The horror of the good ignoring evil

The Penn State pedophile scandal reads like the jacket of a horror novel.

"State College seemed like an all-American '50s college town, proper and proud. But something wasn't quite right at Penn State. A town seduced by its own sense of history and perfection? Or something else?"

As we all know now, "something else" lurked undeterred for years on campus and within the community.

By day, Penn State bustled with the normal goings on of a major university with a storied football program. When the showers were turned on at the Lasch Football Building, it signaled nothing more than the end of a hard practice. But late at night, the showers became the lair of the village predator.

Jerry Sandusky, the longtime assistant coach, used the school's facilities and the god-like reputation of Joe Paterno's football program to lure victims into his arms. So says the grand jury transcript on Sandusky.

When you read it, two things jump out:

First, a lot of people knew about Sandusky. Second, news reports using words like "inappropriate" contact with minors and sexual "assault" don't begin to describe the alleged offenses.

So be warned: What follows are specific findings from the grand jury report, not served up gratuitously, but to illustrate a community that ignored evil.

Through Sandusky's charity, The Second Mile, a fifth-grade boy referred to in the report as "Victim #1" received special attention. He was one of many over the years. Victim #1 was treated to Penn State football games and eventually was invited to spend the night in the coach's basement.

During those sleepovers, Sandusky "had a practice of coming into the basement room ... getting onto the bed and rolling under the boy." Lying face to face, "Sandusky would run his arms up and down the boy's back and 'crack' it. The back-cracking became a ritual" and led to blowing on the boy's bare stomach, kissing and oral sex.

Joe Miller, a wrestling coach at a local school, returned to his gym late one night to "retrieve something he had forgotten" and found Sandusky and the boy alone in the weight room "lying on their sides, in physical contact, face to face on a mat."

Sandusky jumped up and said: "Hey coach, we're just working on wrestling moves."

The wrestling coach said nothing about the odd encounter. But after the boy's mother complained about Sandusky's behavior, he was banned from the high school. The boy, now in his late teens, told the grand jury that over his formative years Sandusky sexually assaulted him more than 20 times.

Janitor Jim Calhoun arrived at Penn State to clean the showers in the football facility. He found Sandusky pinning a young boy against the wall "performing oral sex on the boy."

A second janitor, Ronald Petrosky, also heard water running in the assistant coaches' shower room but could "only see two pairs of feet." Sandusky and a boy about 12 years old left hand in hand.

Calhoun approached Petrosky and began crying. He said he saw the man holding the little boy "up against the wall and licking him."

All the janitors on the shift that night discussed the crime, but no report was made.

On another occasion, wide receivers coach Mike McQueary returned to the football facilities to put a pair of shoes in his locker. He surprised Sandusky, who naked in the shower having anal sex with a 10-year-old boy. McQueary says he made sure the assault stopped before leaving but left the two in the building. That night he talked with his father about what he saw. They reported the assault to Paterno the next morning.

Paterno then called Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley to report that Sandusky was caught in the "showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy." Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz then met with McQueary and said they "would look into it."

A couple of weeks later they told McQueary that Sandusky's keys to the locker room were taken away and that the incident had been reported to The Second Mile.

These predatory events spanned more than a decade with coaches, school officials, police and prosecutors aware of the "Sandusky problem."

All in all, the grand jury documented eight victims. At least 10 more have subsequently come forward.

That's a flat-out tragedy.

But the ongoing horror of this story will remain how a community of good people saw evil and did nothing.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.