Jerry Sandusky is an innocent man railroaded into prison by a remarkable combination of perjury, greed, and the cowardice of the Board of Trustees of that institute of “higher” learning, Penn State. Last week, I, along with more than sixty others, sent a letter to Penn State Trustees asking the present board to review the evidence of Sandusky’s innocence. Two blockheads pulled a parliamentary move to stop the other trustees from considering the solid proof we have to offer.
One of the signers of the letter is the distinguished and famous editor Sanford Thatcher, who was the director of the Penn State University Press for 20 years. He recently shared a letter with Frank Report that he sent to two Penn State Trustees – Jay Paterno and Matt McGloin. Perhaps they will take an interest in the truth at hand.
By Sanford Thatcher
I was made an honorary alumnus when I retired from Penn State in 2009 after twenty years as director of Penn State University Press, but that status does not come with the privilege of voting in the election of alumni trustees. I would have voted for you had that privilege been granted to me. (By the way, I grew up in Forty Fort and went to Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, both suburbs of Wilkes-Barre where my father chaired the History Department at Wilkes College, and my classmate at Princeton, Cosmo Iacavazzi was a star at Scranton Central and became an All-American fullback in college, leading the team to an undefeated season in 1964.)
Penn State is a great university, but that greatness was grievously compromised by what the University did to contribute to the prosecution and conviction of Jerry Sandusky. The moral panic that accusations against Sandusky set off both locally and nationally led to precipitous and rash actions by the board, under the glare of media, and allowed the NCAA to impose sanctions that its own bylaws did not permit it to levy, many of which were later reversed, such as the reduction in the number of scholarships that could be offered to football players.
The University’s offering of millions of dollars to men who would come forward to identify themselves as victims was the height of stupidity because, of course, there were plenty of “victims” to be found, and greedy lawyers to help them, when large sums of money were being offered without any material evidence they could provide of having been victims or any real proof of victimhood, just their testimony about suddenly and conveniently having recovered memories with the coaching and assistance of unscrupulous psychologists and police investigators who were all too happy to suggest what those memories might be like. The entire case against Sandusky was built on a house of cards, relying on repressed memory theory that had long since been discredited by the experts in rthe field.
The real victims here—besides those men who were convinced they had been abused when they hadn’t (compared with the plaintiffs who just wanted to cash in on the easy money being offered) —were, most notably Coach Joe Paterno, who was unceremoniously fired with no investigation having been conducted, and those people whose lives were forever cast into a dark shadow by the unfounded accusations—not just Sandusky, but Spanier, Curley, and Schultz, all honorable men and fellow administrators with whom I was privileged to serve.
President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno talk before the Iowa game, Oct. 8, 2011. In one month, the idiot board of trustees threw both innocent men under the bus.
The attempt by the board to provide ex post facto justification for its decisions through the report commissioned from Judge Louis Freeh only added insult to injury as its main claim was that a coverup was conducted to spare the football program from shame by association since a “culture of reverence” for the program was widespread in the University and State College community—as though Freeh could somehow read the minds of us employees and residents of the town. Did he not realize how ludicrous it was to accuse people like me of putting being a football fan above concern for abused children? At any rate, the flimsiness of the report was soon exposed by former US attorney general Richard Thornburgh, as noted here: https://onwardstate.com/2013/03/15/dick-thornburgh-releases-statement-on-freeh-and-paterno-reports/
Frank Parlato, an intrepid investigator of the truth about the Sandusky case, recently mailed a letter to the board signed by me and over 60 others who know a lot about the case as it has played out over the years. We agree with him that the board has at least a moral obligation to make a real effort at recovering the truth from the mountains of misinformation that have poisoned the public mind. Penn State can never be considered a great university again if its board continues to hide their heads in the sand and let the prevailing narrative remain unchallenged. Unfortunately, it appears from this report by Parlato that some members of the board are going out of their way to prevent the question from ever being confronted and placed on the board’s agenda.
I hope you and your two new fellow football alumni trustees will lead the way to counter this shortsighted strategy. Please share this letter with them. I hope all of you, if you have not yet read the definitive book on the Sandusky case, will inform yourselves and be better prepared to address the issues when they finally are addressed by the board: https://www.sunburypress.com/blogs/blog/mark-pendergrasts-the-most-hated-man-in-america-repeats-as-the-sunbury-press-bestseller-for-february
If there is one book for anyone who wants to understand what happened at the trial of Jerry Sandusky, it is Mark Pendergrast’s forensic masterpiece.
If you wish to be on our email list to get information and notice of new stories on the wrongful conviction of Jerry Sandusky, email me at FrankParlato@gmail.com.
