It’s hard not to know what has been happening in State College, Pa., the home of Penn State University and Joe Paterno, their head football coach for…well…forever…since accusations emerged a month ago about former Assistant Coach, Jerry Sandusky. He has been accused of abusing at least 10 children already and I’m sure more will emerge before the smoke finally clears. Already, the University has fired the legendary head coach and longtime president, Graham Spanier, for not taking more aggressive action when the first accusations came to light almost 10 years ago.
The linchpin in the case is Mike McQueary, Assistant Football Coach, who testified that he saw what he believed to be intercourse or at the very least, inappropriate sexual contact between Jerry Sandusky and a 10-year old boy in the football shower room in 2002. He first brought what he saw to Joe Paterno and 10 days later to Tim Curley, Athletic Director, and Gary Schultz, another college official, but never to the police. He expected appropriate action to be taken by the people he’d notified. They did little...and now they’re all gone...but in the ensuing years, if the charges are true, Sandusky continued to molest young boys.
McQueary described exactly what he had seen 10 years ago to a Pennsylvania court in a preliminary hearing as it applies to Schultz and Curley. I won’t go into all the details of the hearing...you can read that easily enough if you google Sandusky, but he does say that he saw Sandusky with his arms wrapped around a naked 10-year old in the shower and that Sandusky, also naked, was pressed up against the boy’s back who was facing the shower wall. He didn’t claim to actually see Sandusky’s genitals and so on, but was pretty sure what was happening...from the three looks that he took. He passed this information along first to Joe Paterno...without some of the details to save the sensitivity of the aging patriarch, and later to Schultz and Curley. He did know that nothing much happened following his report.
Here’s my big question on the whole issue...and it’s directed at Mr. McQueary. If you saw what you’re saying you saw...why did you walk away? Though I’ve never been in a similar situation, I...like most guys I know...believe I would have walked into that shower room, grabbed Jerry Sandusky by the hair and dragged him away from the 10-year old I believed he was sodomizing. If there were steps nearby, I’d have dragged him down those, too, until I’d mashed him up pretty good...then I’d have dialed ‘911’ and told the dispatcher to send some peace officers...with cattle prods...to deal with him. I’m not a violent man...but I don’t see how I could have witnessed what this man says he saw...and walked away leaving him with the child. Am I missing something? Hopefully.
I managed a long ride on the trainer after shoveling my first 4 inches of snow for the year. The snow was heavy, but the effort was pretty easy. Later that night, I attended a Christmas party with Holly and in the food line was a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I can’t resist the stuff and had two pieces. We returned home to meet some relatives in town for a couple of days...and I had some more to eat. In all, I’d say I broke even on the calorie in/calorie out scale.
Bike Duration: One hour and 40 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 130 bpm.Calories burned during workout: 1350.
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