Jay Paterno, the son of legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno, says that his family is awaiting the release of former FBI director Louis Freeh's "thorough report" into the sex scandal and possible cover-up at the university.
Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and other university leaders "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse" from authorities, according to Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who conducted an investigation for the university in the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal.
Freeh also found that "although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed" by university officials, including Paterno and the university president, for Sandusky’s victims.
Penn State officials said they would hold a news conference at 3:30 p.m. ET to respond to the report.
Freeh's findings may affect the reputation of legendary coach Paterno, who died soon after the Sandusky allegations became public, as well as the university's standing with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which so far has not announced any punishments of Penn State.
The full investigative report is available in this PDF file.
Freeh's statement concludes:
The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims. As the Grand Jury similarly noted in its presentment, there was no "attempt to investigate, to identify Victim 2, or to protect that child or any others from similar conduct except as related to preventing its re-occurrence on University property.
Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University -- President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno -- failed to protect against a child predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities. They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identify of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001. Further, they exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity, of what McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001.
These individuals, unchecked by the Board of Trustees that did not perform its oversight duties, empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to the University's facilities and affiliation with the University's prominent football program. Indeed, that continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims. Some coaches, administrators and football program staff members ignored the red flags of Sandusky's behaviors and no one warned the public about him.
The report goes on:
In critical written correspondence that we uncovered on March 20th of this year, we see evidence of their proposed plan of action in February 2001 that included reporting allegations about Sandusky to the authorities. After Mr. Curley consulted with Mr. Paterno, however, they changed the plan and decided not to make a report to the authorities. Their failure to protect the February 9, 2001 child victim, or make attempts to identify him, created a dangerous situation for other unknown, unsuspecting young boys who were lured to the Penn State campus and football games by Sandusky and victimized repeatedly by him.
The stated reasons by Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley for not
taking action to identify the victim and for not reporting Sandusky to the police or Child Welfare are:(1) Through counsel, Messrs. Curley and Schultz have stated that the “humane” thing to do in 2001 was to carefully and responsibly assess the best way to handle vague but troubling allegations.
(2) Mr. Paterno said that “I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was. So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”
(3) Mr. Spanier told the Special Investigative Counsel that he was never told by anyone that the February 2001 incident in the shower involved the sexual abuse of a child but only “horsing around.” He further stated that he never asked what “horsing around” by Sandusky entailed.
Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University – Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley – repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities, the Board of Trustees, Penn State community, and the public at large.
Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky’s victims.
The evidence shows that these four men also knew about a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky relating to suspected sexual misconduct with a young boy in a Penn State football locker room shower. Again, they showed no concern about that victim. The evidence shows that Mr. Paterno was made aware of the 1998 investigation of Sandusky, followed it closely, but failed to take any action, even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years, and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s. At the very least, Mr. Paterno could have alerted the entire football staff, in order to prevent Sandusky from bringing another child into the Lasch Building. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley also failed to alert the Board of Trustees about the 1998 investigation or take any further action against Mr. Sandusky. None of them even spoke to Sandusky about his conduct. In short, nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity.
On NBC's TODAY show on Thursday morning, the coach's son, Jay Paterno, told host Matt Lauer that all the family has wanted is for an investigation to find the truth. "We have never ever at any time been afraid to see what people have had to say," and he called the Freeh report "one opinion, one piece of the puzzle." "We've never been afraid of the truth, so let's have the truth come out and let's go from there."
The investigation is billed by Pennsylvania State University as "independent," though the university is paying the law firm of Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sandusky, 68, was found guilty of 45 counts of child sexual abuse last month and is currently in prison awaiting sentencing. He faces a maximum sentence of more than 400 years in prison.
Freeh was hired by the university in November to review the school's dealings with Sandusky and its response to a 2001 report that he sexually abused a boy in a Penn State shower room, an incident witnessed by football assistant Michael McQueary.
Jim Prisching / AP file
How will Penn State's "independent report" affect the reputation of its much-beloved former football coach, Joe Paterno, who died after the scandal broke?
Former Penn State President Graham Spanier has come under particular scrutiny in recent weeks amid news reports suggesting he was made aware of suspicious activity involving Sandusky in 2001 and that no report of the incident was made to authorities.
Citing emails obtained by Freeh’s investigators, CNN reported last week that Spanier and two other university officials — Gary Schultz, the former senior vice president of finance and business, and Tim Curley, the athletic director on administrative leave — agreed to take a "humane" approach in dealing with Sandusky following his alleged sexual encounter with a boy.
Instead of reporting the incident to police, according to CNN's report, administrators planned to ask Sandusky to seek counseling and said they would tell officials at the Second Mile, the charity he founded and where he met many of the children he would later abuse, about their concerns.
"At no time in the more than 16 years of his presidency at Penn State was Dr. Spanier told of an incident involving Jerry Sandusky that described child abuse, sexual misconduct or criminality of any kind, and he reiterated that during his interview with Louis Freeh and his colleagues,'' Spanier's attorneys, Peter Vaira and Elizabeth Ainslie, said in a written statement.
In addition, Freeh’s report is expected to include information about the actions of former head football coach Paterno after McQueary’s allegations. Paterno, a legend in college football, died of lung cancer in January at 85.
Gary Cameron / Reuters file
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired in November to determine whether Penn State University officials knew about child sex abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
In a statement Tuesday, Paterno's family pushed back against the leak of emails to CNN, including one in which Curley stated, "After giving it more thought, and talking it over with Joe yesterday - I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps."
"The media spin that this is proof of some sort of cover up is completely false," the statment said. "When the facts come out, it will be clear that Joe Paterno never gave Tim Curley any instructions to protect Sandusky or limit any investigation of his actions.
"Joe Paterno did not cover up for Jerry Sandusky. Joe Paterno did not know that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile. Joe Paterno did not act in any way to prevent a proper investigation of Jerry Sandusky. To claim otherwise is a distortion of the truth."
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The Sandusky scandal led to the ouster of Spanier and Paterno and charges against Curley, who is on leave from the university, and Schultz, who has since retired. The latter two are accused of perjury for their grand jury testimony and failing to properly report suspected child abuse.
Spanier hasn't been charged. He remains a tenured professor of sociology at Penn State. He has sued the university to gain access to internal emails that his attorneys say will exonerate him.
On Wednesday, the Paterno family released a letter written six months earlier by Paterno, saying, "This is not a football scandal."
A statue of Paterno remains outside Penn State's 106,000-seat Beaver Stadium.
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NBC national investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff contributed to this report.
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