He knew.
They all knew.
They knew they had a monster in their midst. And they looked the other way.
They placed a football program and and institution above little kids. And their actions - or better said inactions - led to even more little kids being abused.
Those are the inescapable conclusions of the Freeh Report into the Jerry Sandusky matter and how Penn State University officials, including the late legendary coach Joe Paterno, handled the matter.
The way they handled it was not to go to the authorities, to handle it in-house, to do the "humane" thing for Sandusky, who we now know is a serial pedophile.
And his victims? The kids? They apparently were not as important in the pecking order at Happy Valley.
The Freeh Report makes it clear that Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley, and school President Graham Spanier never made any effort to learn the identity of Sandusky's victims. It concludes Paterno and Spanier concealed information of Sandusky's activities from authorities and the public to avoid bad publicity.
They usually refer to that as a cover-up.
And the report also makes it clear that more kids likely fell into Sandusky's clutches because of their inactions.
They usually call that "empowering."
From the very first days of this ugly scandal, the questions have always been - as they almost always are in these cases - who knew what and when.
Now we know.
To me it doesn't make much difference. I'll say the same thing now that I did then. Joe Paterno had some inkling that there was a problem with Jerry Sandusky. And he passed the buck.
This was not just some win-crazed, second-rate coach at another college football factory. This was Joe Paterno. JoePa. The saintly patron of Happy Valley.
I said it then and I will repeat it now. I believe very little happened at Penn State or even State College that Paterno was not aware of.
Now we know he was aware as early as 1998 of a troubling report involving Sandusky and a child. No charges were brought against Sandusky in that case. About a year later, Sandusky retired. In his mid-50s. And he never gets another coaching job. He gets a sweetheart retirement deal and continues access to the campus. A few years later more reports surface, including the now-infamous incident in a shower witnessed by assistant coach Mike McQueary. When McQueary (who did himself no honor by not going in there and getting that child out of harm's way and maybe punching Sandusky's lights out) goes home and tells his father and a family friend. The next day he tells Paterno. Paterno alerts the AD Curley. And nothing else hapens. Ironically, that was one of the few charges on which Sandusky was acquitted. He was convicted on 45 of 48 counts.
That is now Paterno's legacy. He did nothing, or at the minimum not enough.
This is what happens when an institution becomes more important than people. Especially when those people are innocent, defenseless kids.
See Archdiocese. Philadelphia.
The cases are eerily similar. Archdiocese officials decided to protect the church, not the kids. At Happy Valey, they put their priorities on the university and a powerhouse football team instead of children being victimized by a monster.
I've been in State College exactly once in my life. It struck me how isolated the place is. I guess that's why they call it Happy Valley. They take an immense amount of pride - and rightly so - in the school, and their football team.
Paterno, who spent his lifetime building both the school and his football team, did a lot of good things. He gave millions that were poured into the school and campus, making it a powerhouse off the field as well as on.
None of that should be taken away. But it is now stained by what he did not do in the wake of the allegations against Sandusky.
He was Joe Paterno, the archbishop, the cardinal of Happy Valley.
We all just expected so much more.
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