See no evil, hear no evil at Penn State
When he came to Pittsburgh in advance of the primary election in April, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made the baffling vow that he would “bring that back” in reference to disgraced Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno.
Whether he was referring to the bronze statue of Paterno that was removed from the Penn State campus in 2012 after it became clear that Paterno looked the other way when Jerry Sandusky was carrying on his criminal spree of child molestation, or that he would somehow raise Paterno from the dead, remains unsettled. It should be obvious by now that Trump is not one for clarity or profound thought.
More recently, more than 200 former lettermen from the university’s football team sent a letter to Penn State’s board of trustees and university President Eric Barron asking that the statue be restored to a place of honor. Brian Masella, a former tight end for Penn State, confidently declared, “Now is the appropriate time. Enough is enough.”
Masella might want to retract those words following revelations that Paterno’s knowledge of Sandusky’s horrifying misconduct almost certainly extended all the way back to 1976. In fact, Masella and his compatriots might want to politely ask that Barron and the trustees take that letter and toss it in the nearest trash receptacle.
Even better, they could ask that a match be set to it and its existence never mentioned again.
The once-beloved coach’s downfall was precipitated by a grand jury finding that Paterno was told in 2002 by a graduate coaching assistant that he saw Sandusky raping a boy in a Penn State shower and that Paterno more or less shrugged. More tarnish has been added to Paterno’s reputation as a result of court records unsealed Tuesday. Testimony by dozens of men who said they were molested by Sandusky and paid hefty settlements by Penn State indicated that Paterno and other members of the university’s football squad had some inkling of Sandusky’s misdeeds in the 1970s and 1980s, but adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” stance.
According to testimony delivered in an insurance lawsuit, a man said under oath in 2014 that when he was attending a Penn State football camp 40 years ago when he was 14 years old, Sandusky touched him in a way that was, to say the least, inappropriate. When the teenager reported the incident to Paterno, the coach allegedly brushed him off. “I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff,” Paterno is said to have replied. “I have a football season to worry about.”
Then, there was testimony from a man who said that Sandusky put a hand down his shorts in 1987 when he was a 13-year-old, an act that was apparently witnessed by another assistant coach. That coach did nothing. A year later, a weight room assistant saw Sandusky rubbing the back of a boy who was reclining on a couch in his underwear. No action was taken. Players and coaches were also aware, according to testimony, that Sandusky would have boys stay with him in hotel rooms before home games in State College, and that he would bring boys with him to shower in the team locker room.
In the proceedings, a lawyer asked a man identified as John Doe 101, “Would any of the other coaches bring young men back … and shower with them?” John Doe 101 replied, “Some of the coaches’ sons would come in and work out. But I don’t believe I ever saw any, just, coaches bringing random children in and showering with them.”
In the years since Sandusky was tried and convicted on multiple counts of child sexual abuse, it has defied belief that Paterno and other members of the Penn State football program spent decades in a state of blissful ignorance about Sandusky and his “issues” with boys. The testimony made public Tuesday fortifies the long-held suspicions that, yes, they were in the know and chose to do nothing, either feeling it was too awkward an issue to confront, or, more disturbingly, they didn’t want to upset the apple cart and damage the almighty football program.
On second thought, maybe the Paterno statue should be brought back. They can put it in some far-off corner of campus, and place the following inscription along with it: “I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff. I have a football season to worry about.”