Penn State child sex-abuse scandal: When we had the facts, we ran the story
Published: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 11:54 AM Updated: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 4:50 PM
By
DAVID NEWHOUSE, The Patriot-News
On Friday, The Patriot-News was the first news organization to report that former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky had been charged with child sex abuse. Since then, the national media have descended on Happy Valley and our own coverage has drawn 6 million page views on PennLive.com.
While many readers have expressed their appreciation for our coverage, some have asked: Forget
Joe Paterno or
Graham Spanier. Why didn’t The Patriot-News investigate these allegations sooner?
That’s an important question. Here is the answer:
The Patriot-News broke the story that Jerry Sandusky was being investigated for child sex abuse back in March. We told the stories of two victims in detail.
We wrote additional stories in
April and
August, including one that reported the grand jury had heard testimony from multiple victims.
Any of the national news media who were shocked by
Sandusky’s indictmentlast week evidently don’t read our newspaper or look at our website. They should have.
But could we have reported the story sooner than March?
Until 1998, none of the young victims came forward to tell their story — not to the police or to anyone. It is a terrible cruelty that the trauma of sex abuse often drives victims into silence when sharing their story could help them and others.
In 1998, a boy who was 12 at the time told police that Sandusky had showered with him in the Penn State football locker room during a tour. The boy claimed Sandusky assaulted him during the shower.
During our own investigation, years later, the mother told us that she had been specifically instructed by state police not to speak with reporters.
No charges were filed against Sandusky in 1998. With the mother cowed into silence, the incident remained buried.
No further victims or witnesses spoke up until the 2002 incident that involved Mike McQueary, Paterno and other top university officials.
It appears from the grand jury presentment that the school’s aim was to handle this report very quietly. They succeeded. No one who had been directly involved talked about it at the time. No one.
Sandusky flaunted the so-called “ban” on his bringing kids to campus — in fact, he held Second Mile camps on other Penn State campuses as recently as 2008. We never noticed any sanctions against the former coach because they didn’t really exist.
In the years that followed, still more victims maintained their silence.
That changed in 2009, when a Clinton County boy and a wrestling coach who had witnessed an incident came forward with new allegations. This time, word leaked out in the form of rumors that caught the attention of two reporters:
Jan Murphy of The Patriot-News and
Sara Ganim, then a reporter with
the Centre Daily Times in State College.
Now here’s what a news organization like ours thinks about rumors:
In one sense, they’re worthless. We don’t report a rumor that someone has broken the law.
Would you like it if your neighbor called to tell us that you had been involved in sex abuse and we printed it? We demand at least two or even three independent and highly credible sources to print any anonymous allegation of criminal behavior.
Murphy tracked down sources who confirmed that the rumors were serious but found no one with firsthand, verifiable knowledge of the case.
Sara Ganim had more luck. After a great deal of work, Ganim eventually located and spoke with the victim’s mother. But we needed much more if we were to accuse a Penn State coaching legend of an abhorrent crime.
After Ganim came to The Patriot-News, she continued her reporting in Centre, Mifflin, Clinton and Dauphin counties. She interviewed more than 26 people, often three or four times.
We confirmed their statements in other ways, as well. Sara tracked down a second victim, witnesses and other sources who could talk not only about the Clinton County victim but about what had happened back in 1998.
With enough evidence that we were confident of its accuracy, we published the story on March 31.
The national media ignored it. Locally, we mainly received anger from some readers.
“It truly is troubling to me to see a ‘reputable’ newspaper such as The Patriot-News carrying this type of sensationalist story,” wrote one.
“Shame on those who have tried to defile the legacy that Jerry Sandusky has worked so hard to build,” wrote another.
We stood by the story and more stories followed. We have been told by those with knowledge of the grand jury investigation that our stories prompted additional victims to come forward.
Many of my colleagues here at The Patriot-News are Penn State alumni. Many more of us are Lions fans or have simply admired Joe Paterno. This has been an unbelievably sad week for us along with hundreds of thousands of Penn Staters and millions of Americans who feel the same way.
If we had any inkling of this alleged conduct before 2009 — from any victims, witnesses or those who knew them — we would have investigated it with all the vigor we possess. And we would have been no less careful to deal not in rumors or speculation, but in facts.
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chiefsknitter, on 09 November 2011 - 10:16 PM, said:
