Joe Must Go! McQueary Too!

Our Terry Toohey talks to Penn State alum Ed Monaghan about the sex scandal and alleged cover-up in Happy Valley.

Monaghan just can't believe the Joe Paterno he knew would knew the details of what Assistant Coach Mike McQueary saw in 2002 - former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in the locker room shower - and didn't call the police.

He ain't the only one.

The New York Times has reported:

In explaining his actions, Mr. Paterno has publicly said he was not told of the graphic nature of a suspected 2002 assault by Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant, of a young boy in the football building’s showers. Mr. Paterno said the graduate assistant who reported the assault, Mike McQueary, said only that something disturbing had happened that was perhaps sexual in nature.

But on Tuesday, a person with knowledge of Mr. McQueary’s version of events called Mr. Paterno’s claim into question. The person said Mr. McQueary had told those in authority the explicit details of what he saw, including in his face-to-face meeting with Mr. Paterno the day after the incident.

If that's true, Paterno is almost as guilty as McQueary of not doing anything to stop Sandusky, allowing him years more to sexually abuse boys. But is it true?

There are two possibilities: McQueary indeed told Paterno everything in explicit detail and Paterno used vague language to describe the crime to Athletic Director Tim Curley. Either that, or it was McQueary who used the vague language, maybe because he was embarrassed and ashamed of not doing anything to stop the assault happening right in front of him.

It is fair to say that whatever the case, Paterno didn't do enough to find out the whole story. Neither did Curley. If McQueary didn't provide explicit details, he should have been pressed to tell exactly what he saw.

McQueary's testimony in the grand jury report is shockingly explicit. For all the talk about the legal duties of the people involved to report and their failure to do so, it is McQueary's failure to intervene while the assault was taking place that remains the most stunning. How does a grown man - he was 28 at the time - see such a thing happening and NOT stop it?

Jerry Sandusky should have been knocked on his ass, his victim wrapped in a towel and the police called immediately. That McQueary meekly and quietly left the locker room is astonishing.

Does the Penn State Football program engender such a culture of obsequiousness to high-ups that such a thing can happen? Because, if so, what good is it?

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that someone witnessed a crime being committed and didn't do anything to stop it. But McQueary's behavior is nothing short of a grotesque abdication of his responsibilities as a man and a human being.

There were others who witnessed Jerry Sandusky behaving criminally who didn't do anything to stop him and bring him to justice. The janitor who saw him performing oral sex on one kid in a dark hallway and then declined to tell authorities about it. And the others who witnessed him spooning and otherwise inappropriately touching young boys, all the while claiming he was just "horsing around."

But McQueary's conduct is in a class by itself.

There will be no shortage of psychologists, doctors and lawyers who will be able to explain how McQueary was so shocked by what he saw that it momentarily fried the synapses in his brain. How that shock prevented him from acting forcefully and righteously. Had McQueary done the right thing, he'd have been a hero. He'd have been the man who stopped a crime as it was being committed and brought an alleged child rapist to justice.

In any case, it's time for Paterno to go. Clearly, he didn't do enough to stop Sandusky's reign of terror and neither did the other administrators.

If McQueary told him explicitly what he saw that night, Paterno should have ordered him call the police. There is little doubt, McQueary would have done anything Paterno told him to do.

There is one last possibility and that is that McQueary lied to the grand jury about what he actually saw. But why would he do that, given what his sworn testimony it makes him look like: a weak and cowardly man.

Based on McQueary's testimony to the Grand Jury, Curley and Penn State VP Gary Schultz have been charged with perjury. Their defense will be that McQueary did not tell everything he saw that night. That his description of events was obscure enough to allow Sandusky, when questioned, to convince them he did nothing approaching sexual abuse.

At their trial, it will be their word against a man who watched a 10-year-old boy being raped right in front of him and did nothing to stop it.

As a witness for the prosecution, his cross examination will not be pretty.

UPDATE: It is being reported that Paterno will retire at the end of the season. Should make for an interesting couple of months.