Joe Paterno (affectionately nicknamed "Joe Pa") has the most wins ever of any major college football coach, and is someone who until November 2011 had a reputation for always behaving ethically. That reputation was shared by his institution, Pennsylvania State University (PSU), which was known for running a clean athletic program that always played by the rules in recruiting, academics and enforcing of behavior expectations for students and supporters. Joe Pa, who continued coaching until age 84, had every reason to expect that he could retire on his own terms. Instead, he was dismissed summarily, along with the President and other administrators, and PSU will be forever remembered as an example of how an institution can lose its moral compass.
The road to perdition for Paterno and his bosses started in March 2002, when a graduate assistant named Mike McQueary observed retired defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky in a locker room shower engaged in the anal rape of a 10-year-old boy who was served by a youth foundation that Sandusky had founded. McQueary did not immediately intervene but instead ran out and called his father, who counseled his son to report the incident to Paterno, which the young man did the next day. Paterno, who claims he did not get all of the lurid details (a claim disputed by McQueary), told athletic director Tim Curley a day later that Sandusky had been observed "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy." Some days later, McQueary was called in to a meeting with Curley and senior vice president Gary Schultz (whose portfolio included the campus police) to tell them directly what he had seen. Around March 27, McQueary was told by Curley that the youth foundation had been notified, that Sandusky was ordered to turn in his locker room keys and that he was prohibited from bringing children into the athletic facility. McQueary was never contacted or interviewed by the police to whom, apparently, the incident was never reported. It is alleged that the PSU president Graham Spanier (a noted authority on family therapy) knew about and approved the action that was taken, although Spanier has denied knowing exactly what allegedly occurred in the locker room shower.
It turns out that this was not the first, or last, time that Jerry Sandusky allegedly had sexual contact with a minor. In 1998, the mother of an 11-year-old boy reported Sandusky to the police after he came home with his hair wet after showering with the coach. In a conversation with the boy's mother that was surreptitiously monitored by detectives, Sandusky admitted to showering naked with other boys and stated "I wish I was dead." The case was closed after the County DA (who, bizarrely, has since disappeared) decided not to prosecute. Later that year, Sandusky retired from coaching at age 54 (young for a top assistant at the height of his success) after Joe Pa informed him he would not be succeeding him as head coach. (A big mystery is whether Paterno knew about the 1998 incident and its investigation; I strongly suspect that he did).
Sandusky continued to have a presence on campus with his foundation, an activity which won him considerable local and national recognition. In the Fall of 2000, a janitor named James Calhoun observed Sandusky in a locker room shower performing oral sex on a pre-adolescent boy. Calhoun, a temporary employee, immediately reported the incident to his supervisor, Jay Witherite, who told Calhoun how to go about reporting the incident. Calhoun decided not to follow up, and neither he nor Witherite contacted the police. Things finally began to unravel for Sandusky in the Spring of 2008, when the mother of a high school freshman informed his school that her son had been molested by Sandusky. The school barred Sandusky and reported the charges to authorities as mandated by law.
In early 2009, the Pennsylvania attorney general (he later became governor) began an investigation after a teen-age boy reported numerous instances of inappropriate touching over a four-year-period. One assumes the state's attorney general became involved because of concern that the university and county law enforcement agencies could not be trusted. In 2010, Sandusky withdrew from any role at the youth foundation and on November 5, 2011, he was arrested and arraigned on 40 criminal counts. On November 7, Curley (who resigned) and Schultz (who was suspended) were indicted for lying to the grand jury which investigated the matter. The current Pennsylvania attorney general said that Paterno is not suspected of committing a crime, but she refused to rule out the possibility that the president would be indicted. The next day, an additional victim, the ninth known so far, contacted the state police. On November 9, expressing regret over failing to do more to protect additional children from exploitation by Sandusky, Joe Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of the football season, but later that same day the PSU Board announced the immediate ouster of both him and the university's president. The U.S. Secretary of Education announced that the University was being investigated for possibly violating federal laws barring tolerance of criminal conduct by educational institutions receiving federal funds.
There has, not surprisingly, been considerable criticism of PSU, with most of the criticism focusing on the way in which the 2002 incident was swept under the rug. Certainly, if it had been reported to the police and competently investigated, it is very likely that Sandusky would have been prevented from continuing his alleged predatory conduct towards children. The university and its football program would have suffered some temporary embarrassment, but it would have come out of it with its reputation for ethical conduct largely intact. Instead, the reputation of PSU, and its storied football coach and program, will forever be muddied. In addition, the university and the four dismissed individuals are likely facing years of civil litigation from the abuse victims and their families. If all of this isn't an example of foolish (i.e., risk-oblivious) behavior by an institution and its highly-paid leaders, I do not know what is.
PSU's collective behavior was foolish because avoidance of short-term negative consequences (embarrassment for the institution, worse for their respected colleague Sandusky) opened the possibility—if not likelihood—of far worse consequences for the institution, for all of the actors, including Sandusky (who now is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, and was denied the opportunity to get needed help earlier), and of course for the children whose lives most likely will be permanently affected. To describe the university's collective handing of this situation as "foolish" does not, however, lessen one's right to label it as "immoral." In fact, I believe my four-factor explanatory theory of foolish action has utility in explaining both why generally smart people sometimes act foolishly and also why generally good people sometimes fail to act in accord with moral dictates.
The moral dictate in this case, as in all cases of suspected pedophilia, is to immediately make an oral and written report to the police or to a child protection hotline. Agencies or professionals that routinely have contact with children understand that they are "mandated reporters," which means that they are under a legal obligation to report suspected abuse, and that failure to do so is actually a crime. Where it gets sticky is that while a licensed professional is obligated to report abuse, an employee of a government agency (such as a school teacher) can report it to her supervisor (such as a principal) who then is the person mandated to make the report. What makes it sticky is that the evidence of abuse is sometimes ambiguous (say when a child tells a teacher that her father beats her with a hair brush) and then the agency head may be tempted to deny the credibility of the allegation and fail to take necessary action. (In the case of reported anal rape of a minor, any claim of ambiguity about the seriousness of the incident is obviously not credible, even though some of the PSU actors are denying they knew the lurid details). It is because professionals or agencies have shown over the years that they cannot be trusted to deal with such allegations responsibly that mandatory reporting laws were enacted in the first place, and reporters—who often have a conflict of interest—are discouraged from handling such matters in-house and are encouraged to always err on the side of protecting children.
