Joe Paterno - the college football coach who stood up for character and integrity, both on and off the football field could have possibly be facing charges if he was alive today for child endangerment, perjury and conspiracy.
Legal experts and other pundits said that emails and other evidence in the Penn State investigative report released Thursday suggest that Paterno may have misled a grand jury when asked when he first heard about Jerry Sandusky's misconduct, and show that Paterno and other university officials put boys in danger with their failure to report sexual abuse allegations leveled against Sandusky more than a decade ago.
The complete Freeh report with findings regarding how much Penn State university leaders knew of Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse is the source of the damaging evidence against the legendary Penn State head ball coach.
Duquesne University law professor Wes Oliver said the report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh reads like a prosecution case for a child endangerment charge against Paterno, then-President Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and now-retired vice president Gary Schultz. Oliver noted that a former top official in the Philadelphia Archdiocese was convicted of that very charge in June for allowing a suspected pedophile priest to be around children. ''If you look at what happened here, it's very clear that they were aware that they had a pedophile on their campus,'' Oliver said.
Will Spade, a former Philadelphia prosecutor who worked on a grand jury investigation of priests about a decade ago, agreed: ''Spanier, Paterno, Schultz and Curley are arguably responsible for endangering all of those kids that were abused later.'' So far, the only two figures arrested in the alleged cover-up are Curley and Schultz. They were charged last fall with perjury and failure to report suspected child abuse and are awaiting trial. They have denied any wrongdoing.
Spanier, who was ousted as Penn State president over the scandal, has not been charged, but a grand jury continues to investigate. Paterno died in January of lung cancer at 85.
Penn State career of Joe Paterno in photos. Paterno family spokesman Dan McGinn declined to comment on the criminal legal issues on Friday. At the very least, the Freeh report provides powerful ammunition to Sandusky victims looking to sue the university or Paterno's estate.
The report said that Paterno and the other university officials hushed up child sexual abuse allegations against Sandusky in 2001 for fear of bad publicity. Asked on Thursday whether the actions of the four men amounted to a crime such as conspiracy or obstruction, Freeh said that would be for a grand jury to decide. But the former FBI chief and federal judge said the evidence shows ''an active agreement to conceal.''
Freeh described Paterno as ''an integral part'' of that agreement. According to his report, Spanier, Schultz and Curley drew up a plan that called for reporting Sandusky to the state Department of Public Welfare in 2001. But Curley later said in an email that he changed his mind ''after giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe.'' The report also called into question the truthfulness of Paterno's grand jury testimony last year, when he was asked whether he knew of any abuse allegations against Sandusky before the 2001 episode in which Sandusky was spotted assaulting a boy in the locker room showers.
''I do not know of anything else that Jerry would be involved in of that nature, no,'' Paterno testified in a grand jury appearance that lasted only a few minutes. He added that a rumor ''may have been discussed in my presence, something else about somebody. I don't know. I don't remember, and I could not honestly say I heard a rumor.''
But emails published in the Freeh report suggest Paterno closely followed a 1998 police investigation of Sandusky that ended without charges. In an email captioned ''Jerry,'' Curley asked Schultz: ''Anything new in this department? The coach is anxious to know where it stands.''
Paterno, ''were he alive, he would probably be scrutinized right now, as we speak, by a grand jury,'' said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who represents a young man suing Sandusky, Penn State and Sandusky's charity over claims of sexual abuse. ''When he did give testimony, now revealed to have been dubious at best and false on its face, that is illegal perjury because it was given under oath. So he is exposed.''
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