Four years later, reflections on covering the Jerry Sandusky trial
BY COLLEEN CURRY
Fri Nov. 13, 2015
On Nov. 5, 2011, Jerry Sandusky was arrested on child sex abuse charges, and as the case unfolded in the subsequent months, Penn State University nearly imploded. I covered the events as a reporter for ABC News from start to finish.
1. Questions of Faith
Behind the courthouse, in the glaring June sun, a dozen photographers and reporters watch silently as Jerry Sandusky, the man accused of molesting at least 10 children over a 15-year period, laughs and helps shuffle boxes of documents from a cart into the waiting SUV. It is the third day of testimony in his trial — damning, graphic, horrific testimony that seems sure to return a guilty verdict.
Clad in a dark suit that contrasts his shock of white hair, Sandusky stands more than six feet tall and 250 pounds — a football player’s body with a grandfather’s soft demeanor. As he lifts the boxes of files, Sandusky smiles at the waiting reporters and looks around helplessly for direction from his attorney. He seems almost unaware of what has been happening inside the building behind him each day. It’s hard to imagine him directing a football play, a children’s charity, or even his own vehicle. In fact, he is driven everywhere by his attorney. He is hapless, a silly old man. Or at least that is the idea being presented to us here behind the courthouse.
Of course, there is a disconnect there. The crimes he is accused of committing, and which have been detailed inside the courtroom each day, would have to have been carefully concealed from the world if they were to be committed. The prosecutors call him calculating, an “expert” pedophile, arrogant, bold, and most of all, a monster. Does that description fit? Is he a big, stupid oaf, or a cold, evil predator? That is the question that Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lanky defense attorney, is trying to pose to the jury. But that question, it turns out, will be shockingly easy to answer.
No, our central question, and what amounted to our central preoccupation in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in June 2012, would come to be the icon, the demigod, Joe Paterno, and what he knew and when he knew it.
2. The Problem of Evil
When Sandusky was charged, the Pennsylvania Attorney General released the indictment quietly on a Friday afternoon, purportedly by accident. Sandusky and two other top Penn State officials were arrested on Saturday, and by the time I got into the office Monday morning, the national media were just slowly catching onto what had happened in State College over the weekend.
“Curry,” my editor said. “Why don’t you keep an eye on those Penn State officials?”
I had no idea what she meant. I nodded and scribbled a note on my pad: Penn State?
I printed out and read the indictment at my desk, the words blurring in front of me as I began to understand what I was reading. It described how in 2001, an assistant coach at Penn State claimed he had seen the retired defensive coordinator naked with a child in the locker room showers. The young assistant told the university’s head football coach — Paterno — who in turn told his boss, the Athletic Director, who told the Vice President, who then told the President. Five men, in all, were made aware that Sandusky had done somethinginappropriate with a boy in the university’s locker rooms, yet none of them picked up a phone to call police, according to the indictment. This was a central point of the case, a point that would in time eat away at the the university’s community.
More immediately powerful to me in those first moments, though, was the detailed recounting of Sandusky’s sexual relationships with eight boys. The indictment was filled with graphic descriptions of intimately horrific behavior between a man I’d never heard of and boys whose names would not be made public. I sat queasy at my computer, flipping through the pages. I was the first in our newsroom to read what soon the rest of the world would have to hear about over and over for 10 months, and I had no idea how to interpret it or begin to make sense of it. What follow-up questions do you ask about a man who violently and sexually attacked 9-year-olds? It was so far outside of my reach, my normal everyday existence. It was, I would later think, an eerie, solitary encounter with evil.
3. Teachers to Suit Their Own Passions
The drive to Penn State is daunting. The highway curves and climbs over the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains and then descends sharply into the bowl-shaped land known as Happy Valley, though its geographical name is familiar too: Nittany Valley, home to the Nittany Lions. The road into town drops visitors right at the doorstep of Penn State University, sitting on the valley floor, the faint echo of student voices chanting, “We Are! Penn State!” bouncing off the mountain walls.
You know you are there when you see the stadium. It rises up, gothic and vaguely ominous, like an ancient cathedral in the middle of the city. There, inside the stadium’s walls, a small tough man with rolled up pants and thick black glasses led the football team each Saturday for 61 years. It was a lifetime and then some for the head of a football program, and enough time for Joe Paterno’s reputation and persona to grow so large that its enormity seemed to compete with Beaver Stadium itself. That is, if you could separate the two. Beaver Stadium was synonymous with Joe Paterno, and Paterno, after six decades in power, was synonymous with Penn State University.
Photo: AP
“Joe Pa,” as he was affectionately dubbed, had taken Penn State from a no-name athletic program to a Division-I Big Ten powerhouse during his tenure. The school became nationally known for football, and Paterno’s rising tide lifted the boats of the university’s academics, athletics, community, and, in fact, the entire state. Enrollment increased, as did Penn State’s profits. Paterno, in effect, was at least partially responsible for thousands of students attending the school, for hundreds of faculty members being hired, and thousands more staff becoming employed as the campus grew. His incredible success was so important to the reputation, fundraising and academics of the institution, that football had become arguably the most powerful “department” on campus. At the head of that department, and at the top of the university’s power structure, sat Paterno.
Paterno, for his part, didn’t act like a powerful sports hotshot. He owned a modest ranch home only a block away from school, in a small middle-class neighborhood with nice front lawns. He walked to home games across the fields of the campus he loved so much, and donated back millions to help improve the academics of the university. Though he was, in some sense, the architect of his surroundings, he appeared, day-to-day, as merely a humble occupant, too.
It was this disparity that earned Paterno the adoration of his community. Despite his power, the head coach represented the community’s values: honor, success, education, humility. Though he grasped the school’s economic reins, he also remained its moral compass. Or so it seemed, anyway.
Continue: http://www.si.com/thecauldron/2015/11/12/covering-psu-sex-scandal-jerry-sandusky-joe-paterno
BY COLLEEN CURRY
Fri Nov. 13, 2015
On Nov. 5, 2011, Jerry Sandusky was arrested on child sex abuse charges, and as the case unfolded in the subsequent months, Penn State University nearly imploded. I covered the events as a reporter for ABC News from start to finish.
1. Questions of Faith
Behind the courthouse, in the glaring June sun, a dozen photographers and reporters watch silently as Jerry Sandusky, the man accused of molesting at least 10 children over a 15-year period, laughs and helps shuffle boxes of documents from a cart into the waiting SUV. It is the third day of testimony in his trial — damning, graphic, horrific testimony that seems sure to return a guilty verdict.
Clad in a dark suit that contrasts his shock of white hair, Sandusky stands more than six feet tall and 250 pounds — a football player’s body with a grandfather’s soft demeanor. As he lifts the boxes of files, Sandusky smiles at the waiting reporters and looks around helplessly for direction from his attorney. He seems almost unaware of what has been happening inside the building behind him each day. It’s hard to imagine him directing a football play, a children’s charity, or even his own vehicle. In fact, he is driven everywhere by his attorney. He is hapless, a silly old man. Or at least that is the idea being presented to us here behind the courthouse.
Of course, there is a disconnect there. The crimes he is accused of committing, and which have been detailed inside the courtroom each day, would have to have been carefully concealed from the world if they were to be committed. The prosecutors call him calculating, an “expert” pedophile, arrogant, bold, and most of all, a monster. Does that description fit? Is he a big, stupid oaf, or a cold, evil predator? That is the question that Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lanky defense attorney, is trying to pose to the jury. But that question, it turns out, will be shockingly easy to answer.
No, our central question, and what amounted to our central preoccupation in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in June 2012, would come to be the icon, the demigod, Joe Paterno, and what he knew and when he knew it.
2. The Problem of Evil
When Sandusky was charged, the Pennsylvania Attorney General released the indictment quietly on a Friday afternoon, purportedly by accident. Sandusky and two other top Penn State officials were arrested on Saturday, and by the time I got into the office Monday morning, the national media were just slowly catching onto what had happened in State College over the weekend.
“Curry,” my editor said. “Why don’t you keep an eye on those Penn State officials?”
I had no idea what she meant. I nodded and scribbled a note on my pad: Penn State?
I printed out and read the indictment at my desk, the words blurring in front of me as I began to understand what I was reading. It described how in 2001, an assistant coach at Penn State claimed he had seen the retired defensive coordinator naked with a child in the locker room showers. The young assistant told the university’s head football coach — Paterno — who in turn told his boss, the Athletic Director, who told the Vice President, who then told the President. Five men, in all, were made aware that Sandusky had done somethinginappropriate with a boy in the university’s locker rooms, yet none of them picked up a phone to call police, according to the indictment. This was a central point of the case, a point that would in time eat away at the the university’s community.
More immediately powerful to me in those first moments, though, was the detailed recounting of Sandusky’s sexual relationships with eight boys. The indictment was filled with graphic descriptions of intimately horrific behavior between a man I’d never heard of and boys whose names would not be made public. I sat queasy at my computer, flipping through the pages. I was the first in our newsroom to read what soon the rest of the world would have to hear about over and over for 10 months, and I had no idea how to interpret it or begin to make sense of it. What follow-up questions do you ask about a man who violently and sexually attacked 9-year-olds? It was so far outside of my reach, my normal everyday existence. It was, I would later think, an eerie, solitary encounter with evil.
3. Teachers to Suit Their Own Passions
The drive to Penn State is daunting. The highway curves and climbs over the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains and then descends sharply into the bowl-shaped land known as Happy Valley, though its geographical name is familiar too: Nittany Valley, home to the Nittany Lions. The road into town drops visitors right at the doorstep of Penn State University, sitting on the valley floor, the faint echo of student voices chanting, “We Are! Penn State!” bouncing off the mountain walls.
You know you are there when you see the stadium. It rises up, gothic and vaguely ominous, like an ancient cathedral in the middle of the city. There, inside the stadium’s walls, a small tough man with rolled up pants and thick black glasses led the football team each Saturday for 61 years. It was a lifetime and then some for the head of a football program, and enough time for Joe Paterno’s reputation and persona to grow so large that its enormity seemed to compete with Beaver Stadium itself. That is, if you could separate the two. Beaver Stadium was synonymous with Joe Paterno, and Paterno, after six decades in power, was synonymous with Penn State University.
Photo: AP
“Joe Pa,” as he was affectionately dubbed, had taken Penn State from a no-name athletic program to a Division-I Big Ten powerhouse during his tenure. The school became nationally known for football, and Paterno’s rising tide lifted the boats of the university’s academics, athletics, community, and, in fact, the entire state. Enrollment increased, as did Penn State’s profits. Paterno, in effect, was at least partially responsible for thousands of students attending the school, for hundreds of faculty members being hired, and thousands more staff becoming employed as the campus grew. His incredible success was so important to the reputation, fundraising and academics of the institution, that football had become arguably the most powerful “department” on campus. At the head of that department, and at the top of the university’s power structure, sat Paterno.
Paterno, for his part, didn’t act like a powerful sports hotshot. He owned a modest ranch home only a block away from school, in a small middle-class neighborhood with nice front lawns. He walked to home games across the fields of the campus he loved so much, and donated back millions to help improve the academics of the university. Though he was, in some sense, the architect of his surroundings, he appeared, day-to-day, as merely a humble occupant, too.
It was this disparity that earned Paterno the adoration of his community. Despite his power, the head coach represented the community’s values: honor, success, education, humility. Though he grasped the school’s economic reins, he also remained its moral compass. Or so it seemed, anyway.
Continue: http://www.si.com/thecauldron/2015/11/12/covering-psu-sex-scandal-jerry-sandusky-joe-paterno
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