Saturday, July 28, 2012

An open reply to someone defending the Freeh Report.








Almost all the mail I've received regarding my condemnation of the Freeh Report and its blatant falsehoods and dishonesty has agreed with everything I've written and have seen much the same dishonesty, manipulation and intentional distortion themselves. The only email I've received to the contrary was from someone who supported the Freeh Report and seemed to have more than a passing knowledge in the area of child abuse, not from a personal standpoint but professionally.



My overall reaction to the email which was intelligent, rational and knowledgable was sheer surprise at how someone with what sounded like professional credentials could be so willing to ignore the truth and ignore simple facts when the truth did not fit their preconcieved ideas of what the truth should be, and how little the truth, or finding out the truth as it pertains to a specific person and circumstance, mattered. It showed that the analogy to a torch carrying mob was apt, and that wanting to believe, or feeling compelled to believe and being part of a mob matters a lot more than pursuing the truth.


The subject head of their email was " Your defense of Paterno" . The basis for this person's defense of the report was the premise stated in their opening paragraph. They wrote: " I can only assume that you know little or nothing about the almost universal tendency of otherwise responsible,even moral adults, to disbelieve, downplay and ignore allegations that people they know and trust personally have molested...children".

 Yet in defending the Freeh Report and accusing Paterno, the writer undermines their own premise on which they base their belief in the findings of Freeh's report even from their own perspective.

Freeh hardly alleges that Paterno "downplayed" or "disbelieved" anything, but in fact according to Freeh, recognized the seriousness of it and according to his preposterous and clearly dishonest and unproved premise, lied about it to shield Penn State from "bad publicity".

In addition, according to this writer's behavioral model used to defend the Freeh Report, this sense of disbelief which the writer says is "almost universal" is a reaction to evidence that "people they know and trust personally have molested children.."

Paterno had no personal relationship with Sandusky outside of football in all the years Sandusky coached. They didn't socialize, and as far as the record shows, they weren't friends, their relationship wasn't personal and so there would be nothing about Paterno's relationship with Sandusky that would cause him to deny allegations against him as a pedophile because Sanduksy "was someone Paterno knew and trusted". Though that characterization might certainly at some point be applied to a lot of people at Second Mile. Yet completely discarding the facts, this writer applies their analysis to Paterno.

One further point regarding Freeh's preposterous and unproven (for those who care about little things proof) allegation that Paterno lied to the grand jury in 2010 to protect Penn State from bad publicity. Not only did the results of the 1998 investigation clear Sandusky of any wrong doing,(rightly or wrongly) but consider these facts: even if you want to say Paterno knew the results ( for which there is not a single shred of proof - something Freeh admits and hoped you would ignore), when Paterno testified to the grand jury he was 85, had a retirement package sealed, and knew this would probably be his last year coaching at Penn State. So he lies and commits perjury in front of the grand jury putting all that at risk including his legacy not to mention covering for a pedophile, a man with whom he had no personal relationship, to shield Penn State from the "bad publicity" of a report in which Sandusky was cleared and exonerated? Yet this is what the mindless mob has accepted as true. And accepted as proof to light the pyre to complete the witch burning.

Aside from all this I sent a reply back to this person who had defended the report based on their knowledge of "almost universal" behavior which the writer used to defend the report, and I thought the reply was worth reprinting here:


"Dear_______

What you have completely missed is that you seem to know little or nothing about so called moral or responsible adults throwing away or ignoring the truth or not even caring when they are running with a mindless mob willing to believe anything a discredited dishonest authority figure tells them as long as they think it's going to make them look moral.

My defense isn't of Paterno but of truth and justice and there is not one shred of proof to substantiate one single allegation that Freeh tries to claim as fact against Paterno - none. Freeh saying it doesn't make it true and he presented no evidence to back up anything he said. Nothing.

There is nothing that Freeh alleged that would last a minute in a court room because it violates every tenet of the rules of evidence. Freeh says it and you believe it and you demand no proof and you talk about otherwise responsible and moral adults?


And I'll remind you this isn't the first time Freeh, a well known political hack during his time in Washington , a man you seem to put blind faith in, has smeared an innocent man with no proof and it seems, without conscience. Since today is the start of the Olympics in London it's a good time to remember that in 1996 as FBI director he authorized the leaking of Richard Jewell's name as the Olympic bomber without a shred of proof to substantiate it and stood back and allowed Jewell's life to be a living hell for 3 months before admitting he had no proof and dropping the investigation of Jewell and cleared him. Years later we learned Eric Rudolph was the bomber.


That is the Mr. Freeh whose easily proved dishonest report you swallow without question and assume guilt based on your view of generalities and suppositions.


It's the "otherwise responsible moral adults" that have believed this garbage without question and without scrutiny that ,like all mobs before them are the immoral ones committing one immoral act after another based on their certainty of their own morality and use Sandusky's victims, all of whom were available to Sandusky through Second Mile,not Penn State to do it. And again I will remind you that it has been adjudicated by a jury and a police investigation that no abuse took place at Penn State at any time. All of it took place outside Penn State. Sandusky brought the under privileged boys from Second Mile to use the facilities at Penn State and perhaps as is the pedophile's modus operandi, to groom. But according to all available information committed no acts of sexual abuse there and was exonerated, rightly or wrongly in the 1998 investigation.


So there is a police investigation, a grand jury investigation and a trial that contradicts every allegation against Paterno alleged in the Freeh report with no proof offered to the contrary. No proof of lying or perjury on Paterno's part, just Freeh's allegation. He is so flagrantly dishonest he states in his report "it is not known how the conclusion of the investigation was conveyed to Paterno" without a shred of proof that it ever was. He wants you to assume it was and says they couldn't figure out how they did it. In court that would be called assuming a fact not in evidence and a jury would be told to disregard it. But this isn't a court room, Freeh knew he could get away with it and he did.


One further point. I have been contacted by a former deputy inspector general who agreed with every point I made. He also told me something I hadn't thought of before:


With regards to Freeh's assertion that Paterno was given "constant updates" of the 1998 investigation and followed it closely even though Freeh could not provide a shred of proof to substantiate it, I was reminded by this deputy inspector general that it is standard policy in law enforcement, that details of an investigation into a sexual assault, especially when it involves a juvenile, is never divulged to people who are not authorized to have this information. While it's not a 100%, certainty, it is highly unlikely,that Paterno or anyone else would've been given any updates at all by Schultz no matter how much they asked and again, there is no evidence that Paterno did.


Had Schultz been providing Paterno with "constant updates", while I'm not familiar with Pennsylvania law, he would have either been breaking the law or violating law enforcement guidelines. This isn't 100% conclusive, but it is a far cry from Freeh's assertion for which he has no proof. And it is based on the quality of this kind of assertion that the mob in and out of the media have lit their torches and taken to the streets.


Your email was long and thoughtful and I felt you deserved the same, though I disagree with all your assertions as it pertains to this specific circumstance.


Regarding credibility and honesty, if you knew nothing else, and if you had to make a choice who would you believe? A man who had a platinum reputation for 60 years for honesty and integrity, a man who, in 1968, refused to play the university of Texas for the national championship because Texas didn't allow African Americans on the team, or the man who, without conscience and without proof, smeared an innocent man in Richard Jewel, in one of the most high profile cases the FBI ever had? Pedophiles have patterns. So do mobs. And so do people like Louis Freeh.


Regards

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

"And again I will remind you that it has been adjudicated by a jury and a police investigation that no abuse took place at Penn State at any time."

At last, someone has the guts to stand up to the whining victims and tell them to stop lying about being raped at Penn State. I salute you.

Anonymous said...

If Marc is right, the victims are either lying about being raped at PSU or can't remember accurately where they were raped. In either case, the obvious question is : Why is Jerry in jail?

Tom from Long Island said...

Jerry is in jail for a number of behaviors and acts, most short of sodomy, but still illegal under Pa. law. The location of those acts appear to be away from the PSU property. The thread back to PSU is indeed thin, but to their credit PSU has stood up and said however thin, we were a part of this knowingly or unknowingly and we are going to stand for the victims.
It was Joe Paterno who first said (for us all), "In hindsight, we should have done more." Rather than an admission of guilt this was an admission of reality. Nobody else away from PSU has shown this grasp of what happened and how we each had a part in it. Rather than castigate Paterno for saying what everybody in Pennsylvania should be saying, we should reflect on his message to us all. The media, who is used to covering politicians, took the Paterno statement and made it into a "confession". Theyy heard, "I should have done more." And with that misquote in hand, threw Paterno on the funeral pyre.

In the public outcry, the word rape and sodomy has been thrown around. McQueary testified to believing that something very "sexual" was taking place in 2001, but the Penna. indictment, in an attempt to light a fuse to the media powderkeg, used words like rape and Sodomy to mischaracterize McQueary testimony in an obvious appeal to emotion and outrage.
Listen...what Sandusky did was heinous, wrong, and illegal. How he pereverted a charity to serve as his farm for victims, and how he took advantage of a his victimes and our Country, State, Town, University, and friends to perpetrate his evil on the victims is a lesson to us all. But it is a little silly that so many throw around these deliberate emotional bombs like rape and Sodomy to make a bad situation seem even worse. I have no idea what fuels this silly "piling on" when it seems pretty sure that Sandusky will be in jail for the rest of his life. There seems no tonic for this publics thirst for more spectacle. I saw a quote today where somebody said, "In my opinion you can't punish Penn State enough!" Sadly, in the absence of truth, in this media circus where everybody is routinely considered guilty by the clucking media heads, what can one expect?

Anonymous said...

Would it make everyone feel better if we all used "deviate sexual intercourse" and "anal sex" and "oral sex", as used in the indictment and verdicts, in lieu of "rape" and "sodomy"? When you're talking about ten little boys being rap...sod...subjected to deviate sexual intercourse, it doesn't take incendiary language to make DECENT people go apeshit.

Anonymous said...

When I hear Marc say that Jerry didn't abuse anyone at Penn State and hear Tom from Long Island say that Jerry's behavior wasn't all that serious (i.e., not rape or sodomy) and when I hear that members of the football team are considering abandoning their team mates, it makes me wonder whether we, the Penn State Family, were wrong to "abandon" our brother, Jerry.
After all, why are the conclusions of Jerry's jury about Jerry any more worthy of respect than Freeh's conclusions about Joe?

Anonymous said...

My concern is that there has been no due process afforded to anyone. For those of you who are history buffs, think of McCarthyism and how a broad brush was used to condemn a few guilty parties and hundreds of innocent parties. It took many years for people to clear their names - and some never did. And if you are really a history buff, think about how Sullivan and Brundage abused Jim Thorpe and essentially shut down the Carlisle Indian School. I see unbelieveable similariites to these two events. Both are highly embarassing events in American sports history. Freeh and Emmert spoke as if they had every detail "nailed." Time will tell.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous, There you go like all the idiots with an opinion on this. I NEVER said the Sandusky's actions weren't serious. I was merely being factual in that most of the charges against him were not sodomy. Why does that trouble you so? Does that diminish his sentenced? Does that diminish the pain of his victims? I am a decent person too and I recoil at what Sandusky did, AS somebody with first hand experince with this sort of thing, belive me I have no problem keeping it in perspective. But all of the hyperbole used by the press and bloggers doesn't help anybody. These people who commit these acts are not monsters until discovered, usually before that they are saints. Ofter it takes years and many victims until anybody notices. The guy in my neighborhood was serial. He even went after multiple kids in the same family. He died and nobody ever figured him out. only his victims knew. Some of us with siblings affected were able to speak about it years later. So wake up, Sanduskys are everywhere. IT doesn't take a football team, it doesn't take a charity, it doesn't take an 85 yesr old football coach unprepared to regognixze the evil before him. It happens everyday.
I also recoil at all the inncoent people who are being destroyed by what EVERYBODY missed. Does that make everybody feel better? It does nothing for the victims of Jerry or for the next victim that is probably being being assualted as I write this. Those who use this as an excuse to attack Paterno or PSU to settle some long standing inadequacies in their life or who think they are doing this in the name of some cause or in the name of decency are misguided. This is not a Penn State problem, this is a national problem. Remember, the Catholic Church does not go to bowl game or have a football team, yet they have the same problem and their problem stretches across continents. The same with the Boy Scouts. Let's get to the job of understanding the perpetrators and the communities that support them (Unwittingly) so we can reduce and eliminate this from our society.

Anonymous said...

If the "victims" who testified to having been "abused" ("Jerry made me touch his penis", "Jerry tried to penetrate me", etc) in Penn State facilities were lying, as Marc has proven, why should we believe their testimony of abuse at other venues (Jerry's basement, etc.)?

It's time to stand up. WE ARE not going to let the media and a hack like Freeh tell us what to think about Coach Joe. WE ARE not going to let the media and a bunch of nobodies on a jury in Central PA tell us what to think about Coach Jerry.

Anonymous said...

"I also recoil at all the inncoent people who are being destroyed by what EVERYBODY missed."

But "EVERYBODY" did NOT miss it. Spanier, Paterno, Schultz and Curley did not miss it. They were aware of it and decided to cover it up. The PSU coaches who saw Sandusky showering next to them with little boys did not miss it, They saw what was going on and turned their backs on it. Read the damn Freeh Report, which has been accepted as authoritative by PSU,
the very institution which has the most to lose from its conclusions.
As far as America is concerned, Erickson and the BOT represent PSU, legally and otherwise, and America admires PSU's willingness to admit guilt. What America hates are those PSU alumni and students who are still, STILL, talking about next season's football, who think that redemption comes through defiance.

If you give a damn about the victims, RESPECT what the victims have to say about Joe Paterno:

"Right now, he just feels a sense of ire and frustration that Joe Paterno and these bumbling administrators thought more to protect the football program and their old pal Jerry Sandusky than to consider for one split second his actual and potential victims. I don't think the English language has a word for the level of frustration Victim 1 feels over being molested after they made the decision to cover-up what Sandusky had done."

Can you hear their pain? If so, stop adding to it.

Anonymous said...

I just can't find any sane scenario in which Paterno didn't know

Anonymous said...

"Erickson also spoke directly to the young men Sandusky was convicted of abusing, several of whom were assaulted on Penn State's campus.

"We're deeply sorry and sad, regretful that this happened at our university. We want to do the right thing and help them in their healing process," Erickson said."

THIS is how an HONORABLE man responds.

Notice that he doesn't insult the victims by denying that sexual abuse happened to them at Penn State. Notice that he doesn't say that what they experienced was "short of sodomy", as if anything less than a bleeding anus isn't worthy of justice and compassion.

Unfortunately, one decent man can't make up for all those students and alumni who have responded to the screams of the victims with their own screams of outrage at the NCAA's attempt to interfere with the very football culture at the heart of the scandal.

Anonymous said...

President Erickson also didn't say what I've heard time and time again since the NCAA crack-down : "Child molesters are everywhere. Why single us out?"

Anonymous said...

2 things. First to all of you people who keep saying that football was the motivator behind the "cover up", please tell me where that came from. I have read and re-read the email exchange and cannot find the word football anywhere. So to say that people put football first are at best foolish or at worst blatantly lying. Second, the Freeh report was paid for by the university. The same university that felt an immense amount of backlash at their giving in to public and media pressure regarding the firing of Joe Paterno. There are numerous facts out there that aren't known and more that are that aren't reported because that won't sell news. Any report that is going to be the end all and be all of an investigation should not be so wrought with inaccuracies and assumptions. THERE SHOULD BE FACTS. But as we have seen facts don't matter in this case. A 267 page report full of assumptions and blatant falsehoods doesn't pass the smell test to me. It looks like the university commissioned a report to defend their actions, NOT TO FIND FACT.

Anonymous said...

"Had Schultz been providing Paterno with "constant updates", while I'm not familiar with Pennsylvania law, he would have either been breaking the law or violating law enforcement guidelines."

Schultz could not have violated law enforcement guidelines because he was not law enforcement.

As for the rest, the Freeh report didn't really add anything new to this conversation. Schultz, Spanier, Curley, Paterno and McQueary all knew about the abuse. It stopped there for them and law enforcement was not alerted. They all failed and deserved to be fired.

That Curley e-mail about "talking it over with Joe" was Freeh's greatest discovery. Not because it is the subject of speculation today but because it will almost certainly be a major focus in Curley's upcoming trial. We will know more then. In all honesty, I hope Curley says Joe fought him over the decision to handle it in a "humane" way. Either way, it doesn't change the fact that they knew and didn't take it to the right people.

-MC