A consulting firm’s report offering new information about how Joe Paterno and Penn State senior officials responded to an allegation that Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a boy inside the football team’s showers could be made public as early as next week, several sources said Friday, and is expected to be tough on Paterno.
The report is expected to shed new light on administrators’ handling of the Sandusky allegations, and also raise questions about Paterno’s leadership of Penn State’s vaunted football program, according to several people with knowledge of the inquiry’s scope.
“Much of the focus will be on the culture of the football program, with findings that go back more than a decade,” said a Penn State official briefed on the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s going to be very tough on Joe (Paterno).”
The long-awaited report, compiled by Freeh Group International Solutions, the consulting firm led by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, is the culmination of an eight-month investigation that examined whether university policies and culture were contributing factors to a lack of reports and action about abuse that occurred on campus. Investigators interviewed more than 400 people, including Penn State administrators, faculty members, trustees and former coaches, players and staff from Penn State’s football team.
A batch of emails the Freeh Group uncovered — leaked in recent weeks to NBC and CNN and confirmed by ESPN — have raised fresh questions about Paterno’s handling of the allegation about an incident involving Sandusky and a young boy in the Penn State locker room showers in February 2001.
The emails shed new light on how former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz had dealt with the allegation made by former assistant football coach Mike McQueary about the alleged incident involving Sandusky and a young boy in the showers. They also raise questions about the handling of the matter by then-Penn State president Graham Spanier, who resigned last November after Sandusky’s arrest.
Curley and Schultz are charged with perjury and failure to report suspected abuse of a child. They have both pleaded not guilty; their next court date is scheduled for Wednesday.
In late February 2001, Curley and Schultz had intended to report McQueary’s allegation to child welfare authorities, according to emails. But Curley had changed his mind after a discussion with Paterno, saying in an email he preferred to talk directly with Sandusky. The leaked email implies that Paterno might have played a larger role in those discussions than he had described to the grand jury or in statements and an interview prior to his death.
Spanier, then the president of Penn State who resigned last November, agreed not to go to the authorities, but he said in one of the emails that university administrators could be “vulnerable” for failing to report it, sources say. Spanier called the approach a “humane and reasonable way to proceed.”
