Paterno family report: JoePa allegations were ‘rush to judgment’
JOHN McDONNELL / Washington Post
Joe Paterno and his wife, Sue. Paterno offered to quit as head coach
at Penn State effective at the end of the 2011 season, but was instead
fired Nov. 9. Students rioted.
The family of
Joe Paterno issued a massive report this morning that seeks to rebut,
at times point by point and line by line, the damning accusations that
the late Penn State football coach covered up sexual-abuse allegations
against Jerry Sandusky.
The authors of the study exonerate the coach and the university
football program, and denounce the accusing Freeh report as inaccurate,
incomplete and misleading."A rush to judgment," said former U.S. attorney general and Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh, among the experts retained by the Paterno family.
The study, called "Paterno - The Record," was commissioned by the coach's widow, Sue Paterno, and led by her Washington attorney, Wick Sollers. Posted on www.Paterno.com and simultaneously discussed on ESPN at 9 a.m. today, the study represents a major effort by the Paterno family to clear the damaged reputation of the former coach.
He and three other university leaders were found in the Freeh report to have covered up allegations of child-sexual abuse by former assistant coach Sandusky, now in prison. The university leadership accepted the report, which became the basis for extraordinary sanctions against the football program.
From the News Desk
In a statement released Sunday through a spokesman, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who investigated the university's behavior in the Sandusky Case at the behest of the school leadership, defended his work.
"I stand by our conclusion that four of the most powerful people at Penn State failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade," he said.
The new study by the family said:
- Paterno participated in no conspiracy to hide Sandusky's actions, neither because of a fear of bad publicity or other reasons.
- There's no evidence that the football culture at Penn State contributed to Sandusky's crimes.
- Freeh investigators had no subpoena power and no one testified under oath. Some witnesses were allowed to speak anonymously.
- The string of e-mails that contributed to Freeh's finding of conspiracy "falls apart under scrutiny." The e-mails show that "Joe Paterno knew few details about Sandusky, that he acted in good faith and that he did what he thought was right based on what he knew at the time."
This morning on ESPN, Thornburgh and other members of the report team lambasted the Freeh report.
Thornburgh said he respected Louis Freeh, but the report was "full of inaccuracies" and left "much overlooked, much misrepresented."
Former FBI profiler Jim Clemente said Sandusky alone was responsible for the crimes that put him in prison to serve what is effectively a life sentence. "Sandusky got away with what he did because he's a skillful manipulator," in the "top 1 percent" of predators who groom children for abuse, he said.
Wick Sollers, who is Sue Paterno's attorney, said on ESPN that he was not ruling out any option, including a lawsuit, regarding the NCAA's extraordinary penalties against the football program.
On Friday, Sue Paterno released a letter that called her husband's firing by the university board of trustees "rash and irresponsible," and on Monday night she'll appear in an ABC interview conducted by Katie Couric.
In the two-page letter, addressed, "Dear Lettermen," Sue Paterno broke 14 months of silence to harshly criticize the trustees and the Freeh report produced under its auspices. Joe Paterno died in January 2012, and the three former top university officials now await trial on charges that stem from the Sandusky case.
Sue Paterno wrote in the letter that she did not recognize the man Freeh described, and defended her husband as "exactly the moral, disciplined and demanding man you knew him to be."
Paterno said the board panicked in dismissing her husband after Sandusky was indicted in November 2011. Joe Paterno died from complications of lung cancer the following January. The board, the letter said, panicked again when the Freeh report was released in July 2012.
"To claim that this ill-considered and rash process served the victims and the university is a grave error," she wrote. "Only the truth serves the victims."
Paterno said she directed her attorney to review the Freeh report and her husband's conduct at length and in depth. Before the family report was released, she said her attorney's experts "unreservedly and forcefully confirm my beliefs about Joe's conduct."
Joe Paterno's dismissal, and the subsequent allegations against him, continues to anger many members of the university community, who after more than a year speak out at trustees meetings and other forums. The current university leadership has sought to move on from the matter. Others, who likewise love the school, accept the Freeh report and its conclusions concerning Paterno as definitive.
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