July 22nd, 2012: Joe Paterno’s statue was removed from its home outside of Beaver Stadium.
July 23rd, 2012: The NCAA imposed harsh sanctions onto Penn State’s football program, including a $60m fine, 4-year ban from postseason play, the loss of 20 scholarships every year for four years, and vacating of wins from 1998-2011.
Now that the monster himself Sandusky has been imprisoned for the rest of his life, and his biggest enabler, The Pennsylvania State University football program and its hold over the whole university, have been justly punished, we must now look to who else allowed this tragedy to reach such a high level.
Thomas W. Corbett, or Tom, was elected in November of 2010 as the new Governor of the State of Pennsylvania. Previous to gaining this position, he served as the state’s Attorney General from 2005 to 2011, winning re-election in 2008. As Attorney General, it was his job to watch over and control all major police investigations in PA.
In 2008, the mother of a high school boy at Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, reported to the Vice Principal that her son had been molested by Jerry Sandusky, who was a volunteer assistant football coach at the time. The Vice Principal then reported these accusations to local authorities. As in any big name investigation, the reports found their way to the desk of the Attorney General, Tom Corbett. General Corbett assigned one investigator to the accusation at the time, a former police detective, who was then working as a narcotics agent.Many prosecutors have been quoted in saying in any investigation of an accused child molester the first action is to take the accused off the streets. Corbett insisted upon his team that Sandusky not be arrested until a strong case was built against him; this decision may have led to the abuse of more victims. So the question we should be asking of Governor Corbett is why did it take until November of 2011 for Jerry Sandusky to be arrested on these accusations of child abuse that you, the Attorney General, had known about since 2008?
Did it have anything to do with the fact that you knew you were going to be running for Governor in 2010? And with that you knew taking down Penn State would hurt your reputation in the eyes of the schools very large and extremely loyal alumni network. Also, you couldn’t bear the possibility of losing the over $200,000 in campaign donations from members of PSU’s Board of Trustees and the over $650,000 from members of the Second Mile’s, Sandusky charity benefiting underprivileged youth, board of trustees, their family members, and companies.
The political, financial, and social hit that you, Mr. Tom Corbett, would have taken by outing Sandusky for what he really is and Penn State for the intricate circle of lies and cover-ups that have surround the football team, athletic department, and university for the past 14 years, would have just been too much to recover from. In order to protect yourself and your dreams to be the most powerful political figure in the state of Pennsylvania you were willing to risk the safety, mental and physical, of thousands of young boys.
The political, financial, and social hit that you, Mr. Tom Corbett, would have taken by outing Sandusky for what he really is and Penn State for the intricate circle of lies and cover-ups that have surround the football team, athletic department, and university for the past 14 years, would have just been too much to recover from. In order to protect yourself and your dreams to be the most powerful political figure in the state of Pennsylvania you were willing to risk the safety, mental and physical, of thousands of young boys.
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