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Paterno screwed up bigtime, but doesn't it beg the question why administrators like Paterno (inside and out of sports) make the same mistake over and over again?
Hell no Sandusky wasn't railroaded. Even his own son testified against him. But I think the previous poster was referring to the fact that Sandusky was acquitted of the rape in the showers in 2001 because the prosecution decided not to call the guy to the stand. And oddly neither did the defense. The man was alternately quoted as saying nothing happened in the shower while at the same time he was suing Sandusky for s e xual molestation on other occasions. Both the prosecution and the defense saw him as a wildcard.
The thing I can't understand about Paterno being the main scapegoat is that he was aware of two instances (though the first was reported to police), whereas so many important people in the state were also aware and did nothing. I'm not even getting into police and child services in Centre County, but the Second Mile was told by Paterno and PSU, and the Second Mile BOD is filled with top honchos. The top of the state gov't knew, including prosecutors, for years, and they did nothing. This includes the former governor. And then you have the whole Clinton County school system that terrorized one of Sandusky's victims for years until he dropped out of school, and to this day that school system hasn't been disinfected of horribly corrupt teachers, football coaches, principals and superintendents. Not even an apology for terrorizing the victim. Then there's another very high amount of absurdity in that the Clinton County rape by Sandusky was reported in the media in 2009, a full 2 years BEFORE the story blew apart in 2011. That isolated rape in 2009 apparently had little media interest and even less prosecutorial interest. They sat on it for 2 years. Then in 2011, they convened for pre-prosecutorial testimony, and that's when the McQueary stuff came out. If I had to guess, there were people in the community who were flabbergasted that the 2009 story didn't blow Sandusky out of the water, that the state took no interest, and that this monster was allowed to continue, so someone dropped a dime on McQueary. it was only in 2011 that the governor and his friends in the AG office sent additional investigators to look at Sandusky. And in the end, Second Mile wasn't touched.
Given all this, it seems absurd that beyond Paterno, no one is taking serious blame.
I don't necessarily disagree that others were is a position to stem the actions of Sandusky or that Paterno was singled out due to his prominence, while others skated. It happens all the time. I was just addressing the characterization of the testimony against Sandusky and the implication that the charges he was found guilty on were not as serious as they were.