The Jerry Sandusky trial is over, but now the story will move on to the alleged cover-up at Penn State. The news report above from CNN is devastating, as emails have been discovered suggesting a cover-up among Penn State officials. More importantly, references to Joe Paterno in the emails suggest that athletic director Tom Curley decided to change course and not follow a plan to report the incidents to authorities after he spoke with Paterno on the matter.
These are all allegations at the moment, but if these emails are accurate, it appears there was a conspiracy to handle the Sandusky allegations by confronting Sandusky but not reporting it to the authorities, and that Joe Paterno was actively involved. Not only was he involved, these emails suggest that Paterno himself may have been the primary influence to cause the plan to go to authorities to be changed.
This is a stunning development. Again, we need to wait for the report and for all of the evidence to come out. But, we do know that Mike McQueary testified that he told Paterno and then Penn State officials about what happened. And we also know that after Paterno informed his superiors, nothing was ever reported to the authorities. Now the rest of the details are coming to light, and Joe Paterno’s legacy might be completely destroyed.
More importantly, because Penn State officials and Joe Paterno never informed the authorities, more boys were raped and assaulted by Jerry Sandusky in the years that followed. Just disgusting.
We’re following SPORTSbyBROOKS on Twitter to track the developments in this story. This article from Dan Wetzel at Yahoo! summaries the issues and the devastating emails better than our short summary here.
