Paterno Won Sweeter Deal Even as Scandal Played Out
by Jo Becker
The New York Times
July 14, 2012

In January 2011, Joe Paterno learned prosecutors were investigating his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexually assaulting young boys. Soon, Mr. Paterno had testified before a grand jury, and the rough outlines of what would become a giant scandal had been published in a local newspaper.

That same month, Mr. Paterno, the football coach at Penn State, began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. Paterno and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation, had reached an agreement.

Mr. Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years....

The Shocking Truth About Joe Paterno, Penn State and Governor Tom Corbett
by Dave Zirin
The Nation
July 12, 2012

“It is very simple: Joe Paterno was a criminal.” —Jeff Passan, Yahoo Sports

After seven months, 400 interviews and the review of more than 3.5 million documents, Louis Freeh has completed his report on the dark underside of Penn State University, and it will stun even the most cynical among us. The former FBI director was given, we were told, “free rein” to investigate the institutional failures that compelled school President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, director of campus police Gary Schultz and legendary football coach Joe Paterno, to cover up allegations that revered former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was a serial child predator. In the immediate wake of Sandusky’s conviction on forty-five counts of various acts of child abuse, Freeh’s 267-page report is shocking for what it reveals and shocking, frankly, for what it doesn’t reveal. The report constitutes nothing less than a death blow to the school’s reputation. Its conclusions, that those in positions of power at Penn State showed a “total disregard” for the safety of vulnerable children, will echo for years. We can reasonably expect this school with a $4.6 billion budget, a $1.8 billion endowment and 96,000 students to be inalterably crippled for the foreseeable future. Civil lawsuits, criminal lawsuits and hot pressure on the NCAA to shut down the lucrative football program will all result from this report. It also, as suspected, constitutes a death blow to what was left of the reputation of the most successful, respected coach in the history of college football, Joe Paterno. There were many cynical about the report before its release, saying, “We’ll learn that Joe Paterno covered up Sandusky’s child abuse to protect the football program. We already knew this.” But there is so much in the report we didn’t know. We didn’t know, as Freeh writes on page 39, that “several staff members and football coaches regularly observed Sandusky showering with young boys” before May 1998.

We didn’t know that there was evidence Joe Paterno knew about formal allegations against Sandusky as far back as 1998, four years before his assistant Mike McQueary walked in on Sandusky raping an 11-year-old boy in the Penn State showers, and then reported it to the coach. A supposedly shocked Paterno told Washington Post reporter Sally Jenkins shortly before his death that he didn’t know what to do upon hearing McQueary’s story because he’d “never heard of rape and a man.”

We didn’t know that when Sandusky was forced into retirement in 1999, he received in Freeh’s words, “an unusual lump sum payment of $168,000” as well as full use of team facilities.

We didn’t know that Paterno, well aware of every sick allegation, wanted Sandusky in 1999 to stay as “Volunteer Position Director–Positive Action for Youth.”

We didn’t know that Sandusky had the gall to ask the school to open, in his name, a football camp for middle school boys.

And most criminally, we didn’t know, according to Freeh, that in 2001 Schultz and Curley agreed to go to authorities but changed their mind after Curley discussed their plan with Paterno. At one point, Spanier said that if Sandusky quietly sought help, they’d turn a blind eye...

 

Was there a Penn State conspiracy to cover up Sandusky's sex abuse?
by Naomi Wolf
The Guardian
July 6, 2012

On 22 June of this year, Jerry Sandusky, an assistant football coach at Penn State University, was found guilty of abusing ten boys over the course of a decade and a half. At first, the Sandusky case at Penn State seemed like that of a lone abuser. Now, it seems to be turning into a story of extensive and shockingly high-level coverup of the known rape of children. A new trove of emails from 2001, read by a firsthand source to a CNN reporter last week, suggest that 15 young lives were not just ruined because Sandusky abused vulnerable boys for over 15 years, but were ruined, too, because powerful men around Sandusky knew exactly what he was doing – and colluded in detail with one another not to stop it...

 

Hezbollah Resigns: Lebanese Government Collapses As Political Party Pulls Out

Violent deaths of children 'down 40%'

Researchers say child death rate has plummeted in the last 30 years, thanks to 'improvements in social care systems'  The number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% in the past 30 years, according to a report by researchers from Bournemouth University.  Between 1974 and 2006, the number of children aged 14 and under who are killed annually fell from 136 to 84, says the study, which was shown to the BBC ahead of publication later this year.

As a proportion of the child population, the death rate nearly halved from 32 to 17 per million children.  Prof Colin Pritchard, from the university's school of health and social care, told the BBC: "Thirty years ago England and Wales were the third or fourth highest child killers in the western world, but we're now fourth lowest.  "There's been a gradual decline in these terrible events."  The study examined nine other developed countries, with most showing similar reductions.

Spain had the lowest violent death rate, at four deaths per million children, with Italy on five.  The US figure was highest at 47 deaths per million, with Germany second highest at 21.  Pritchard said improvements in social care systems, along with a greater focus on child poverty, had helped lower the death rate.  "When these things go wrong, it is very often because the usual good working together has actually broken down," he said.

Interesting follow up to our discussion in the guns thread last week (published in todays Guardian).  Sometimes public perception is not the reality.  Of course this won't be good news until the level of child death due to violence is zero.

I have to say that most of the Sri Lankans I met (ok, not the tamils) were big fans of the president because of his actions in the North in terms of tackling the Tamil Tigers so my guess will be a win for him this week.  This article hints at army violence though if the head of the army doesn't win.  My brother is there again at the moment for a family wedding.

Sri Lankan presidential election's main candidates call for calm

Incumbent and challenger make plea to supporters after run-up to first poll since defeat of Tamils Tigers is marred by violence

Supporters of President Mahinda Rajapaksa listen to his speech during an election rally in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP

The two main candidates in Sri Lanka's first election since the defeat of the Tamil Tigers urged calm after today's vote.

"I respectfully call upon our people to safeguard democracy and the dignity of the motherland by united, resolute, calm and peaceful behaviour," said President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is seeking a second six-year term.

More than 800 violent incidents and five deaths have been recorded in the run-up to the election, according to the independent Centre for Monitoring Election Violence. MORE