Jerry Sandusky and Penn State

As a blogger about lies and liars, today's FBI report on the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse case at Penn State requires a prominent spot in this series.  Jerry Sandusky was convicted a few weeks ago of abusing a number of young boys while working as a football coach at Penn State University.  Today, the FBI released an exhaustive report about the case.

People who commit crimes such as child abuse typically lie without hesitation about their behavior.  Not only do they lie to others, but it appears they even lie to themselves, and often convince themselves that they are not doing anything wrong.  Either they think society is too up-tight, or they convice themselves that the children were behaving in seductive ways toward them, rather than the other way around.  Whatever they believe in order to justify their behavior, they protect themselves by creating a smokescreen of lies.

What is much more surprising is that other people often lie in order to cover up cases of child sexual abuse.  Unfortunately in this case, it appears that Jerry Sandusky was not the only one telling lies about what was going on at Penn State.  When FBI Director Louis Freeh released his report today, July 12, 2012, he indicated that everyone from the college adminstrators to the school's janitors kept Sandusky's behavior a secret, often because they feared the power of the football program and the coaching staff.

The FBI did not come to this conclusion lightly.  They interviewed 430 witnesses and read 3.5 million emails and other documents before releasing today's report.  In one quote, the FBI report says, "In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the university -- Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley -- repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse."

Regretably, even though there had been several complaints made to the coaching staff and college administrators about possible incidents of child abuse and inappropriate behavior by Jerry Sandusky, nothing was done.  In fact, at the FBI news conference for the release of the report, FBI Director Freeh commented about the "total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State."

Parents continually instruct their children to tell someone if they are ever touched inappropriately.  Teachers and others who work with children are required by law to report any incident of suspected child abuse.  At Penn State, even when reports were made to those who were in authority, the complaints were ignored.

Source for quotes and factual information: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/freeh-report-penn-state-coverup-joe-paterno-jerry-sandusky_n_1667727.html?ir=College

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