Joe Paterno et le scandale de Penn state

Joe Paterno est une institution du sport collégial aux États-Unis. Le récent scandale impliquant son ami et assistant Jerry Sandusky (qui aurait agressé sexuellement des enfants) risque de faire pâlir son étoile.

"What would you do?
A young man tells you he just witnessed an older man molesting a boy in a shower. The boy appeared to be 10 years old.
What would you do?
There are a hundred other aspects to this Penn State story -- the legend and many good deeds of Joe Paterno, his tense relationship with his nominal "superiors," his longtime friendship with alleged child molester Jerry Sandusky, and the game of telephone that unfolded in State College after the incident. But don't let that obscure the real issue here, the only one that matters. There was an eyewitness to an unspeakable crime. Penn State knew it. And Penn State didn't do nearly enough about it.
The legal case is still unfolding. But Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said on Monday that the inaction of Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and senior vice president Gary Schultz "likely allowed a child predator to continue to victimize children for many, many years."
Kelly also said there is a difference between legal guilt and moral guilt.
We don't yet know who is legally guilty. But several prominent employees at the state university are morally guilty. And one of them is Joe Paterno.
*****
Today, Penn State looks precisely like the Catholic Church looked for so many years. There were accusations of pedophilia. The allegations were so horrific that they threatened to undermine the reputation of the institution. The people in charge should have brought the allegations to light. But they were more worried about how the institution would look than the values it is supposed to uphold.
Jerry Sandusky was evidently living a lie, but there were all sorts of little lies that covered up the big one. Paterno told himself -- still tells himself, apparently -- that as long as he reported the incident to Curley, he had done enough. Administrators apparently decided if Sandusky was no longer allowed to bring children on campus, they had done enough.
Think about that. If Sandusky did something bad enough that you don't want him bringing kids onto campus, why wouldn't you call the police? Why wouldn't you track down the victim, find his family, see how they want to deal with this?
How can you stay quiet when Sandusky worked with children every day -- and had them live in his home -- when you don't trust him enough to allow him to bring children onto your campus?
Penn State took that simple question -- "What would you do?" -- and covered it with so many layers of nonsense that nobody could see the question anymore."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/michael_rosenberg/11/07/pennst.scandal/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t12_a2&hpt=hp_c2