Franco Harris criticizes Penn State for firing Paterno

Man I like Franco and think he is a good guy.....But there is no way I can agree with him on this one

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 66805.html

 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. From what I've read, I don't think Paterno did nearly enough to stop the atrocities taking place so the board had no choice but to fire him.

 

Lookingt at it objectively (not emotionally), Paterno is a scapegoat and got railroaded and his firing was premature. The board has been looking to get rid of him for several years now and jumped on the opportunity.

 

Damn, I had a really long very well written (my opinion) post, but it failed to post. I'll summarize by saying that this was not a move based on moral principals, but a move to attempt a separation in case of Civil liability cases.

Also, I know there are processes in place at my particular employer and once reported internally, there is nothing I can do legally afterward due to legal and investigative issues. What is the process for reporting at Penn State? Is there one? I think there should have been more that he, as Head Coach, could have done and should have done. But that is easy to say in hindsight. A Grand Jury did not find him at fault, but now we want to link him to a former coach and coach emeritus that was given access to the facilities by who?

 

Rich, alumni scumbags that wanted him gone. Money talks!!

 

the whole thing just doesnt pass the smell test to me. there is way more here that we dont know yet. i just cant see Joe Paterno sitting on this. from everything we have heard and know about the man it just doesnt seem right that he would willingly take the knowledge that he supposedly had about Sandusky to his grave.

im not defending anyone in this mess. McQueary should have stopped it right when he saw it and we probably arent having this conversation. now we have reports that Sandusky was running some sort of child escort service to the wealthy alumni. this is stuff that even the best writters couldnt come up with.

if it turns out that the high ranking people at Penn State were keeping this on the hush hush to protect the football team or the school i will never cheer for them again and ive been a Lions fan for over probably 30 years.

 

683,000 adult American women are forcibly raped each year. This equals 56,916 per month; 1,871 per day; 78 per hour; and 1.3 per minute.

1,500 children die from abuse each year. There are 140,000 injuries to children from abuse each year. There are 1.7 million reports of child abuse each year."

According to a 2008 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report an estimated 671,888 people experienced homelessness in one night in January 2007. Some 58 percent of them were living in shelters and transitional housing and, 42 percent were unsheltered.

Ask yourself this Are you doing enough? Don't get mad at someone else when you aren't doing anything either. The public outrage at this one incident is somewhat disproportionate to what takes place on a daily basis in this country which know one seems to care about as much until it is front page news.

 

Wow! You need to read the report then. How can you tell him to shut up and then say you haven't. Apparently there was a report filed in 1999 for the same thing by University Police.

The focus should be on the kids who were harmed by this man. Not Joe Paterno, who is seeming like a PSU Board of Directors scapegoat. Paterno should have said screw reporting procedure and when straight to police himself. He didn't and now we hindsight it after seeing that there was an apparent cover-up by who he did report it to.

 

There is absolutely something you can do. If you report it to your boss and nothing happens, you go to his/her boss. If you go up to the top of the organization and nothing happens, you go to the police.

 

Since October 2010 I've raised $8,200 for children, MDS (Muscular Dystrophy) and Sunrise Camp which supports children with cancer. Before you call someone out know what the f**k you are talking about. And what you wrote has s**t to do with Paterno and the rest doing miserably little to help those victims.[/quote:3q3jdq8u]

I wasn't calling you out. I was putting this in perspective. Everyone is so angry and calling for Joe's head about this one case. Yet they really don't seemed to be worked up that this stuff happens in their own neighborhoods, communities, towns, churches and what have you. Is the unknown attacker and victim from main street USA any less worth of our hate and outrage? Should we care more about this because it is Penn State and Joe Paterno? These are questions that should be asked. I sorry if my post seemed to single you out but yours was the comment that stood out the most.

 

No there you are wrong. There is a clear reporting structure that includes the process of making a statement to the correct people. There is a clear action that needs to be taken and procedures in place for grievances if not satisfied. (which include a law enforcement agency) So, no I cannot take my statement anywhere outside of the proper channels. Trust there are checks and balances where I work.

 

I'm not wrong. There has been a procedure everywhere I have worked and it has always been report it to your manager and if it isn't addressed, report it to their manager and so on until it is addressed and if it is not addressed, you contact the appropriate authorities.

So what are your procedures if a grievance is not satisfied where you work? I would hope that you don't just trust that someone would eventually do something.

 

That's what is bothering me so much. So many times I read stories that end in tragedy and 8 times out of 10 it seems there were no indicators. People are shocked, neighbors are quoted saying what a nice, normal guy he was. And in this case we have to see victim after victim and many reported incidents that were iced over. Makes me sick.

 

I'm surprised this is controversial at all.

I've worked with kids for years, in several different settings, including those where there are "specific courses of action" that you're supposed to take if you see or suspect or hear about abuse. At one school I worked for, there was one specific dude I was supposed to report to if anything came up, and he was the only one I was required to tell (instead of additionally going to the principal, for example).

There are times to trust, and there are times to get sh** done. A kid shows up with a black eye and won't talk about it, and you know from experience that his dad is the aggressive type? You report it, and see that it's looked into. After someone whose job to investigate investigates, you're done. You don't go running to the police and say, "Lock him up" if they decided the dad was not at fault. You trust the system, and it's not your place to do otherwise unless you have real evidence or are some kind of witness... However, you walk in on a kid being raped in the shower? Your subordinate comes to you and explains that your co-worker is having anal and oral sex with 2nd graders? You don't tell your boss and trust the system. You make sure it stops. THAT is your job. It was thrown upon you whether you like it or not, and if it doesn't seem fair that you're in a potentially compromising position at work, think about the kind of position that kid is in. If you want to go through the canals you're supposed to, that's fine. But if you show up a week later and the dude is still throwing the ball around with that kid, maybe it's time to think about whether your first attempt did the trick. Then, like someone above said, you try someone else. Anyone. Go up the chain. Don't want to? They don't listen? They cover it up? Go to the police. Go to the FBI. Go to the streetcorner with a bell and a sandwich board. Yell it from the rooftops. The police aren't going to give a crap about Penn State's defensive coordinator, they're going to see if he's raping kids and arrest him.

No one is handcuffed by protocol when a kid is getting raped, and hindsight is a word that should not be in this conversation. Anyone who needs hindsight to know you're supposed to stop child rape no matter what your friend or boss tells you is a fool at best and an accomplice at worst, and it is a shameful sign of our society to see that at least several people at Penn St. didn't know that.

 

There was a story in my local paper today about why this sort of thing couldn't happen in North Dakota or Minnesota since it is a law that you can be held criminally liable if you don't report an incident such as the shower incident. However they cited a study that showed that even with the law that almost 50% incidents went unreported. Usually by good people who just did not want to become involved in such cases.

 

Look I see where you're coming from and I've attempted to generalize it for everyone's benefit. Yes, in my case you are wrong. I've stated that there are appropriate "authorities" in my "company" and it escapes understanding. I'm in the military which means there are enforcement agencies affiliated and specified by policy that things get reported to outside the normal chain of command in certain situations . Yes, we do have things that separate us from the normal "company".

 

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Penn State wasn't the only place involved in not bringing this to light. The Grand Jury report does not specify what the exact words were used in describing the situation in Paterno's case. This is what will come out during the trial. Either way that should have flagged him as he does have the youth organization he was involved in. Too many times these guys hide in plain sight supposedly helping the victims. If you read it there were a lot more people involved and investigators told to close cases. There needs to be a deeper look for more possible victims instead of this public blame game. Maybe there needs to be a change as to who investigates these cases. In a broader sense, there needs to be a focus at all campuses in how things are done. As with the Catholic priest scandal, deeper investigations led to more findings across the country. Also, as a parent I'm not going to be satisfied with a promise he won't do it again. It's going public or to a DA's office. The problem is this is all reactionary. Most of the known victims are in their 20's.


This should probably be moved to another forum though, as it's not Steeler Talk.

 

I think Paterno passing it up to his superior was the right thing to do. But I want to know what exactly happened after that?

Why didn't the athletic director do something, and did he tell Paterno to forget the mess, or did they conspire together to cover this up?

 

Joe did not witness anything!!!!!! Take off your emotional judge-jury-executioner cloak off for a while and look at the real known facts, not what you think could be facts or assumptions. You seem to think McQuerry reported a rape to Joe, but that is most likely not the case at all. Nobody is defending Sandusky here, we are looking at what happened to JoePa objectively. Why isn't anyone crying for the head of McQuerry's father -- I am sure he was told more than Joe was told. You people are acting as if Joe actually knew what was happening with Sandusky, when he may not have know any detains other than a vague accusation. He had ZERO first hand knowledge of anything.