'Evil allowed to run wild' Ex-Penn State president guilty in Sandusky case
Depicted by prosecutors as a bureaucrat whose inaction allowed "evil" to run wild on innocent children, the former president of Penn State University was convicted Friday of keeping a lid on the scandal surrounding notorious child-abusing coach Jerry Sandusky.
A jury in Harrisburg, Pa. deliberated 13 hours before finding Graham Spanier guilty of one count of child endangerment. The charge stemmed from Spanier's handling of a complaint against Sandusky, a once-popular assistant football coach whose career at Penn State spanned three decades. Spanier was found not guilty of conspiracy and a second child endangerment count....
The trial centered on how Spanier and two other university leaders handled a complaint by a graduate assistant who said he reported seeing Sandusky sexually molesting a boy in a team shower in 2001. The administrators told Sandusky he could not bring children on to the campus any longer, but they did not report the matter to police or child welfare authorities.
Sandusky was not arrested until 2011 after an anonymous tip led prosecutors to investigate the shower incident. He was convicted the next year of sexually abusing 10 boys and is serving a decades-long prison sentence.
Four of the eight young men testifying at Sandusky’s trial said the abuse occurred after 2001.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/24/penn-state-graham-spanier-trial-jerry-sandusky/99595674/
Showing posts with label Graham Spanier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Graham Spanier. Show all posts
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Teen says she was forced to have sex with 1,000 men over 2 years, 2 Former Penn State Administrators Plead Guilty To Roles In Abuse Scandal
Teen says she was forced to have sex with 1,000 men over 2 years
Mar 12, 2017
PHILADELPHIA -- Lawyers in Pennsylvania say their client was sexually exploited at a motel for years, alleging the teen girl was a victim of human trafficking who was forced to have sex with more than 1,000 men.
"This child was forced into sex slavery, paid to do things with men double, triple, quadruple her age," attorney Nadeem Bezar told reporters.
The teen's lawyers are using Pennsylvania's human trafficking law to sue the motel where they say their client was sexually exploited, marking the first civil suit under the law since it was enacted in 2014, CBS Philadelphia reports.
Lawyers allege employees at the Roosevelt Inn in northeast Philadelphia knew that a 14-year-old girl was being held against her will for two years. She was forced to have sex with more than 1,000 men for as little as $50, they said.
"She is devastated by what happened to her. She's just trying to piece her life back together," said Bezar.
The girl, now 17, wants the hotel to pay for what happened to her. Under the 2014 human trafficking law, she's suing the motel's owners, the motel's management company and the manager himself. The lawsuit demands $50,000 in damages, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
According to the Inquirer, the girl managed to escape and reconnect with her family after two years at the motel. The Inquirer notes that those responsible for trafficking the teen were convicted and sentenced to prison. Her attorneys reportedly declined to identify her captors, fearing retaliation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philadelphia-teen-says-she-was-forced-to-have-sex-with-1000-men-over-2-years/
2 Former Penn State Administrators Plead Guilty To Roles In Abuse Scandal March 13, 2017 Colin Dwyer
Two former high-level Penn State administrators pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor charges of child endangerment, for their roles in covering up child sex abuse by disgraced assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Former Vice President Gary Schultz and former Athletic Director Tim Curley each took a plea bargain that — if accepted by the judge — will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. As part of the plea bargain, the felony charges they originally faced were reduced to misdemeanors.
As Penn Live notes, the pleas also open the possibility they may testify against former university President Graham Spanier, the only remaining defendant in the case. Jury selection begins next week for Spanier, who has been charged with a conspiracy felony and a child endangerment misdemeanor.
The charges against all three men pertain to how they handled the multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Sandusky, who in 2012 was convicted of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year span. "Prosecutors said Spanier, Curley and Schultz knew of complaints involving Sandusky showering with boys in 1998 and 2001," The Associated Press reported in 2012....
"This was not a mistake by these men, this was not an oversight," then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said in 2012, as we noted at the time. "It was not misjudgment on their part. This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth."....
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/13/519996345/2-former-penn-state-administrators-plead-guilty-to-roles-in-abuse-scandal
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Meet the Woman Who Exposed Jerry Sandusky
Meet the Woman Who Exposed Jerry Sandusky
She's Sara Ganim and she's just 24. In a Glamour exclusive, she tells how she broke the story of Penn State's sex-abuse scandal and changed college sports forever.
by Liz Brody
"Anything else going on?" Sara Ganim asked her source late one night in 2009. As the crime reporter for a small newspaper in State College, Pennsylvania, it was a question she always ended with. And this evening, to Ganim's surprise, the source replied, "Well, actually, a boy just came forward to the police and alleged sex crimes against Jerry Sandusky."....
Ganim, a Penn State grad and a football fan herself, knew her way around the university's online message boards. There she quickly found gossip about Sandusky getting too friendly with young boys. So she started asking around. "I'd say, 'Hey, have you heard anything strange about Jerry Sandusky?'" And though people knew about the rumors, Ganim says, "almost no one believed they were true."
For the next two years, Ganim tried to get real facts—"I just started knocking on doors," she says—and pursued the story aggressively after joining the staff of Harrisburg's The Patriot-News in January 2011.....
"Some people closed their doors in my face, and others definitely did not tell me the truth," she says. "But many were relieved—they were done keeping the story bottled up inside." What she uncovered was staggering: She identified two alleged victims and learned that Sandusky was under investigation by a grand jury for sexual abuse. (In Pennsylvania such proceedings are held in secret.) Ganim kept digging and, by this time last year, had enough evidence to write the first story exposing the grand jury hearing, as well as accusations that the former coach had molested at least one boy in the university's locker room.
Some readers savaged the paper for printing "gossip." But other media and sports reporters ignored the news, even as Ganim continued to report the story. "It felt like we were living in the Twilight Zone," says The Patriot-News' editor, David Newhouse. Adds Ganim, "Particularly with the local papers, I thought [that] was pretty irresponsible." It took a full seven months—after Sandusky was arrested and publicly charged with the sexual abuse of eight boys he met through his charity, The Second Mile—for national news media to pounce. The horrifying charges included repeated oral sex and sodomy; one victim testified that he screamed in vain from the Sandusky family basement, knowing the coach's wife was upstairs....
On November 8, based on Ganim's reporting, The Patriot-News published a front-page editorial calling for the resignations of Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, and its head coach of 45-plus years, Joe Paterno. The day after the editorial, the university forced out both men, and the campus erupted in student riots. It was only then that Ganim realized just how huge her story had become....
In one blistering article, she detailed how an incident witnessed by then grad student Mike McQueary had been watered down with every retelling—from "anal rape," as McQueary described it to Paterno, to "something of a sexual nature," as the coach retold it to the school vice president, to what Spanier eventually characterized as "conduct that made someone uncomfortable"—without ever being reported to police. (It later came out that Spanier and the board of trustees had known about the Sandusky investigation for months and done next to nothing.) Ganim's discerning coverage made sure Penn State and other schools started taking abuse allegations seriously; soon after, similar cases drew attention at Syracuse University and The Citadel.
http://www.glamour.com/inspired/magazine/2012/02/meet-the-woman-who-exposed-jerry-sandusky
She's Sara Ganim and she's just 24. In a Glamour exclusive, she tells how she broke the story of Penn State's sex-abuse scandal and changed college sports forever.
by Liz Brody
"Anything else going on?" Sara Ganim asked her source late one night in 2009. As the crime reporter for a small newspaper in State College, Pennsylvania, it was a question she always ended with. And this evening, to Ganim's surprise, the source replied, "Well, actually, a boy just came forward to the police and alleged sex crimes against Jerry Sandusky."....
Ganim, a Penn State grad and a football fan herself, knew her way around the university's online message boards. There she quickly found gossip about Sandusky getting too friendly with young boys. So she started asking around. "I'd say, 'Hey, have you heard anything strange about Jerry Sandusky?'" And though people knew about the rumors, Ganim says, "almost no one believed they were true."
For the next two years, Ganim tried to get real facts—"I just started knocking on doors," she says—and pursued the story aggressively after joining the staff of Harrisburg's The Patriot-News in January 2011.....
"Some people closed their doors in my face, and others definitely did not tell me the truth," she says. "But many were relieved—they were done keeping the story bottled up inside." What she uncovered was staggering: She identified two alleged victims and learned that Sandusky was under investigation by a grand jury for sexual abuse. (In Pennsylvania such proceedings are held in secret.) Ganim kept digging and, by this time last year, had enough evidence to write the first story exposing the grand jury hearing, as well as accusations that the former coach had molested at least one boy in the university's locker room.
Some readers savaged the paper for printing "gossip." But other media and sports reporters ignored the news, even as Ganim continued to report the story. "It felt like we were living in the Twilight Zone," says The Patriot-News' editor, David Newhouse. Adds Ganim, "Particularly with the local papers, I thought [that] was pretty irresponsible." It took a full seven months—after Sandusky was arrested and publicly charged with the sexual abuse of eight boys he met through his charity, The Second Mile—for national news media to pounce. The horrifying charges included repeated oral sex and sodomy; one victim testified that he screamed in vain from the Sandusky family basement, knowing the coach's wife was upstairs....
On November 8, based on Ganim's reporting, The Patriot-News published a front-page editorial calling for the resignations of Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, and its head coach of 45-plus years, Joe Paterno. The day after the editorial, the university forced out both men, and the campus erupted in student riots. It was only then that Ganim realized just how huge her story had become....
In one blistering article, she detailed how an incident witnessed by then grad student Mike McQueary had been watered down with every retelling—from "anal rape," as McQueary described it to Paterno, to "something of a sexual nature," as the coach retold it to the school vice president, to what Spanier eventually characterized as "conduct that made someone uncomfortable"—without ever being reported to police. (It later came out that Spanier and the board of trustees had known about the Sandusky investigation for months and done next to nothing.) Ganim's discerning coverage made sure Penn State and other schools started taking abuse allegations seriously; soon after, similar cases drew attention at Syracuse University and The Citadel.
http://www.glamour.com/inspired/magazine/2012/02/meet-the-woman-who-exposed-jerry-sandusky
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Penn State charges raise questions about Paterno's culpability, Jimmy Savile case may lead to inquiry against seven forces
Penn State charges raise questions about Paterno's culpability
Charges that three former university administrators covered up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky suggest former Coach Joe Paterno could have been charged had he lived, some say.
By Peter Hall, Morning Call
November 4, 2012
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The charges filed last week accusing three former Penn State administrators of engaging in a "conspiracy of silence" to cover up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky raise questions about whether legendary football Coach Joe Paterno could have been charged if he were still living.
Former university President Graham Spanier and the others face charges including perjury and endangering the welfare of children.
"To be fair and consistent, you have to read this as a posthumous indictment of Joe Paterno," said law professor Wes Oliver of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh....
Those who have watched the case said the grand jury presentment released Thursday paints Paterno as an active participant in the conspiracy.
"The reality is that he knew. He knew early on, and he chose to protect the image of the football program and to protect Penn State," said Jennifer Storm, a victims advocate who has worked with two of the young men Sandusky molested when they were boys.
But Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., said that without knowing everything that state prosecutors in the case know, it's not fair to conclude that there was probable cause to charge Paterno.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-paterno-20121104,0,5553402.story
Jimmy Savile case may lead to inquiry against seven forces
Calls for inspectorate to assess how abuse allegations were handled by police
Jamie Doward, Mark Townsend and Gemma O'Neill
The Observer, Saturday 3 November 2012
Several police forces could be investigated over their handling of sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile after the police watchdog confirmed that an inquiry was a possibility and a lawyer representing alleged victims said there were urgent questions to be answered.
Alan Collins, a solicitor at the law firm Pannone, who is representing five of Savile's alleged victims and has been approached by at least 20 others, said the case for the police to be investigated had become paramount. Collins said it should be the job of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the independent body set up to assess police forces, to investigate how and when officers had investigated Savile....
At least three forces – Surrey, Sussex and Jersey – are known to have been aware of allegations against Savile, but the true number is believed to be as high as seven.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/03/jimmy-savile-case-inquiry
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