The more information is revealed about the child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State, the more it becomes clear this is about more than the alleged monstrous crimes of one man.
This does not mean society in general should be blamed as some commentators have suggested. Generalized blame would let off easy the accused and the specific people who failed to act more aggressively on behalf of child abuse victims.
Penn State administration officials, officials at The Second Mile charity for at-risk children where the accuser allegedly recruited his young victims and members of law enforcement knew of allegations of child sex abuse and failed to act to protect children.
Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator for Penn State, should be back in court next month where he is charged with 40 criminal counts of molesting young boys as young as 10 between 1994 and 2007.
On Dec 7, Sandusky is due for a preliminary hearing in which a judge would determine if there’s enough evidence for prosecutors to move forward with the case.
Fortunately a new judge has been assigned to handle Sandusky’s preliminary hearing next month. The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts said Nov. 16 that Robert E. Scott, a senior district judge in Westmoreland County, would take over the case after Centre County court officials sought an out-of-county jurist.
The case previously had been assigned to District Judge Leslie Dutchcot, who donated to The Second Mile in 2009. She set Sandusky’s low bail at $100,000, unsecured. Dutchcot should have removed herself from hearing the case.
Sandusky’s fate will be decided in a courtroom.
However the action or inaction of several officials should also be questioned including those of Governor Corbett.
Corbett took the case on a referral from the Centre County district attorney in early 2009 while he was serving as attorney general.
The governor reportedly bristled when asked whether it was fair for people to criticize the pace of the probe.
“People that are saying that are ill-informed as to how investigations are conducted, how witnesses are developed, how backup information, corroborative information is developed, and they really don’t know what they’re talking about,” he told reporters.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported Nov. 14 that only one trooper was assigned to the case after the state took it over in 2009.
Despite the governor’s objections there is a valid reason to question why his investigation took so long on such serious allegations and why only one trooper was assigned to it.
There are also many other questions to ask of other officials in how they handled the sex abuse allegations.
State Rep. Eugene DePasquale, D-York, last week called on Corbett to appoint a special investigator to look for answers that fall outside the criminal investigation.
Penn State’s board of trustees on Monday announced the retaining of former FBI director and federal judge Louis J. Freeh to lead its independent inquiry.
As more information becomes known, it becomes clearer that a special investigator as well as a federal investigation is needed.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune.)
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