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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Nov 12, 2011 - 03:51pm PT
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Blah blah
A football coach at a high school or college teaching institution is most definitely a teacher.
Futhermore, I think I read Paterno taught English courses.
Well they may be a "teacher" in some sense, but the question is do they need the same license that a high school or grade school teacher has.
I know law school professors (adjunct) who certainly don't have teachers' licenses--not sure why college football coach would be any different.
I have never head that a college professor needs to have (or normally would have) a teacher's license--call me a skeptic but I'd need to see some evidence of that.
Remember that high school teachers / grade school teachers are people who got degrees in education. A math professor, for example, is someone who has a Ph.D in math and won't have taken an education class in his life.
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Tung Gwok
Mountain climber
South Bend, Indiana
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Nov 12, 2011 - 04:39pm PT
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The focus has been on Paterno not doing enough to protect children in 2002, but what about earlier? Penn State was a place where no decision was made without his approval. The first complaint against Sandusky was made in 1998. Then Sandusky retires in 1999 even though he was considered an heir apparent and only 55 years old. Think Sandusky wanted to leave on his own? He was pushed out. Think Paterno had anything to do with Sandusky being pushed out? Paterno is so powerful, the Board couldn't make Paterno leave in 2004. Of course he was a part of pushing Sandusky out. Think it was about Sandusky's coaching? Sandusky was defensive coordinator for two national championships. In short, the available evidence is that Paterno was part of pushing Sandusky out for other than football reasons in 1999, the year after the first public complaint against Sandusky. Pushed Sandusky out into full-time working with kids. Paterno knew well before 2002.
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tarek
climber
berkeley
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Nov 12, 2011 - 04:54pm PT
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how someone witnesses something--like what the grad assistant is alleged to have witnessed--and does not immediately intervene, never mind then calling the police, is the part I cannot fathom.
but I think klk has it right in terms of U athletic program power relationships that work to make sure the show goes on costs be damned.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 12, 2011 - 05:35pm PT
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A key to even one door on the university should be enough to qualify as "license", as far as looking out for the kids goes.
If Paterno wants to split legal hairs to excuse his rotten behavior, then he deserves to be tossed out on his miserable ass.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Nov 12, 2011 - 05:56pm PT
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It is thought that most sexual assaults are not reported. Why? Have you seen what happens to the victim when it's reported? It is the only crime people have to convince others they didn't want to experience. After being assaulted, would you want to go forward with that? Most who are victimized also feel a lot of shame for no good reason. I think the better question is why the few who do go forward do?
Another thought. When I was young, my dad told me that he would KILL anyone who put their hands on me. So when a freak did just that, I told NO ONE. Why? Because I didn't want to be the reason that my dad went to prison. Not the greatest logic, but it's kid logic. There are lots of fears in people who are victimized that make them not go forward. It's sad, no?
And while I in no way excuse the folks who saw and did nothing, or just reported it to a superior and left it at that, I can also understand it. They may very well lose their jobs for doing so. Yes, there are laws, but c'mon. It's sort of a no-win situation for witnesses and victims.
Is this good? No. Should it be different? Yes. So next time someone - anyone indicates they were sexually assaulted, I hope each one of us think about how we deal with that. Do we question whether it was "real"? Do we question whether they really wanted it? Do we want witnesses in order to believe it? I hope not. People (with the exception of a weirdo here and there) do not go forward with these sorts of accusations lightly. They won't get out of it unscathed. Too bad that is the reality for now.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Nov 12, 2011 - 06:04pm PT
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Good post, Callie !
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 12, 2011 - 06:14pm PT
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Callie
excellent post.
There's one glaring difference with Paterno and McQueery
Do we question whether it was "real"? McQueary saw the assault taking place, did nothing to stop it, and didn't follow through when Sandusky was still around the showers with children. Presumably McQueary's veracity was credible to Paterno. Why else did they hide Sandusky in an off campus place? Yet that was still with children so they must have felt that covering up for Good Ole Penn State was more important than children's lives.
Sandusky wasn't "sexually assaulting" the child McQueary saw, he was raping him. Let's not sugar coat it.
Your points about fear of retribution for both the victim and anyone who finds out about it and then reports it is valid and important.
I've been told by girlfriends they've been raped or sexually assaulted as children: by Father, Uncle and strangers, (not to mention raped while in college). I never doubted any of them for a moment. Only one of these assaults (by a stranger on an adult) was ever reported.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Nov 12, 2011 - 06:17pm PT
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Hey Crimper:
I hope you were able to work through everything-
I've been working with children for 25 or so years and I've seen and heard and dealt with so much that, that part of my plate is way full- I can no longer watch movies, read books about this stuff. Some may call it entertainment but after you lose a dozen or so kids to suicides the novelty starts to wear off.
I was always impressed with how my students carried themselves in public with some very heavy baggage under the surface.
Abuse leaves scars that our society does not deal with very well- Does any one find it less than bizarre that college educated men and women would riot in support of child abuse?
Or to keep it cleaner that they would riot because of football? We're talking about grown men chasing a ball around.
Might as well dig it in, same sort of bullshit when some climbers dies and people say he died doing what he/she loved. Baloney- you think their last thoughts were "this was worth it"?
murf
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Nov 12, 2011 - 07:08pm PT
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High Traverse - My use of sexual assault wasn't an attempt to sugar coat it at all. Hope it didn't come across that way. And I agree with your point about not sugar coating it. In the literature on rape and sexual assault, sexual assault is often used to describe rape & sexual assault. My own research generally distinguishes between the two (the data I use can do that - lots of other data can not).
Also, I have yet to meet a woman who hasn't had the freaky uncle, older kid down the street, next door neighbor of shop merchant who touches them or forces them to touch that person inappropriately. I have yet to meet one that told their parents or another authority figure either. They are out there, but they are rare. I don't think boys are too terribly different in that respect - and maybe even less likely to tell.
I have often wished that there were a PR campaign about rape, and that it showed the photos of the aftermath. Not the sanitized versions presented in the media, but the reality. I think that would go far to make it clear that it is ugly violence.
I feel great sadness for those young men that were victimized. How many worried that if their parents found out, they'd be called awful names? Or how many wondered if they were gay? Or worried someone would find out at school and they'd be harassed? Or a million other things? It's heinously sad.
I think that until we stop questioning the veracity of these incidents (how many have to prove they didn't want to be robbed?) or question whether the victim 'liked it' then victims will continue to stay quiet. And predators will be able to continue their predation.
In some ways, a lot more people and our culture are responsible for the way this event played out.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 12, 2011 - 07:20pm PT
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Crimpie
My use of sexual assault wasn't an attempt to sugar coat it at all No, of course not. I didn't mean to imply that you were sugar coating. I meant the media and many people use the euphemism inappropriately. Like you, I strongly believe it's essential to speak frankly.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Nov 12, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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Agreed! :)
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 12:47pm PT
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The Devil and Joe Paterno
By ROSS DOUTHAT
WHEN I think about the sins of Joe Paterno, and the ignominious ending of his long and famous career, I think about Darío Castrillón Hoyos.
Castrillón is a Colombian, born in Medellín, who became a Catholic priest and then a bishop during the agony of his country’s drug-fueled civil wars. In Colombia, he was a remarkable figure: a “rustic man with the profile of an eagle,” as Gabriel García Márquez described him, who left his episcopal residence at night to feed slum children, mediated between guerrillas and death squads and reputedly made his way to Pablo Escobar’s house disguised as a milkman to demand that the drug kingpin confess his sins.
But that isn’t how the world thinks of him today. In the 1990s, Castrillón was elevated to the College of Cardinals and placed in charge of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, where he came to embody the culture of denial that characterized Rome’s initial response to the sex abuse crisis. Castrillón dismissed the scandal as just “an American problem,” he defended the church’s approach to priestly pedophilia long after it had been revealed as pitifully inadequate, and in 2001 he even praised a French bishop for refusing to denounce an abusive priest to the civil authorities.
How did the man who displayed so much moral courage in Colombia become the cardinal who was so morally culpable in Rome? In the same way, perhaps, that college football’s most admirable coach — a mentor to generations of young men, a pillar of his Pennsylvania community — could end up effectively washing his hands of the rape of a young boy.
It was precisely because Castrillón had served his church heroically, I suspect, that he was so easily blinded to the reality of priestly sex abuse. It was precisely because Joe Paterno had done so much good for so long that he could do the unthinkable, and let an alleged child rapist continue to walk free in Penn State’s Happy Valley.
Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be?
But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness — by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.
I believe that Joe Paterno is a good man. I believe Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, the brilliant sportswriter who is working on a Paterno biography, when he writes that Paterno has “lived a profoundly decent life” and “improved the lives of countless people” with his efforts and example.
I also believe that most of the clerics who covered up abuse in my own Catholic Church were in many ways good men. Of course there were wicked ones as well — bishops in love with their own prerogatives, priests for whom the ministry was about self-aggrandizement rather than service. But there were more who had given their lives to their fellow believers, sacrificing the possibility of family and fortune in order to say Mass and hear confessions, to steward hospitals and charities, to visit the sick and comfort the dying.
They believed in their church. They believed in their mission. And out of the temptation that comes only to the virtuous, they somehow persuaded themselves that protecting their institution’s various good works mattered more than justice for the children they were supposed to shepherd and protect.
I suspect a similar instinct prompted the higher-ups at Penn State to basically ignore what they described as Jerry Sandusky’s “inappropriate conduct,” and persuaded Paterno that by punting the allegation to his superiors he had fulfilled his responsibility to the victimized child. He had so many important duties, after all, and so many people counting on him. And Sandusky had done so much good over the years ...
The best piece about Darío Castrillón Hoyos was written by the Catholic essayist John Zmirak, and his words apply to Joe Paterno as well. Sins committed in the name of a higher good, Zmirak wrote, can “smell and look like lilies. But they flank a coffin. Lying dead and stiff inside that box is natural Justice ... what each of us owes the other in an unconditional debt.”
No higher cause can trump that obligation — not a church, and certainly not a football program. And not even a lifetime of heroism can make up for leaving a single child alone, abandoned to evil, weeping in the dark.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 13, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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I also believe that most of the clerics who covered up abuse in my own Catholic Church were in many ways good men. This clown has a strange and warped definition of "good men". "Many ways" of being good don't count when you fail the ultimate test of protecting and defending children.
But what do Catholic Priests know of children? They've never raised any.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Nov 13, 2011 - 02:43pm PT
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Hmmm, my late sister was molested by an uncle (by marriage) when she was five (1959) in Seattle. When one of my uncles (captured in North Africa, escaped with two Canadian commandoes from POW camp in Italy and made their way back to friendly lines), he told his brother-in-law “touch her again and I will kill you”.
My previous girlfriend, from County Wexford, was molested by her mother’s brother, and when he died in his 30s (of natural causes), she felt justice had been done. I knew her pain about being molested, because I saw the pain.
My present fiancée was abused by her (late) father and is living with it to this day. That is one reason she is an alcoholic, and ended up in Saint John of Gods (psychiatric hospital) last night after we went out for dinner. She had thoughts of being molested and it came to a head. The Garda were called in and took her to John of Gods.
They released her in my care at around 7 this morning (it’s been a long 24 hours).
Abuse of any kind should not be tolerated and stamped in the head. But abuse of children… that is just sick.
As my partner’s full-time carer (registered with the Carers’ Association here in Ireland), I have seen the damage done by an abuser/pedophile.
If indeed Paterno knew it was happening, he had a duty of care (morally, if not legally). Apparently, he turned his back on such care, if news reports and the Grand Jury are anything to go by.
If it is the case he was involved in a cover-up, throw the book at him, and hell be danged what he “did” for Penn State.
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Archie Richardson
Trad climber
Grand Junction, CO
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:07pm PT
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We are quick to pass judgement, without knowing all the facts. And the indictment certainly looks damning, at least re Sandusky. But challenges await the trial juries in these cases....
I assume none of us have tossed out our jury summons, or lied to get out of jury duty, or gone along with the crowd when we did serve on a jury. Or otherwise failed to support what passes for a justice system in this country. When we could have learned the facts in some case, and maybe helped a little.
Just a thought..
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:14pm PT
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I assume none of us have tossed out our jury summons, or lied to get out of jury duty, or gone along with the crowd when we did serve on a jury. Or otherwise failed to support what passes for a justice system in this country. I'm annoyed that I've not served jury duty. Been dismissed twice.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:24pm PT
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Thanks, Patrick.
One wonders how many individuals the university will jettison, so as to avoid institutional reform.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 13, 2011 - 07:51pm PT
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MH
you're becoming Mighty jaded for a Canadian.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Nov 13, 2011 - 08:00pm PT
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you're becoming Mighty jaded for a Canadian.
Canadians can sweep things under the rug every bit as well as Americans. That is one area of moral spinelessness that is independent of country.
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Gal
Trad climber
a semi lucid consciousness
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Nov 13, 2011 - 08:30pm PT
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I read the Grand Jury report. It's an upsetting situation and I didn't know the full story until now. I think my questions and thoughts are similar to what has been posted, but it is something I need to write about, i just have questions. I really don't understand how this could have happened.
I don't understand why these higher ups decided to downplay everything & (specifically Curley/Schultz/Spanier/Paterno... ) lie & downplay (testifying before grand jury that the charges were "not that serious"/change the wording to things like "inappropriate behavior" about what McQueary actually told them (rape/sodomy)?
I sure hope McQueary doesn't recant his testimony under pressure-at least he is still telling the full story even though he didn't do enough at all at the time/and everything for him will be destroyed too-without him telling what he saw, nothing would have happened ever.
It seems like these higher ups wouldn't have lost anything if they had quickly, swiftly, and adamantly fired and charged Sandusky immediately and react with utter revulsion toward Sandusky as most of us would. If anything, wouldn't they all have been even bigger heros for getting rid of him right away? Why did they not?
I couldn't stand to be around someone like that ever again and would keep telling what happened to authorities until something was done-as in, they wouldn't be able to shut me up. And I really do think I would have called police immediately had I witnessed the shower scene... and I do think I would have tried to stop it (I know that you can never know exactly how you would react-I suppose the only reason I wouldn't try to stop it at the scene of the crime would be for fear of being assaulted too-but I still think I would have been capable of something from a distance-shouting that the police were on there way and on the phone, etc).
Why did they all find it necessary to sweep it under the rug? I just don't understand the psychology/thought process behind this at all. Is it that they just didn't want to be bothered with dealing, and felt above the law and supposed "hassle"? This is the question I want answered most: why did they downplay this, not fire and charge Sandusky?-it seems the key to making sure it doesn't happen again.
What is going to happen now-as in, who will be charged?
What is offensive is Sandusky is pleading innocence. WTF! Guess he figures he has gotten away with it this long, he figures he can get off the hook again.
I would like to know what his wife knew, or knows, and thought during this whole time. I find it extremely hard to believe she knew nothing. And I dread finding out what his adopted kids/kids had to endure.
There will be a lot more that will be discovered, I feel certain and sad of it. I hope these boys (now young men), his victims, are able to find some peace in their lives somehow.
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