I remember Jerry Sandusky when he was famous for coaching football. There seemed to be a consensus that Penn State’s defensive coordinator was a fine coach. Surely it was just a matter of time before he took over for Joe Paterno or got a head coaching gig elsewhere. Show me an assistant who does not want to be the No. 1 guy.
On the warm night of September 30, 1989, I sat with my then-girlfriend in the stands at Memorial Stadium in Austin. Texas and Penn State were playing before a packed house. The Longhorns were ahead until late in the fourth quarter when a defensive play turned the game around. One of the Nittany Lions broke through the line and blocked a punt. The ball was recovered in the end zone, and victory turned into defeat for UT. I read plaudits in the next day’s paper for Sandusky, Penn State’s defensive wizard.
Little did I or anybody know that 23 years later, Sandusky would be the most reviled man in America. A jury of his peers in central Pennsylvania recently convicted him of 45 counts of child sexual abuse. The story has been covered exhaustively since his arrest in November 2011; millions of words have been written and spoken about Penn State’s disgraced ex-coach. Since the jury foreman gave the verdict, the administration, students, alumni and others have talked optimistically about closing the book on the sordid story, moving on, putting it behind them. But that is not about to happen. The Sandusky scandal is the worst in American college sports history.
Civil suits against "Jer," as he called himself, and the university that effectively enabled his crimes will be massive. Penn State has a $1.8 billion endowment, and a fair chunk of it is likely to go to the victims—as is right and proper. Ten young men (two of them still unidentified) were presented as Sandusky’s victims during the trial. And one of Sandusky’s adopted children, Matt, revealed even before the jury came back with the verdict that he too had been abused by the old man. Same thing for a guy named Travis Weaver, who came forward during the trial. I am confident that more victims will be revealed in the years that stretch ahead.
Some people opine that Penn State—which once boasted about being cleaner than most big-time programs—may get whacked by the NCAA for not maintaining institutional control during the Sandusky years and be forced to sit out a season of college football. (A good idea, but I do not see it happening.) Others say the larger-than-life statue of Paterno outside the 107,000-seat stadium should be taken down, in light of his weak response to the news that Sandusky had been seen raping a young boy in the showers of the Penn State locker room in 2001. (Also unlikely.)
A lot of damage was done to the young men whom Sandusky cruelly abused during that time. No amount of money or counseling will wipe out their experiences. We can only hope that each of them finds as much peace as possible in his heart.
In my view, there was an odd aspect to the media coverage of this story. I saw a steely refusal to reference the fact that Sandusky focused his pathological attention on boys alone. Girls just did not seem to do it for him. Whether Sandusky fit the profile of a homosexual or not—there is no indication he had adult partners—he sounds pretty gay to me. The gay lobby would have been all over the media had it made the obvious point. On the flip side, if Sandusky’s decade-long crime spree had focused on girls, there would have been hell to pay with the feminists. I can think of no better example than this of how social discourse in the United States is twisted and constrained.
The 68-year-old Sandusky awaits sentencing, but it is certain that he will never again be a free man. Due to the prison code wherein child abusers are the lowest of the low, he will be held in protective custody. That’s 23 hours a day of solitary confinement in a small cell.
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