Joe Paterno’s Troubling Attitude Toward Previous Sex Charges at Penn State.......

[KoKo]

Joe Paterno's fall from grace came as a shock, but only to those who missed signs of ethical decay in his football regime.

Other close observers of Paterno’s world made a connection between sporting success and signs of impunity in the world beyond the field. “Has Penn State’s on-field progress led to off-field problems?” the ESPN program Outside the Lines asked in 2008. As the Nittany Lions won more games, their players more often broke the law. Between 2002 and 2008, 46 Penn State players were charged with a total of 163 crimes; 27 were found guilty. The Daily Beast was not able to obtain information confirming how many of those charged were accused of sex crimes but there were at least four cases of students accused of sex crimes during that period.

Penn State is far from the only sports program to have a problem with sex crimes. Nor is the problem limited to college sports. In 2004, with a rape trial for NBA star Kobe Bryant in the news, USA Today combed court records and found that of 168 sexual-assault allegations made against professional and student athletes over a 12-year period, just 22 went to trial, and only six resulted in convictions. Forty-six cases ended in plea agreements, the newspaper found—a stark contrast to the conviction rates for nonathletes.

The rape of a child is, of course, different than the rape of an adult woman—a different crime, punished differently by the law, and with different lasting effects on the victim. But when the crime may have been perpetrated by a person affiliated with a popular sports program some ugly parallels emerge. Incidents can go unreported, perpetrators unpunished—or lightly punished—and the police kept out of things.

“It really is the same thing,” said Delilah Rumburg, who heads the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. “There is this betrayal when someone you know rapes you, whether you’re a child or adult.” Institutions—whether a sports program or, say, the Catholic Church—reflexively protect their own, which allows predators to stay free, Rumburg says. “They build this cloak of secrecy to protect an icon, as well as the institution,” says Rumburg. “It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can’t let someone know that this is happening within our family’—in this case, an institution that happens to be Penn State.”

More at......
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/12/joe-paterno-s-troubling-attitude-toward-sex-charges.html

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. recommend

[Spazito]

2. One only has to read this to see a pattern of behavior by Paterno....

and the Penn State administration when dealing on issues like assault, never mind child rape. This is very telling, I think:

"In late 2002, Penn State cornerback Anwar Phillips was accused by a classmate of sexual assault, and the university suspended him for two semesters. But before his suspension began, the Nittany Lions were to play Auburn in the middle of January in the Capital One Bowl. Paterno put Phillips in uniform.

And Paterno apparently had support from above. In his 2005 book about Paterno, The Lion in Autumn, sportswriter Frank Fitzpatrick described the uproar that followed. Athletics director Tim Curley, who has been charged with failing to report a crime and perjuring himself in front of the grand jury, insisted in 2003 that it had been “appropriate” for Phillips to play; university administrators said that a miscommunication was to blame.

Paterno refused to say whether he even knew Phillips had been accused or suspended. “What happened, happened. I have very little control over it,” he said that spring, according to Fitzpatrick.

Paterno added later: “That’s nobody’s business but mine. It’s not the fans’ business, and it’s not yours.” No one but Paterno, of course, knows whether what he had been told about Sandusky four years earlier crossed his mind."

Thanks for posting this, it is an important read. Recommended.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. Definitely recommend.

Also, there are those rare instances of false accusation -- like the Duke lacrosse team case -- that make it even more difficult for victims to come forward, fearing that their claims will be dismissed, they will be accused of lying, etc.

I don't think most people really understand how difficult it is for a victim of any kind of abuse to come forward, to say anything. Abuse is generally an exercise in power, and the abuser almost always already has some form of power over the victim. Jerry Sandusky apparently preyed on young boys from precarious situations, he flattered them with attention and bought their silence with gifts and privileges he had the power to give them.

Joe Paterno also had enormous power. We shouldn't be surprised at the various ways he exercised it.



TG

[SoutherDem]

4. Football has been placed on a pedestal for years.

My whole life I have seen the football teams, the coaches and players placed on pedestals. In both high school and college football was untouchable. The coaches openly criticized the non-athletics to a point that PE was miserable for the average student. Teachers were all but forced to pass the "star" players because they were needed for the "big game". Although I never heard of any sex scandals with the way the coaches and players were idolized it easily could have happened.
Our society justifies allowing our lives to focus on this sport to the point that we see no problem spending millions on the sport, while teachers and professors are fired, we build stadiums and field houses while the academic buildings are falling apart and we set rules for them to follow the get mad when a team is caught breaking them. The quest for the championship out weighs all else.
Football is fine but we need to find our priorities and treat it like a sport, entertainment and not a religion.
I know some disagree and will point out how the teams help the rest of the school but at this point in time I find that a hard sell.