Where Football Is King, Alleged Crimes Sometimes Get a Pass
Critics say devotion to the coaches behind powerhouse Penn State blinded some.
Nov. 13, 2011— -- Penn State alumna Kristen Houser said she was glad to see fans out in force at the Nittany Lions' game Saturday in T-shirts focused on the allegedy victims in the scandal that has rocked the school and its legendary football team.
But the slogan, "Stop Child Abuse," didn't go far enough in her eyes, because it left out a key word. The charges against ex-assistant coach Jerry Sandusky are child sexual abuse.
"Inserting that word, 'sexual,' really changes things," said Houser, vice president for communications and development for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, which has counted sexually abused boys among its clients since its inception 35 years ago.
If the omission was an unconscious oversight -- and she said she believes that's the case -- it nevertheless suggests something about how difficult it's been for many in her football-fixated hometown to face the charges being ferreted out against Sandusky and, by extension, the powerhouse Nittany Lions, the university and the town that grew up around it.
Penn State, she said, "is a cultural hub. When people want to see sporting events, they go on campus. When they want to see a play, they head to the theater on campus. The people who sit on the board for Second Mile [Sandusky's charity] are local business people."
Houser is a Penn State graduate who, as student activist 20 years ago, pushed for heightened policing and publicizing of on-campus sex crimes.
"People see Joe and Jerry at the grocery store. Joe would walk to the stadium from his house on game day and you would walk behind him," she said. "So, this whole community is struggling with this sudden glimpse in the mirror…"
And it is hardly an appealing sight, USA Today sports writer and ABC contributor Christine Brennan said today on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."
Of Mike McQueary, the Penn State assistant coach who allegedly saw Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in a campus shower in 2002: "I believe he thought he was doing a lot, that he was going above and beyond by going to legendary head coach Joe Paterno's house the next day and telling the revered coach what he saw.
"In this case, unfortunately, in this world of college football, Joe Paterno is bigger than the police," Brennan said. "These college programs, people love them. People watch them. I've been around them for decades … They're living in an entirely different world than you and I."
It's fair to ask why McQueary didn't take more forceful, immediate action, given what he says he witnessed, Houser said.
It's also fair to question the lack of more forceful action by Paterno, 84, who coached Penn State for 46 years before Saturday's match-up against Nebraska -- the Nittany Lions lost during what was a described as a somber, reflective afternoon, she said.
Paterno, along with former president Graham Spanier, who called the charges against two university officials accused of failing to report the allegations to police and then lying to investigators "groundless," were fired by the school's board of directors last week.
The delayed response to the alleged crimes against the eight boys owe, in no small measure, to the social dynamic in a town where Paterno and Sandusky each have held their own, singular gravitas, Brennan and Houser said.
"There was such a culture, a group-think that was either in denial or either knew about Sandusky and didn't want to go any further with it," Brennan said. "We'll get to those answers eventually."
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