What about the elder McQueary?

[Liberal_in_LA]

Where was the fury over the rape of a boy?


Imagine you are a 10-year-old child. It is nighttime. You are in an otherwise empty gym shower with a man whom your family trusted. You are both naked, and he is sodomizing you.

You are bewildered, terrified and in physical agony. And then another grown-up enters the shower area. He sees you being anally raped against the wall. All three of you lock eyes.

Help is here, you think.

Help is here. But your would-be savior runs away. And you're alone once more with the monster you'd thought was your friend.

--------------

McQueary is 6 feet 4. He weighs 213 pounds. He could have knocked Sandusky flat, scooped up that child in his strong arms, and physically stopped the torture of a small boy. Instead, according to the grand jury report detailing Sandusky's alleged monstrous behavior, a "distraught" McQueary rushed to his office and phoned his father.

The elder McQueary, unbelievably, did not order his son to race back to the shower and seize the child. He did not dial 9-1-1 himself and then speed to the gym to offer support until police arrived. He did not call an ambulance for a child who, by that point, undoubtedly needed medical care.


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Where+fury+over+rape/5686810/story.html#ixzz1dQl0gpZr

[golddigger]

1. Well according to some on DU the 28 yr old kid was in shock.

:sarcasm:

[jobycom]

2. He probably was, but he still should have done something. nt

[valerief]

3. For how many years? nt

[iscooterliberally]

5. Good question.

My neighbor went to Penn State, but was not a fan of Paterno or McQueary. He thinks that the younger McQueary might have been one of Sandusky's earliest victims when he was still a child. He thinks the high paying job he got was to keep him quiet. A normal person would have reported to the police immediately. I hope they all end up in prison for a very long time.

:mad:

[valerief]

10. That's a possibility. The silence of so many 'normalizes' child rape at Penn State. nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. The elder McQueary would have snapped him out of his shock "get back in there and grab the kid"

"you are twice the size of the rapist!" Rapist was naked, not like he had a gun or anything.

[AngryOldDem]

17. No excuse.

And I find the irony too rich when I consider the vitriol (much deserved) heaped here upon sex abusing priests and those who cover up for them.

Not one iota of difference between that situation and this one.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. I am not an expert, but I can do some research

What we have is a confrontation between two men, Jerry Sandusky who was age 55 at the time of the 2002 incident, and Mike McQueary who was age 28.

Sandusky had been a defensive end when he played football at Penn State in the 1960s; Joe Paterno was his coach.

McQueary had been a quarterback at Penn State in the 1990s; Joe Paterno was also his coach.

McQueary is described as being roughly 6'4" and 213 pounds.

Knowing very little about football positions, I'm still going to assume that Sandusky in his prime was not a small man and hadn't shrunk considerably over the years. In size, the two men might have been comparable, but McQueary had the distinct advantage of youth.

IF McQueary was intimidated by Sandusky's physical presence, how does that square with his personal history as a quarterback? Aren't quarterbacks routinely confronted by defensive players who are much larger than they and hell bent on knocking them down? Aren't quarterbacks expected to make decisions based on the dynamics of a play that is unfolding before their eyes on the field?

Now, let's back up a little bit. McQueary played for PSU until 1997. He tried to play in the NFL and a European league, but returned to Penn State in 2000 as a graduate student and assistant coach.

While McQueary was away from Penn State, Sandusky "retired" after the 1998 revelations about his behavior with young boys. McQueary had been friends with Sandusky and it seems to me impossible that McQueary didn't know anything about the 1998 allegations. Sandusky was still on campus through his work with his foundation, Second Mile, that attempted to help at risk youth. If McQueary remained ignorant for those two or so years between his return to Penn State in 2000 and his discovery of Sandusky in the shower raping the 10 year old, then I can only assume McQueary chose to be ignorant.

Again, Sandusky was assumed to be Paterno's eventual successor until his downfall in 1998. It would make sense to me that McQueary may have seen himself as Sandusky's eventual successor, and I can't imagine that he wouldn't have wanted to know EVERYTHING about what was going on with the football program. Indeed, wouldn't Paterno want McQueary to know, so he wouldn't inadvertently blow the lid off something? Any explanation of McQueary's innocence and justified ignorance makes no sense to me. McQueary HAD to know. He simply had to. Occam's Razor and all that.

So in 2002, McQueary catches Sandusky in the shower with the 10 year old, and does nothing to stop the rape. According to his own testimony, he's distraught. So distraught, in fact, that he leaves the rape ongoing even though he has made eye contact with both Sandusky and the boy. He's seen them, and they know it.

Again, remember that MCQueary was a quarterback. He was expected to be able to make snap decisions on the football field ALL THE TIME. Not once in a great while when there might be a crisis, but every single play. He was accustomed to facing down defensive players who were probably the same size as Jerry Sandusky but younger. Not once in a while, but ALL THE TIME.

But for some reason or other, McQueary acted out of character on the night he caught Sandusky raping the boy. Now all of a sudden his so distraught that he leaves the scene and calls his father on the phone. His father is a pediatrician. Not just a doctor, but a pediatrician. And his father likewise does nothing to protect the innocent victim of Jerry Sandusky. No call to 911. No call to the police. No call to Jerry Sandusky. No call to Joe Paterno. Not knowing what might have happened to the kid after McQueary left the locker room, neither father nor son does anything at all until the next morning, when the incident is reported to Paterno.

Now, I'm not going to examine what Paterno did or didn't do in this post. What I'm focusing on is the actions -- and/or inactions -- of the person who had the best opportunity to stop two crimes. The first being Jerry Sandusky's 2002 rape of a 10 year old boy which was in progress when McQueary saw it. The second being the next nine years of Sandusky's sexual predation. (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/story/2011-11-10/jerry-sandusky-investigation-victim-1-cover/51160950/1 includes an allegation that Sandusky made 118 phone calls to one of the victims; I consider that predation.)

McQueary had the knowledge, the access, the information, and the physical capacity to stop this. He did nothing. He CHOSE for whatever reasons to do nothing. Whether he hoped the situation would go away and he'd eventually inherit Paterno's job, whether he was brainwashed into believing he hadn't seen what he saw, I don't give a flying shit WHAT he thought -- McQueary is an epic fail. I can see absolutely no excuse whatsoever for his inaction in 2002 or the ensuing nine years of silence.

McQueary needs to be fired. He's not a whistleblower, and he's not a hero. He's a flaming piece of shit.


Tansy Gold

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. person wearing clothes and shoes has advantage over naked wet guy n/t

[fishwax]

13. for the record, his father wasn't a pediatrician but rather a physician assistant / ceo

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/sports/ncaafootball/aspiring-coach-in-middle-of-colleges-scandal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

"McQueary’s parents, John and Anne, moved the family to State College when Mike was 6 and immediately bought season tickets for Nittany Lions football games. A former medical corpsman with the Navy’s special warfare operations, John became a physician assistant, and later, the chief operating officer of a large medical and surgical group in State College. He was also a renowned coach in the State College area himself in youth sports."

I've seen several posters say that he was a pediatrician, but I haven't seen anything to support it. I don't know where that info comes from.

Of course, not being a pediatrician doesn't excuse not convincing his kid to go to the police, but I just wanted to clarify.

[Liberal_in_LA]

14. thanks for the correction.

[Tansy_Gold]

21. I'm not sure where *I* got that information from

but I believe it was from one of the earlier DU posts that I thought was quoting a news report. I will correct that in any future posts. Thanks.


TG

[snagglepuss]

16. Very well said. I too find it highly improbable that McQueary didn't know about

that 1998 incident, in fact his knowing about it may explain the absence of an immediate intervention to the rape, the absence of a gut response. After the death of my physically and emotionally abusive father, I learnt that relatives knew that we had it bad but no one ever said anything. I was utterly shocked to find out that our family situation was spoken about. When an aunt told this to my brother he ripped into her demanding to know why no one ever intervened. She had no answer, however, I think when "things" are known for years but not brought into the open, people lose the ability to react on the spot when confronted by abuse head on. Years of gossip somehow dampens the response or the willingness of a response.

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. sorry no one spoke about about your abusive father. I'm finding out how common this is

:-(

[snagglepuss]

20. I brought this up because I am troubled and perplexed by his inaction

so I wonder whether McQueary over the years had made peace (most likely unconsciously) with the fact that Sandusky was a pedo.

p.s. Your empathy is appreciated.:hi:

[elfin]

8. One more person to confirm that NO ONE

NO ONE put the child's needs above their own loyalties or interests.

This point was made by a caller on today's Ed Show on Sirius.

How did that feel to the CHILD to know that NO ONE helped him, even after being seen??

Add the dad to the list.

[malaise]

9. Why would he -he only cared about his son's

place in the Penn State football set up.

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. That's how to advance your career at Penn state - close your eyes to rape

[roody]

11. Maybe raping children is business as usual.

[randome]

19. You think this doesn't go on in other colleges?

We need to come down hard on all of them, put monitors in place, make every single one of these football coaches and managers and whatever know they are forever under scrutiny.

[AngryOldDem]

15. Exactly.

This whole mess could have ended right then and there if the McQuearys had just done the right thing.