For fifty years the excellence and integrity of Penn State's football program has transformed the university founded as an agricultural school located in a backwater. Football success generated tens of millions of dollars in free, positive publicity, which made the school more visible to promising college applicants, which increased the quality and quantity of enrollment, and which swelled its endowment with donations from proud alumni. It was a golden circle.
Yesterday, three men closely associated with Penn State were indicted by a Pennsylvania grand jury. Jerry Sandusky was charged with forty counts related to child molestation. Eight boys are involved, none older than thirteen. For thirty-two years, ending in 1999, Mr. Sandusky was an assistant football coach at Penn State. Many of the incidents of child molestation occurred while Sandusky was employed by Penn State, on university property, or on university business.
More ominously for Penn State, the administrator in charge of all sports programs, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz, a senior vice president whose duties include oversight of campus police were also indicted in the case, for perjury before the grand jury and for failure to notify law enforcement of a 2002 molestation instance. Closing the tarnished circle, university president Graham Spanier issued a written statement after the indictments attempting to distance Penn State from Sandusky, who he referred to only as a "former university employee" and steadfastly backing Curley and Schultz. It is a statement Spanier will regret having written.
Several years ago Spanier and Curley went to the home of head football coach Joe Paterno. The football team was mired in mediocrity at the time. The purpose of the visit was to convince Paterno to resign. Paterno slammed the door in their faces and stayed on. He is now 84 years old. For fifty years football has ruled at Penn State.
Child sex cases are among the most challenging for America's judicial system. That system requires openness. The presentation of proof of guilt is in public courtrooms. That means that the victims have to testify and that often means increasing the trauma that they have already suffered. These cases are also very humiliating to the accused; there is no more accursed word in the language than pedophile. In an undercover recording of a conversation with the mother of one of the boys Sandusky is reported to have said, "I wish I were dead." Suicide is more common in these cases than in others, especially, as here, when the accused is famous. It's a vicious circle: the charges must be pressed--to protect other children--but those already victimized might be traumatized anew; the accused must be punished if guilty--but not by death; the system must protect him too.
