Seriously though. First we had "riots" where people used the shooting of a man to run wild, trash their communities and steal a bunch of shit. Now people are "rioting" because a football coach covered for his child-molesting buddy and was rightly fired. I'm just speechless really and almost sympathetic towards those who go on shooting rampages. A large percentage of today's youth fucking sucks.
I don't know why it is that you believe that Joe Paterno covered up for Jerry Sandusky in any way whatsoever. Did you not read the pdf link you posted at the end of your original post?
Joe Paterno reported to his immediate supervisor, the athletic director at Penn State, Tim Curley, the very next day what the graduate assistant told him that he had witnessed Jerry Sandusky doing to the child in the locker room. Then Tim Curley and Gary Shultz met with the graduate student directly about ten days later to find out first hand what it was that he saw.
I think that the protestors wonder why Joe Paterno is being fired when he reported the information which he heard second hand from the graduate student immediately to his boss, who reported it to the University President, Graham Spanier, along with letting him know what steps he had already taken to deal with it. I think that the person who was the one with the responsibility to report the abuse was "the person in charge of the school or institution" which was not Joe Paterno.
Covering was a wrong word. I was outraged that people could be so stupid. He failed to ensure that his report actually did something though. It's not like he was reporting some kid stealing football equipment, he was reporting a colleague abusing a child. Most people in his position surely would question why Sandusky was not charged, arrested or even fired at the time.
He's not the person who witnessed the abuse, though. Once he told his boss what he saw, the boss and another man in his chain of command interviewed the graduate student and Joe Paterno was not even at this meeting. He wasn't really in a position to second guess his boss. Jerry Sandusky was not an employee of the university anymore, he had already retired. That's what "emeritus" means.
I think that what Jerry Sanduskey did to those boys is reprehensible and I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison for it, but I don't think that it's fair to blame Joe Paterno for what Jerry Sandusky did. He fulfilled his legal obligation to report the abuse.
Also one can question why he didn't go directly to the police, instead of just reporting it to his superior.
If I told you that I had seen someone (you thought) you knew behaving inappropriately with a child, would you go to the police to make a report yourself or would you suggest that the eyewitness do so? Hearsay evidence is generally inadmissible and this was not something that he witnessed himself.
Furthermore you have to ask yourself what you would have done if you personally witnessed someone raping a ten year old child anally? Would you have quietly backed out of the room and told someone about it the next day or would you have yelled at the perpetrator to stop hurting that child, called 911, then taken the child to the hospital?
