The Elephant in the Room

Many of you landed on this page because you are a Penn Stater, a college football fan, or a sports fan wanting to know more about Joe Paterno's life.

I also know some are here because you're interested in the Jerry Sandusky scandal and its accompanying fallout. You want to know what Joe Paterno knew and when he knew it. That is the elephant in the room. I get that.

My father's life was big, complex, and principled, and he himself would tell you he was not perfect. But what the Freeh Report asserted is far from the truth.

Child sexual abuse is the witch trial topic of our time. I fully grasp the powerful emotions wrought by this issue. Calm discussion is difficult. It is outside our comfort zone, creating a lack of awareness that provides cover for perpetrators to operate in plain sight.

However, we must remember what Johns Hopkins University professor Dr. Fred Berlin stated in his report: "In our legitimate effort to protect innocent children, the fair treatment of adults should not become a collateral casualty."

After the Freeh Report, I understand why people are angry at the university and my father. But as FBI director, Freeh took Richard Jewell from hero to suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing. After the facts were uncovered, Jewell was indeed the good guy, but the damage was done.

Our world demands immediate reaction and analysis. Initial reporting is often inaccurate and lacks perspective. For my father and Penn State, almost three years later the truth is getting clearer. An in-depth investigation by former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, former FBI profiler Jim Clemente, and Dr. Berlin presented a record supported by facts and evidence.

Both Thornburgh and Clemente worked with Louis Freeh. Yet both studied the report he issued and found it deeply flawed. Both addressed Joe Paterno's role related to crimes committed by another.

My father did not commit a crime or even witness a crime.

I grew up a son to Joe Paterno and worked alongside him for 17 years. I know all too well that he was human, an imperfect being. But he always tried to do what he believed was the right thing. When he erred, he erred with the right intentions.

This book is not an attempt to include my father as a victim in the horrible Sandusky story. When my father was fired, he reiterated to me that being fired paled in comparison to what had happened to others.

Beyond the victims, others lost their jobs and reputations. Recognizing that does not detract from our concern for the direct survivors of a predator. It simply realizes this truth; the bomb that went off threw shrapnel all over the place.

But the immediate media focus was not on the crimes committed or even the victims. On November 12, 2011 on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," host Seth Meyers had a bit with actor Jason Sudeikis dressed up as the devil. The devil yells "JoePa, a cover-up? This is college football, not the Catholic church." In the entire skit, they referenced the Penn State scandal and Joe Paterno — but the man actually charged with the crimes not a single time. In an email to their subscribers in November of 2011, The New York Times recapped how they had covered the story. It concluded the email by saying this: "More than boys had been violated it seemed. A proud university's sense of superiority and privilege and arrogance had been blown up, too."

Using the specter of boys being violated was inappropriate. But in the headline and body of editor Joe Sexton's story, the name Penn State appeared six times, Paterno four times, and the man charged at the time, Jerry Sandusky, zero times.

Although Sandusky had not worked at Penn State in almost 12 years, the focus became the university. That the vast majority of the charges occurred at locations unconnected to Penn State did not matter.

The focus also fell on Joe Paterno, who did not witness a crime but when told of what might have been one, a day after it happened, reported it exactly as directed by university policy set by state law.

Joe Paterno has been pronounced by the media as "the most powerful man in the state," the foundation of an argument alleging he could and should have done more. His own words: "In hindsight I wish I had done more" have been used against him over and over again as a sign of guilt.

It never was an admission of guilt. It was a painful statement that if he had only known more, then he could have done more. Clemente's powerful report makes the point that Joe Paterno was but one of many, some infinitely more highly educated on this issue, who missed this.

One powerful element to come out of our family report was one that surprised me. If you had asked me three years ago what a pedophile looked like, I would have described a loner in a trench coat, cruising parks and elementary school parking lots in a white van.

We were totally unfamiliar with the nice guy offender. Most never suspect a predator could be a married, non-drinking churchgoer who'd spent his life building a charity to help young people. Yet as the experts in our report point out, these people set themselves up in ways that put them around children.

Why did we miss it? It is a societal problem, a lack of discussion and education on this issue. We have that image of the loner in the white van. We prefer not to talk about it or look in the shadows of ignorance where these criminals hide within plain sight.

Before you condemn Joe Paterno, I ask you to consider if you too would have seen into the darkness of another's heart when all signs pointed you to look the other way.

Before you condemn people at Penn State or in our community, consider this: in adopting Matt Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky went to court to fight for him. I recall him talking to us in the office about the setbacks and ultimate triumph in court.

In the end the presiding judge and the state of Pennsylvania ordered that Jerry be allowed to adopt Matt over the wishes of Matt's biological mother. They viewed Jerry and his home as the better place for Matt.

The...