What we have is a confrontation between two men, Jerry Sandusky who was age 55 at the time of the 2002 incident, and Mike McQueary who was age 28.
Sandusky had been a defensive end when he played football at Penn State in the 1960s; Joe Paterno was his coach.
McQueary had been a quarterback at Penn State in the 1990s; Joe Paterno was also his coach.
McQueary is described as being roughly 6'4" and 213 pounds.
Knowing very little about football positions, I'm still going to assume that Sandusky in his prime was not a small man and hadn't shrunk considerably over the years. In size, the two men might have been comparable, but McQueary had the distinct advantage of youth.
IF McQueary was intimidated by Sandusky's physical presence, how does that square with his personal history as a quarterback? Aren't quarterbacks routinely confronted by defensive players who are much larger than they and hell bent on knocking them down? Aren't quarterbacks expected to make decisions based on the dynamics of a play that is unfolding before their eyes on the field?
Now, let's back up a little bit. McQueary played for PSU until 1997. He tried to play in the NFL and a European league, but returned to Penn State in 2000 as a graduate student and assistant coach.
While McQueary was away from Penn State, Sandusky "retired" after the 1998 revelations about his behavior with young boys. McQueary had been friends with Sandusky and it seems to me impossible that McQueary didn't know anything about the 1998 allegations. Sandusky was still on campus through his work with his foundation, Second Mile, that attempted to help at risk youth. If McQueary remained ignorant for those two or so years between his return to Penn State in 2000 and his discovery of Sandusky in the shower raping the 10 year old, then I can only assume McQueary chose to be ignorant.
Again, Sandusky was assumed to be Paterno's eventual successor until his downfall in 1998. It would make sense to me that McQueary may have seen himself as Sandusky's eventual successor, and I can't imagine that he wouldn't have wanted to know EVERYTHING about what was going on with the football program. Indeed, wouldn't Paterno want McQueary to know, so he wouldn't inadvertently blow the lid off something? Any explanation of McQueary's innocence and justified ignorance makes no sense to me. McQueary HAD to know. He simply had to. Occam's Razor and all that.
So in 2002, McQueary catches Sandusky in the shower with the 10 year old, and does nothing to stop the rape. According to his own testimony, he's distraught. So distraught, in fact, that he leaves the rape ongoing even though he has made eye contact with both Sandusky and the boy. He's seen them, and they know it.
Again, remember that MCQueary was a quarterback. He was expected to be able to make snap decisions on the football field ALL THE TIME. Not once in a great while when there might be a crisis, but every single play. He was accustomed to facing down defensive players who were probably the same size as Jerry Sandusky but younger. Not once in a while, but ALL THE TIME.
But for some reason or other, McQueary acted out of character on the night he caught Sandusky raping the boy. Now all of a sudden his so distraught that he leaves the scene and calls his father on the phone. His father is a pediatrician. Not just a doctor, but a pediatrician. And his father likewise does nothing to protect the innocent victim of Jerry Sandusky. No call to 911. No call to the police. No call to Jerry Sandusky. No call to Joe Paterno. Not knowing what might have happened to the kid after McQueary left the locker room, neither father nor son does anything at all until the next morning, when the incident is reported to Paterno.
Now, I'm not going to examine what Paterno did or didn't do in this post. What I'm focusing on is the actions -- and/or inactions -- of the person who had the best opportunity to stop two crimes. The first being Jerry Sandusky's 2002 rape of a 10 year old boy which was in progress when McQueary saw it. The second being the next nine years of Sandusky's sexual predation. (
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/story/2011-11-10/jerry-sandusky-investigation-victim-1-cover/51160950/1 includes an allegation that Sandusky made 118 phone calls to one of the victims; I consider that predation.)
McQueary had the knowledge, the access, the information, and the physical capacity to stop this. He did nothing. He
CHOSE for whatever reasons to do nothing. Whether he hoped the situation would go away and he'd eventually inherit Paterno's job, whether he was brainwashed into believing he hadn't seen what he saw, I don't give a flying shit WHAT he thought -- McQueary is an epic fail. I can see absolutely no excuse whatsoever for his inaction in 2002 or the ensuing nine years of silence.
McQueary needs to be fired. He's not a whistleblower, and he's not a hero. He's a flaming piece of shit.
Tansy Gold