New York Times Editorial: Penn State's Part

[Stuart G]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/penn-states-part-in-the-sandusky-sexual-abuse-scandal.html?_r=1&hp


The factual conclusions of the investigation of Pennsylvania State University’s cover-up of serial sex crimes by one of its former football coaches are searing enough: the university’s leaders did nothing for nearly a decade and a half — from the late-1990s until just recently — while a predator trawled for children in their midst, using the school’s football program as a lure. Worse than that, the report says, the school’s leaders worked diligently to conceal significant facts about the case from the authorities, the board of trustees, the university community and the broader public.

But the exhaustive investigation by Louis J. Freeh, a former federal judge and F.B.I. director, goes much further. It shows how slavish devotion to some institutional imperative can trump everything, including the law, basic human decency and the bedrock obligation we all have to protect defenseless children from harm. At Penn State, the imperative was protecting a storied football program and its legendary coach. In another huge institution betraying children under its protection, the Roman Catholic Church, it was the sanctity of the priesthood...

further down in editorial ....

According to the Freeh report, Mr. Spanier, Mr. Curley and Mr. Schultz then concocted a plan that involved encouraging Mr. Sandusky to seek professional help and barring him from bringing children alone to the football building. (They incongruously described this as “humane.”) Later that same year, Mr. Sandusky is said to have assaulted yet another victim in the football building showers.

As Mr. Freeh noted on Thursday: “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children Sandusky victimized.” He said they “never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims” until after he was arrested in 2011.