Freeh report blasts culture of Penn State

Over and over, Freeh’s damning report referred to a pervasive and damaging culture at Penn State where the levers of power were tightly controlled by four men — university President Graham Spanier, head football coach Joe Paterno, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz — whose repeated failure to deal with troubling allegations lodged against Sandusky always seemed to be directed by one goal: “to avoid the consequences of bad publicity.”


A statue of former Penn State coach Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium.

In the litany of horrible acts committed by former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, one illustrates more than any other how the now-convicted pedophile was able to victimize so many young children — for so long — without fear of retribution.

Former FBI director Louis Freeh said Thursday that the most “telling” piece of information in his nearly eight-month investigation into the university’s handling of Sandusky’s misconduct is a 2000 incident in which a Penn State janitor witnessed the once-revered coach performing oral sex on a young boy in a university locker-room shower.

“The janitor who observed it says it’s the worst thing he ever saw,” Freeh said, outlining the explosive findings of his 267-page review, which found a complete failure of the university leadership to stop Sandusky. “He’s a Korean War veteran. … He spoke to the other janitors. They were awed and shocked by it. But, what did they do? They said they can’t report this because they’d be fired. They were afraid to take on the football program. They said the university would circle around it. It was like going against the president of United States. If that’s the culture on the bottom, God help the culture at the top.”

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