Angry crowds took to the streets this week to protest fallout from a child sex abuse scandal that exploded on a college campus, throwing rocks, trying to light vehicles on fire and tearing down street signs.
Their anger was not at the scandal itself, in which a former assistant coach for the Penn State football team was charged with sexually abusing eight boys during a 15-year period — at times in the team’s locker room.
Rather, the students were upset at the university’s decision to fire 84-year-old Joe Paterno, one of the most revered college football coaches in the US. Officials said he did not do enough when he first learned of the abuse.
The students shouted, “We want Joe back,” and “One more game.”
They clashed with 100 police wearing helmets and carrying pepper spray. Witnesses said rocks and bottles were thrown and a news van was knocked over, its windows kicked out.
The response appalled some observers and a lawyer for some of the assistant coach’s accusers worried that his clients would be turned into scapegoats by angry fans.
“These sexual assault victims are now watching people parade and riot around the streets,” attorney Ben Andreozzi said. “Now you have a football institution crumbling and to think that is not in some way going to impact these victims is naive.”
Wednesday night’s firing of Paterno brought down not just some aging head of a football team, but the face of a highly regarded program that tapped a nostalgia for simpler, more clean-cut sport.
Penn State has one of the US’ largest and most loyal fan bases, drawing more than 100,000 people to its home games in State College, a community of less than 40,000 with the nickname “Happy Valley.” As in college towns throughout the US, game days are an event, part beer bash and part reunion. The team’s success also brought in millions of dollars in television broadcast rights, merchandising and more.
Paterno won more games than any other major college football coach in the US. He spent 46 years leading the Penn State team and he took pride in doing it honestly.
He appeared to steer the football program away from the pitfalls of US college sports, including academic cheating to meet the required grades to keep star athletes in school and payoffs to players or their families. The program’s motto: “Success with honor.”
However, as the allegations that the team’s former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky molested eight young boys between 1994 and 2009 emerged, so did concerns that they had been hushed up or ignored to protect a storied sports program.
The incident that seems to have brought down Paterno occurred in 2002, when then-graduate assistant and current assistant coach Mike McQueary said he saw Sandusky sodomizing a 10-year-old boy in the football team’s showers.
McQueary told Paterno. Paterno told the athletic director, Tim Curley, and a university vice president, Gary Schultz, who in turn told Penn State president Graham Spanier. In response, Sandusky’s keys to the locker room were taken away.
However, authorities were not alerted until 2009, when another boy reported Sandusky’s behavior. A grand jury report details other alleged victims and even witnesses. One locker room janitor said he saw Sandusky performing oral sex on another boy, who was pinned against the wall, in 2000.
Sandusky, who spent three decades on the Penn State staff before retiring in 1999, has denied the charges.
Penn State said on Thursday night that there had been “multiple threats” against McQueary, now the team’s receivers coach, and he would not attend today’s home finale against Nebraska “in the best interest of all.”
It was not clear whether the threats were about McQueary’s response to the shower incident or about Paterno’s firing.
Curley and Schultz have been charged with failing to report the incident to authorities. Prosecutors have not ruled out charges against Spanier.
Paterno is not a target of the criminal investigation, but the state police commissioner called his failure to contact police himself a lapse in “moral responsibility.”
The scandal has shocked the US and prompted parallels to the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, whose hierarchy for decades covered up widespread child abuse by priests.
In a statement on Wednesday, Paterno said he was “absolutely devastated” by the abuse case.
“This is a tragedy,” Paterno said. “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
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