Real Law Breakers in the Penn State Scandal

The mother of Victim 1 (as reported in the Grand Jury Report involving the Sandusky case) spoke with the media behind a distorted voice cover about her son.  She discovered his behavior going from great kid to awful.  He asked strange questions about finding perverts on the internet.  He asked her to lie to Sandusky if he called.  CNN reported:

The mother of the boy said she first got clues that something was wrong when her son’s behavior changed.

“He went from like being a perfect 1,2,3, magic child to being ornery and being arrogant and mean,” she said. But when her son asked her to lie to Sandusky when he called the house, she became suspicious.

“Then, out of the blue, one day he was sitting at the computer and wanted to look up ‘sex weirdos.’ He asked me ‘What’s the website you get on to look them up?’ And I told him it was Megan’s Law. And he said, ‘Well, how do I type it in?’ So, I gave him the web address and he typed it into the computer and I said, ‘Who are you looking for?’ and he said ‘Jerry.’

That is a rather damning remark.  The mother continued:

And he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just want to see if he’s on there.’ I said, ‘Well, why would he be on there? Do you have something you want to tell me?’ and he was like, ‘No.'”

Asked what was going on with Sandusky, the boy answered, “Sometimes he just acts weird. So I just wanted to see if he was on there, that’s all.'”

From CNN:

The mother said that a few days afterward, she learned that Sandusky had been taking her son out of school without her permission, so she called school officials and asked them to talk to her son “and just ask him how he feels.”

Soon after, the principal called her back in tears and invited the boy’s mother to meet with her and the school guidance counselor, the mother said.

“They told me that my son had said some things about that there was a problem with Jerry,” she said. “He just said that he thought he needed to tell somebody or it would get worse.”

The mother said that, at that point, she asked the school officials to call the police. They said no, she said.

“They said I needed to think about the ramifications of what would happen if I did that,” she said.

Asked what they meant, the mother said, “I don’t know. I guess, I’m assuming what we’re going through right now.”

Asked what she would like to see, she said, “I want Jerry Sandusky to go to jail for the rest of his life.”

School officials k-12 are required by Child Protection Laws to report all suspected cases of child abuse which includes sexual abuse.  Ramifications?  They don’t get to make that judgement call.  Victim 1’s school administrators and counselors did break the law.  They failed to report suspected child abuse based on the kid’s remarks.  Hopefully, that is where the heads start rolling. 

Rightly or wrongly, those child protection laws don’t apply to the Penn State people who did lose their jobs.  They deal with adults, not children, for a living.  Until such time that it is federal law that all adults have to report suspected cases of child abuse, the Penn State folks really didn’t break the law.

(other than Jerry)

The eyes are all on Penn State.  Those same eyes ought to be looking at the k-12 school that let victim 1 and his family down–big time!