According to an investigation released last Thursday, Penn State administrators actively worked to cover up Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse and rape of children.
Sandusky retired as a Penn State football coach in 1999 but kept an office at school, where there were several reported sightings of him assaulting young children on campus. He was found guilty on June 22, 2012 of 45 criminal counts relating to the assaults of ten boys.
A recent report indicated that Penn State President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President?Finance and Business Gary Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy Curley and the late head football Coach Joe Paterno all knew about Sandusky’s actions for over a decade but took no actions to help the victims.
“These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities,” the report stated, according to The Huffington Post. “They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky’s victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and wellbeing, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001,” when then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported witnessing Sandusky sexually assaulting a young boy in a locker room.
To conduct this report, FBI officials conducted 430 interviews and read over 3.5 million emails. No one spoke to the Penn State officials while investigating, but they instead relied on information from documents and other witnesses.
In a January 2012 interview with the Washington Post, Paterno tried to why he did not report Sandusky.
“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” Paterno said. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people.”
The report calls this issue one of the most extensive cover-ups in university history. Instances of abuse by Sandusky allegedly occurred from 1998 to 2011 and were reported to Penn State officials. These instances were left unreported to government officials until recently.
Now, Curley and Schultz will face criminal charges for failing to report the allegations of child abuse which were made against Sundusky in 2002.