How many of you have failed to live up to your standards?

I'm pretty sure I have done everything on your list multiple times. I do not consider myself a moral person...but the only thing that would stop me from reporting a child rapist  to the police immediatly would be me not wanting to catch a murder rap. 

A big mistake is not wearing a condom with the random skank you picked up at the bar. Joepa not making sure Sandusky was brought to justice is just plain evil. 11 year old kids were being raped. Why do people keep trying to defend the indefenceable

OP-  The difference is when I fail, and probably when most people on this board fail, little kids don't get molested. 

 

 

any bad thing you could do in life is forgivable or excusable. This is not one of those things.

I've never been told of a child being raped in the very building my office resides in & done absolutely nothing about it.

If a man 30 years younger were accused of the exact same thing as JoePa, absolutely no one on this board would be defending him.  

There's something about accusing an old man of a terrible crime that makes us uncomfortable.  I get that.  But if the story we've been told is true, there is just no defense here. 

 

Simply put, Paterno made a big mistake.  If he asks for forgiveness, should it be granted?  Yes.  But part of making mistakes is paying the consequences for them.  If you make a mistake at work, you have to correct it. If you steal from a store, you have to return the goods and serve the punishment.

Paterno made a huge mistake.  Which means the punishment should be equally as large.

We all make mistakes.  But when we make mistakes, the right thing to do is to take on responsibility for them, deal with the consequences, and make ourselves better people.  Paterno is no different.

People say that he let it go on for a long time, but it's not like he saw it with his own eyes happening over and over again as a constant reminder.  He went to people above him who I am sure he thought would handle the situation properly.  I'm not saying that's enough, he should have done more and didn't and he himself admits that, but the idea that he gladly let it happen goes to far.

I think the deal is that we as humans try our hardest to rationalize things, make them black and white and nothing in between.  We thought Joe Pa was a perfect saint, a hero of sorts, and now he's simply a villian in the eyes of many.  In reality he isn't either of those things.  We often make mistakes that we regret later.  Most of us are lucky enough to never have to be put in the situation Joe Pa was in and very few of us ever have so much riding on the line.  I'm not condoning how Joe Pa handled it, but this wasn't something that he saw day after day and continued to cover up.  In fact, he didn't cover it up, he told people he thought he should.  That isn't the real issue.  The real issue is that he didn't tell the people he should have.  Probably in part to save face, probably in part not to tarnish his program that he built.  There is most likely selfishness in this.  But Joe Pa is not Sandusky.  Joe Pa is not a saint or a devil.  Nor is he Hitler or Mother Teresa. He is somewhere in between in the grey.

This is simply an incredibly sad situation.  Joe Pa has probably done more for his institution than anyone in their profession.  He and his wife have helped countless numbers of special needs kids.  He has been a father and grandfather figure to more players than just about anybody in history, and for the most part has been a supurb role model and taught many of these boys to be men.  Joe Pa has done so much good, much, much more than most in his position or any position for that matter, and I don't believe that  part of his legacy should be lost.  He deserves both on his record, in his legacy.  He deserves to be remembered for what he really is, a great ambassador for the game, a person who has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and a person that made a terrible crucial mistake in this regard.  We wish everything, people included, could be rationalized and catergorized as good and evil, but they just aren't.  This is just a really sad situation, and there really is no simple answer to it all.

but 2 things:

1) how much of my (or anyone's) inaction lead to multiple children being raped?

2) WTF did joepa allow sandusky (notice my lack of capitalization?) to still bring kids around the program, as recently as 5years ago?

Given the above, his record was all a waste and his legacy should be forgotten.

"Now here is the detail that, among all the details in the Grand Jury’s extensive depiction of the morally depraved behavior of Sandusky, Curley, Schultz, Paterno, PSU president Graham Spanier, and McQueary, is perhaps the most shocking: Five years after this, in the spring of 2007, Sandusky was attending PSU football practices with his latest rape victim: a 12-year-old boy who he had met through a Second Mile camp conducted at PSU, and who he was in the process of, among other things, orally sodomizing."

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/11/the-mystery-of-cowardice

 

The incredible demands on football coaches these days is the reason I don't want to condemn JoePa completely.  Look at the insane hours that our coaches have put into the program.  I'm sure almost everyone here has read Three and Out at this point and realizes the huge amounts of stress to win games and the multitude of demands on a head coach.  Was it the right thing to do to pass it up the chain and get back to work?  Clearly the answer is no, though that is easier to see in hindsight.  But is it as wrong as everyone is making it out to be?  Did JoePa actively condone what was going on by not calling the police or was he just trying to get back to his extremely demanding job?

I tend to be pretty lenient on people, because I know everyone is human, and there is so much more that goes into a decision than just the straight facts you read about or see.  It's easy to judge from the future what actions were right or wrong, but in the present it can be much harder.

I have failed to live up to my standards, many times.  To err is human.  Regardless, I never screwed up to the degree that Penn State and Joepa did in these alleged crimes.

I don't understand how you can possibly equate people's normal everyday shortcomings with this.  It boggles my mind.

Listening to them discuss this on BTN right now.  To their credit DiNardo and Martin refuse to get dragged into discussing this in a football context and insist on returning the discussion to the victims.

DiNardo is adamant on this and he is right - Paterno should not be on that field Saturday.

Will I be negged and banned if I respond with "fuck off?"

How dare you humanize the de-humanizers!?! But seriously we all have shades of selfishness that we'd never expect that come out when our own futures are at stake. God help us. This life isn't worth it unless we live for others first.

I fail to live up to my own standards, most every minute of every day. I regret and am saddened by my failure. As, I believe, is Joe Paterno.

Joe failed, his God's standards, his own standards, and society's standards. As a result, the consequence is he will lose his job, and his reputation. He is being punished, and rightly so. The lives of the boys who were sodomized will never be the same. Joe could have done something, and failed miserably.

I do, however, believe in forgiveness, even for Joe Paterno, especially for Joe. The nature of true forgiveness is to be forgiven even though you don't deserve it, and can't earn it.  I suspect the truth is, Joe is judging and condemning himself, more than any of us can. Everyone needs compassion, including Joe Paterno.

I hope that for as many years as Joe has left, he will use them to make a difference as an advocate on behalf of children who have been abused. I hope that each of us who are deeply saddened will remember this when we have the opportunity to speak up and act, regardless of the cost to ourselves.

Pastor Martin Niemoller, a famous German anti-Nazi theolgian, said the following about the response of Germans during World War II:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then the came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

May God help each of us to boldly and courageously speak out for those who have no one to speak out for them.

I hope this isn't rambling. Maybe we need to look at this from a different perspective. I am a registered nurse who has worked in pediatrics and also volunteered for several years with a family abuse program working with kids who were the victims of abuse (not saying that I am an expert, but just that I have experience with this). Here is my question? Has anyone on the board ever been in the situation where you needed to report to the authorities that someone you know is a child molester? I ask this because everyone on this board knows or has known someone who was a child molester. Have you ever even wondered about someone that you know? Unfortunately, it is common that when someone is found to have had inappropriate contact with a child, there are a lot of people who say, "I can't believe it. He would never do that." However, there are also usually those who had suspicions but never told anyone. I had a patient who's father was torturing him because he was upset about the child's mother's new boyfriend. I listened as the kids that I worked with told awful tales of abuse, pausing between sentences to ask normal kid questions. It was heartbreaking. But i will tell you this, many times family members would tell us after the fact that they had suspicions of abuse, but they were either afraid to tell the authorities, or they just hadn't. Their minds told them that it couldn't be true. You can bet your ass, however, that once we found out, we did. I will not be as hard on McQueery as others are. He witnessed something that I assure you, will never leave him. Yes, he first went to his father, then went and reported it to Joe Paterno. That was not easy to do. I'm telling from experience, it is more common than not that people don't report right away or sometimes don't report at all. I guarantee you he wanted to stop people on the street and tell them. He probably wanted to go straight to the police. It just isn't always that easy. He did what he did. I know that he wishes he could do things differently, but it is too late for that now. The fact is that he reported it and it went nowhere. They failed the child and they failed him. People say he should have followed up, but he probably was not ready to fully accept what he witnessed (to be clear, i am in no way equating witnessing sexual abuse with being the victim of sexual abuse). I know that we would like to say what we would do in that situation, but it is not up to you. Your mind and your body react how they react. All of my prayers and my sympathy go to the victims. The fact is, we all need to learn from this. If you suspect abuse, you have to act. If that action is to pay more attention to what's going on, then that is what you need to do. Talk to you kids. Talk to their teachers. Talk to their coaches. Talk to them. Pay attention. Someone could have stopped this, and people are very judgemental with regard to what THEY at PSU should have done.  What would you do? I hope you never have to be faced with that decision. 

The moral and just take responsibilty for their actions and accept the consiquences. We all make mistakes, but the better people own up to them. Those that lie and deceive deserve the punishment they receive. I am thankful I had a mom and dad teach me what was wrong and and what was right. It appears that most people did not have that.

I fail my own standards all too often. The difference is that when I fail my own standards, youngs boys are not anally raped or forced to perform oral sex on an adult "man." This is not about Joe Paterno, its about the boys who have been taken advantage of by an entire organization of grown men who were supposed to look out for their best interests. 

But to try and equate cheating on a spouse, or lying to someone, etc to covering up the sexual abuse of children is laughable.  This is simply not something you can try and explain away through a simple moral lapse.  You don't get a pass when it comes to things like this.  You cover something like this up, you are done.  Period.  There isn't a moral gray area here, everyone needs to stop acting like there is.

One time I started an insensitive thread during the PSU scandal