In case the mob running around Penn State flipping over media trucks late last night didn’t fully drive the point home, perhaps the attorney representing some of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged victims will do the trick: Joe Paterno’s career is more important than anything else in this universe, including allegedly molested children.
Sure, court documents indicate that Paterno was made aware of Sandusky being inappropriate with a child in Penn State showers. Yes, the most famous man on Penn State’s campus did continue to let Sandusky hang around his team and campus for years after he was told of Sandusky’s “peculiar” behavior with young male children.
But no, apparently, he shouldn’t have been fired for his gross incompetence on the matter.
In another example of the perverse logic that seemingly everyone in Penn State is working with, here is what a Harrisburg civil attorney who has been advising some of the alleged Sandusky victims had to say on Paterno’s firing, via Penn Live:
"The board of trustees got it wrong. They should have consulted the victims before making a decision on Mr. Paterno," Ben Andreozzi said. "They should have considered these victims watch TV and are aware of the students' reaction and may not want to be associated with the downfall of Mr. Paterno. The school instead elected to do what it felt was in its own best interest at the time. Isn’t that what put the school in this position in the first place?"
"The way the Board reached its decision raises more concerns than the decision itself. There is no indication the Board considered the impact of the decision on the abuse victims," Andreozzi continued. "The school let the victims down once, and I think they owed it to the victims to at least gauge how the immediate termination decision would impact them as opposed to Mr. Paterno's resignation at the end of the year. These victims do not live in a bubble.
"They see the students reaction to the termination, and to think this does not weigh on their minds would be naive."
Unbelievable.
Over the last few days we’ve covered this story extensively here on Opposing Views, but we’ve done it from slightly different angles. We’ve focused on how this latest incident just speaks to the continuously eroding sense of decency in the sport, and what it means big picture.
We’ve also pointed out that Penn State has essentially been using Paterno as a bulletproof vest for the school’s egregious behavior when news of the molestation scandal came to light.
Stay tuned, it doesn't look like this mess is going anywhere.
Dear Alex and others,
I can see you are all upset, and we all are.
I have looked in to this a bit.
I cannot confirm that anybody is blaming the victims.
Thank God!
But for goodness sake, why do we insist on suggesting that somebody is?
I didn't see a single sign that said "Blame The Victims!"
The board of trustees got it wrong, for sure.
They got it wrong in the 90's and ever since.
Paterno followed the rules of the organization he worked for. Escalate even second hand information to your director. He did.
The board took hasty action with contemptable disregard for full facts, root cause, or corrective action.
It was a completely undisguised effort to assign responsibility elsewhere.
It has failed.
The follow=up trail still leads back to them.
As soon as we can get the attention off Joe Paterno's broken career, we can turn the attention back to the bad guys, and the rules that needed to change 20 years ago.
How 'bout it , cowboys?
It's a sad case of the students at Penn blaming the victims and acting like idiots tearing up the town. Of course the attorney for the victims is only in it for the money too. It's a sad case of neglect on the part of coaches and staff when they decided to pretend it didn't happen!I don't know how they live with theirselves!