What Would A Man Do?

I'm going to rant again. This is an area very near to me and I feel compelled to answer those who are supporting and defending some of the involved parties in this travesty. Warning, not safe for children.

I have one response to Penn State staff and Joe Paterno defenders. Fuck You. Is that clear enough?

By this time you've all seen the headlines and possibly the story out of Penn State. To say the whole affair is rephehensible is to call the Sun kinda big. It's an atrocity and everyone involved, from Paterno on down should lose their jobs, their freedom and their reputations forever.

Take a minute and peruse this time line. Pay particular attention to these six entries;

Fall 2000—A janitor named James Calhoun observes Sandusky in the showers of the Lasch Football Building with a young boy, known as Victim 8, pinned up against the wall, performing oral sex on the boy. He tells other janitorial staff immediately. Fellow Office of Physical Plant employee Ronald Petrosky cleans the showers at Lasch and sees Sandusky and the boy, who he describes as being between the ages of 11 and 13.


Calhoun tells other physical plant employees what he saw, including Jay Witherite, his immediate supervisor. Witherite tells him to whom he should report the incident. Calhoun was a temporary employee and never makes a report. Victim 8's identity is unknown.


March 1, 2002—A Penn State graduate assistant enters the locker room at the Lasch Football Building. In the showers, he sees a naked boy, known as Victim 2, whose age he estimates to be 10 years old, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant tells his father immediately.


March 2, 2002—In the morning, the graduate assistant calls Coach Joe Paterno and goes to Paterno's home, where he reports what he has seen.


March 3, 2002—Paterno calls Tim Curley, Penn State Athletic Director to his home the next day and reports a version of what the grad assistant had said.


March 2002—Later in the month the graduate assistant is called to a meeting with Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz. The grad assistant reports what he has seen and Curley and Schultz say they will look into it.


March 27, 2002 (approximate)—The graduate assistant hears from Curley. He is told that Sandusky's locker room keys are taken away and that the incident has been reported to The Second Mile. The graduate assistant is never questioned by university police and no other entity conducts an investigation until the graduate assistant testifies in Grand Jury in December 2010.

At least two men, Calhoun and an unnamed graduate assistant physically saw Sandusky having sex with pre-teen boys and do not intervene. They left those boys to their fate. Left them. Who do they report the crime to? Superiors and supervisors. They passed off their responsibility as men, as human beings, to others assuming that those men would do what they themselves failed to do. It wasn't their own lives and safety they were playing with but that of two innocent boys and many more who came later. It all could have been stopped in the Fall of 2000 at the very least with a simple 911 phone call. Hell, they could have reported it anonymously but they didn't. I simply cannot fathom anyone who would abandon those boys at that moment. It beggars incredulity.

Paterno reports it to the AD who does....Nothing. The Vice president for Finance and Business is told and he does...Nothing. Paterno tells the Ad and then does...nothing. Three senior men, leaders and molders of young minds, who didn't just fail those two boys they consigned those who came after them to the same fate at the hands of a human predator who deserves nothing more than a bullet and an unmarked grave.

Let's define a few terms here, Child Molestation and Child Sexual Abuse are RAPE, nothing less. Sex with an innocent child is rape pure and simple. Words like molestation and abuse dilute the seriousness of the crime and lessen it's impact on the public who hears about such depravity. Those two boys, at the very least, were raped by Sandusky.

Let's play a what if game. What if that janitor or graduate assistant witnessed two players fighting? What if one of those players, larger and stronger than the other began choking his weaker and smaller opponent. Even absent seeing the actual death would it be reasonable to assume the crime of murder was happening before their very eyes? Would they be expected to tell a supervisor, coach, AD or Vice President and hope for the best? Would it be considered cowardly if they had refused to intervene or at the very least grab a phone and dial 911?

Everyone involved who didn't try to intervene and stop these crimes is a coward and a criminal, period. My wife Lu, all 5 feet nothing of her, would have done everything she could have, even at the cost of her own life, to stop such an act had she witnessed it and if told about such behavior she would have reported it and the names of the involved to the police. Without hesitation and without delay and damn the consequences. Would any of you have done different? I don't think so.

I am sick to death of the apologists and those who turn a wilfully blind eye to the wanton criminal behavior of beasts like Sandusky. Whether under the guise of a church, wayward child program or a university, those who fail to protect the weak and helpless are vile and deserve to be excoriated from the face of the earth. I have no sympathy, no concern and no regard for such as they and that most emphatically includes Joe Paterno. Paterno had a chance to step up as both a man and as a leader and he chose to not do so. The moment he was told about the actions of Sandusky it was incumbent on him, as it was on all the rest, to do everything in his power to bring the assaults to an end and ensure to one else was raped or harmed by that monster.That he failed in that most basic duty of all men tells me all I need to know about his character. Say it with me; Aided and Abetted.

I unconditionally repudiate Joe Paterno and the rest of those failures and spit upon their memories. May that university and all their works fade into nothingness. And don't give me Mandated Reporter. Every single human being who sees or is even aware of such crimes is morally mandated to report it to the police, not their chain of command. Some things are beyond discomfort and a desire to protect reputatons. Rape is a crime second only to Murder and you have to go a very long way to convince me that they aren't equally horrendous. Death Penalty for Rape? Sign me up as a supporter, especially for the rape of children and as far as I'm concerned all sexual contact with minors is rape of a child.

The only victims here, and they are victims in the truest sense of the word, are the little boys who were raped by a monster straight out of every child's nightmares and abandoned to their fate by the uncaring. No parent worthy of the name could stand by and watch such or hear about it without doing all in their power to see the rapist brought to immediate justice.

I have run out of words to describe my feelings here. I am at a loss for explanations and answers. My attempts to convey my outrage, abhorrence and heart sickness are inadequate. It is beyond my ability to understand such alleged men and their actions. If this isn't black and white I don't know what is. There is no grey area here. It is evil incarnate. The inability or refusal to protect our children is our very end as a species and if this is what we've come to then we are already lost.

May God forgive us.

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