Report says PSU hushed up scandal
PHILADELPHIA — In 2000, three janitors at the football building at Pennsylvania State University saw Jerry Sandusky engaged in activities that one said he found more upsetting than the worst combat injuries he witnessed in the Korean War.
This janitor watched Sandusky pinning a young boy inside a locker-room shower and performing oral sex on him.
At the time, none of the janitors said anything to anyone.
Bringing bad PR to coach Joe Paterno “would have been like going against the president of the United States in my eyes. Football runs this university,” one worker told investigators this month as part of the independent report on the sex-abuse scandal at the university.
From the janitors to top administrators, the scathing report released Thursday says, people at Penn State University kept silent about the crimes of Jerry Sandusky, sacrificing children out of fear for their jobs or damage to the university’s “brand.”
The inquiry, overseen by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, says “the Athletic Department was perceived as ‘an island,’ where staff members lived by their own rules.”
While praising Penn State’s commitment to academic excellence and the deep ties between community and school, the report describes the university as an insular place convinced of its own righteousness.
In a telling example of “Paterno’s excessive influence at the university,” as the Freeh report puts it, the university softened the punishment in 2007 when several football players waded into an off-campus party and ignited a brawl that left people seriously injured. University President Graham Spanier intervened to water down the players’ punishment to make sure they didn’t miss practice.
When campus police learned of possible abuse by Sandusky, they hastened to keep the allegations under unusual wraps.
About the same time, Spanier acted aggressively against a sports agent who, before the 1997 Citrus Bowl, had bought $400 worth of clothes for a Penn State football player.
“Spanier was very aggressive in that case and banned the agent from campus,” according to the report, which quoted the university president as saying the agent “fooled around with the integrity of the university, and I won’t stand for that.”
Among many reform recommendations, the Freeh inquiry said Penn State should appoint a university ethics officer to advise the president and board, as well as bring in new board members less tied to the university.
It also said Penn State should elevate the human resources administrator’s job in status and clout; improve background checks; eliminate any favoritism in student discipline; and greatly improve compliance with a key federal law requiring universities to keep track of sexual assaults.
