Penn State Child Sex Abuse Scandal, Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

Fire his ass! Wait, let's just hang him! No, we'll tar and feather him first, then fire him and hang him! Better yet, let's just get a good, old-fashioned lynch mob and storm his house and break down the doors and grab him from his armchair and drag him through the streets. He must be guilty. The media said so. Was there a trial? We don't need no stinkin' trial! Is there evidence? Sure, the media said so. We know he's guilty. Innocent until proven guilty? Where are the ratings in that?

Well, it looks like the lynch mob got its wish. Penn State's , after 60-plus years, two national championships, five undefeated seasons more wins than any other NCAA Division 1 coach and decades of producing good men as well as good football players, has been run out.

He was canned Wednesday night by a board of trustees desperate to do something, anything, to show they are taking action … even if it’s the wrong action at the wrong time.

What a shame.

For the better part of a week, ever since the grand jury report against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was released accusing him of multiple counts of child sexual abuse, the attention has been not on Sandusky, who allegedly committed the crimes, but on whether or not his former boss took the proper action and went to police when informed of Sandusky’s alleged acts.

As a matter of fact, he did. Paterno went to Gary Schultz, the Penn State vice president who runs the university police department. He told Athletic Director Tim Curley. He went to these men on the word of a graduate assistant and former quarterback against a man he had known, worked with and maybe even trusted for decades. In truth, any more than that could be construed as interfering in a police investigation … if one had begun.

To put it in football terms: If the quarterback hands off the ball and the runner drops it on the way to the end-zone, is that the quarterback's fault? He did what he was supposed to do. He took the ball from the center, passed it to the most appropriate player on the team and expected a good run. Do you destroy the career, reputation and maybe the life of a man who has done so many good things because he did what he was supposed to do?

But the thing that bugs me most about this incident is the duplicity rampant among Paterno’s most vocal critics.

I wonder how many of the sanctimonious hypocrites calling for Paterno's head have ever called the police when they heard a neighbor beating his wife or children, when a co-worker came to work or child came to school with unexplained bruises, when they witnessed a mugging or robbery underway while driving down a street, or even just stopped to help a child crying on the sidewalk or in a mall?

It is so easy to say, in retrospect, that someone should have acted differently. And we all like to think we would have done differently. But unless you have been in that position, you just don't know.

Put yourself in Mike McQueary’s position. Imagine being in a situation where your boss and coach is a national icon in one of the most respected athletic programs in the world and you have to tell him that his former assistant, friend and trusted associate is committing acts like this. I'd say McQueary has a lot of guts. How many others would have looked away or tried to pretend they didn't see what happened? Imagine the pressure on him. He's not stupid. He knew what would happen in the media, eventually, even if it came out right away. I'd bet on that. (By the way, the grand jury report doesn’t say what McQueary did but I’d bet that he stopped that alleged attack.)

We have developed an instinctual knee-jerk reaction in this country to place blame without the facts whenever we see or hear something in the media. If the facts prove that Paterno did not do the right thing, then there will be time to take the appropriate action against him. Until then, let us all hope we are never put in a similar position.

The thing that should disturb us most of all is that neither Paterno nor McQueary nor Sandusky ---yes, even he--- has had a chance to provide his side of the story yet. We have a prosecutor's report. But our Constitution specifically states that every accused is innocent until proven guilty. Nobody has proven anything, yet. It may well happen, but to hang people based on accusations, without a fair trial, is nothing really short of lynching. Where is the justice there?

We are a nation of sanctimonious hypocrites.

God bless America. God help us all.