young coach couldn’t possibly provide this icon with a full accounting of what he saw. Paterno certainly uses this as an explanation: “It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report.”

Here’s the thing, though: Even if we believe this — and I am sure it WAS impossible for the witness to tell JOE PATERNO exactly what he saw — that speaks as much as anything to the problems inherent with having an icon on your payroll. What if, indeed, Paterno were too enormous — or too dignified, or too old-school, or whatever the reason — to be given a full accounting of what happened?

Well, that’s a big problem. And Penn State has to recognize this, even if we embrace the best-case scenario, that a fully informed Paterno would have used his status to make things right in 2002.

It doesn’t matter why the right thing wasn’t done, just that it wasn’t done.

And Paterno still has to answer for that, if not with his job then with a chunk chiseled off his pristine legacy.