How key figures from Jerry Sandusky’s crimes view Joe Paterno’s legacy, 10 years after his downfall

Somewhat over 10 years in the past, the general public realized of the horrific sexual-abuse crimes dedicated by former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. The fallout was swift and sweeping.

Along with Sandusky’s conviction and imprisonment, three high-ranking Penn State directors obtained jail time, and the winningest coach in main school soccer historical past, Joe Paterno, was abruptly fired.

Paterno died of lung most cancers in January 2012, 74 days after Penn State fired him for his position in Sandusky’s crimes. He was 85. A decade later, the beautiful and sudden finish to Paterno’s 61-year teaching profession continues to divide the Penn State group and past, and plenty of of these concerned, together with Sandusky’s victims, are nonetheless reckoning with what he did and what college officers did after that.

ESPN not too long ago interviewed key surviving figures from essentially the most wrenching interval in Penn State’s historical past to see how they wish to rethink Paterno’s legacy a decade later.

Aaron Fisher

Initially recognized in court docket paperwork as “Sufferer 1,” Aaron Fisher was the primary survivor of Sandusky’s sexual abuse to come back ahead, first to his psychologist, then to Pennsylvania State Police.

Fisher’s determination as a 15-year-old to talk with detectives about Sandusky’s serial sexual abuse launched a police investigation that spanned greater than three years and led to felony costs that will land Sandusky in jail for 30 to 60 years — successfully a life sentence.

Trying again, Fisher says his major concern in coming ahead was that he “would not be believed.”

In October 2012, Fisher, alongside along with his psychologist, Michael Gillum, launched a ebook, “Silent No Extra,” which chronicles Fisher’s experiences assembly Sandusky at a summer season camp for The Second Mile when Fisher was in fourth grade. Sandusky used The Second Mile, the charity he based in 1977 to assist at-risk youth, to satisfy and groom his victims.

Sandusky took Fisher to Penn State video games, to a Philadelphia Eagles sport and finally invited Fisher over to his house for sleepovers on dozens of events, the place Sandusky then molested him in a basement bed room.

“We might play a few video games. He had a pool desk, dartboards. However we might get round for mattress … and he would lay in mattress with me, after which it simply progressively received worse,” Fisher instructed ESPN.

When Fisher first reported Sandusky’s sexual abuse, Sandusky was serving as a volunteer assistant soccer coach at Fisher’s highschool in Mill Corridor, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles northeast of State Faculty. When Sandusky was dismissed as an assistant, phrase filtered via the small group that it was due to Fisher’s report.

The backlash was rapid. Fisher stated he obtained threatening notes and that he and his mom’s vehicles had been “keyed.” He says his concern for his security solely grew on the November 2011 night that Joe Paterno was fired by Penn State’s board of trustees. “First phrases out of my mouth had been, ‘Why did he get fired? They’ll kill me.'”

Fisher says his lowest level got here when he tried suicide when he was 15. “If the closet bar was excessive sufficient, I would not be right here. My toes touched the bottom. That is how shut I received,” Fisher stated, describing an try to hold himself in his closet.

Now 28, Fisher is a father of two kids and lives in central Pennsylvania. He is unemployed however spends time pursuing his hobbies of repairing and customizing vehicles and off-roading in his Jeep. Penn State has paid greater than $100 million to a minimum of three dozen individuals who say they had been abused by Sandusky. Fisher stated he needs to maintain Sandusky up to now.

“There’s at all times the thought that me being sexually abused by Sandusky did actually occur, however that is me attempting to maneuver ahead. I do not consider [Sandusky] anymore,” he stated. “There’s individuals on the market who’re attempting to maneuver on with their lives and never be put again in that downstairs basement once more. I do know that is not a single place I wish to go, not ever once more.”

Graham Spanier

Former Penn State president Graham Spanier pulled up his pant leg throughout an October 2021 interview with ESPN to disclose a monitoring gadget strapped to his left ankle. On the time he remained below house confinement.

“It is slightly degrading,” Spanier stated. “Once I went to have this placed on on the probation and parole workplace, I stated, ‘Is that this actually mandatory?'”

The Penn State board of trustees compelled Spanier to resign on Nov. 9, 2011, the identical day the board fired Paterno. Like Paterno, Spanier’s position in Sandusky’s crimes concerned his dealing with of an incident witnessed by former Penn State quarterback and graduate assistant coach Mike McQueary.

McQueary first instructed state investigators in 2010 he went to the locker room contained in the Lasch Soccer Constructing on Penn State’s campus after hours in 2001, heard what gave the impression of sexual sounds coming from the bathe, regarded in and noticed a unadorned boy, round 10 years outdated, being raped by Jerry Sandusky. He additionally instructed investigators that he introduced the bathe incident to Paterno’s consideration the following day. Paterno notified then-athletic director Tim Curley however didn’t name police.

McQueary would later e mail state prosecutors in an effort to make clear what he had witnessed. “I can’t say 1000 % certain that it was sodomy,” McQueary wrote. However he described the incident as “sexual and/or means over the road,” particulars he did not waver from over the course of his testimony in a number of completely different felony and civil court docket proceedings.

Emails made public throughout the college’s inside investigation present that Spanier, former vp of finance and enterprise Gary Schultz and Curley mentioned reporting the bathe incident witnessed by McQueary to the correct authorities however finally determined to not report it in any respect.

Within the emails, Curley wrote to Schultz and Spanier: “After giving it extra thought and speaking it over with Joe … we wish to help the person [Sandusky] … to get [him] skilled assist.”

Spanier replied: “The one draw back for us is that if the message is not heard and acted upon … then we turn into susceptible for not having reported it.”

That incident, which was initially made public in a November 2011 grand jury presentment, turned the point of interest of the general public’s anger and led to outcry over the way in which it was dealt with by Penn State’s leaders.

Spanier was initially indicted in November 2012 on a number of costs, together with failure to report suspected baby abuse. He was convicted in 2017 of 1 misdemeanor depend of kid endangerment and sentenced to serve two months in jail.

By way of a collection of appeals, Spanier, who had coronary heart surgical procedure in 2019 and has fought prostate most cancers, averted serving his jail sentence till June 2021. He spent 58 days within the Middle County Correctional Facility, a roughly 10-minute drive from the college the place he served as president from 1995 to 2011. Spanier, 73, accomplished serving his interval of house confinement in early October. Spanier maintains his innocence, saying he was by no means instructed Sandusky was seen doing something of a sexual nature with a minor boy within the bathe.

Penn State has eliminated most imagery of Spanier and Paterno from its campus: In July 2012, the varsity took down Paterno’s statue from exterior Beaver Stadium. Spanier’s portrait in Outdated Principal, the executive workplace of Penn State, was eliminated as nicely.

“That’s rewriting historical past. You possibly can’t write us out of Penn State historical past,” Spanier stated. “They even went via the difficulty of re-landscaping the realm the place [the statue] was in order that no person can inform the place it was or that it was ever there. That is simply improper.”

In reflecting on Paterno’s legacy, Spanier calls the previous coach “a humanitarian,” including, “He was a lot greater than a soccer coach. Frankly, the one motive Joe continued to educate till he was 85 was due to what he may do for the college,” together with donating to the Faculty of Liberal Arts and to the libraries.

Spanier, who continues to reside in State Faculty, is retired from his work on the college, although he has maintained his president emeritus standing and all tutorial credentials with Penn State.

“It is a large reduction to have that behind me,” he stated in April. “I’ll proceed to do no matter I can to advance the college. I nonetheless love Penn State.”

Gary Schultz

A self-described Penn State “lifer,” Gary Schultz moved to State Faculty in 1967 as a pupil and by no means left. After a 38-year profession within the college’s administrative ranks, he turned vp of finance and enterprise.

“I used to be proud to be affiliated with Penn State,” Schultz, 72, instructed ESPN in an August 2021 interview.

In March 2017, Schultz and Curley pleaded responsible to misdemeanor baby endangerment associated to their dealing with of the bathe incident reported by McQueary in 2001, so prosecutors agreed to drop three felony costs of kid endangerment and conspiracy.

Schultz and Curley surrendered to authorities on the Middle County Correctional Facility in July 2017. Curley, who didn’t reply to a number of interview requests from ESPN, was sentenced to 3 months. Schultz served a two-month jail sentence in a cell he shared with Curley.

Like Spanier, Schultz additionally maintains his innocence, saying Penn State officers “had no report of something that sounded unlawful.” Nonetheless, Schultz described himself as “a belt and suspender type of man” and, trying again, instructed ESPN, “my largest remorse is that we did not flip it in for Division of Welfare to research it. That is what we must always have executed.”

He says the board of trustees “just about threw Joe Paterno and the remainder of us below the bus on the time.”

“There are some trustees that I feel are very supportive of Joe and doing what they will to appropriate a story that folks had purchased into at the moment. However they’re the minority and so they’re typically not in management positions. So, I feel the vast majority of the board, and significantly the management, shouldn’t be able to reverse course.”

Schultz now splits time between a house in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, simply exterior of State Faculty, and a house in Myrtle Seaside, South Carolina. To this present day, he stated, relationships he as soon as took as a right have been impacted by the lingering fallout.

“There have been really some individuals who I labored with that had been ordered to not have any contact with me,” he stated. “It was awkward. If I simply occurred to stumble upon a few of these individuals on the road, you already know, they might type of be realizing that they needed to keep away from me. They’d say ‘hello’ and simply scurry away. Clearly it hurts.”

Jay Paterno

Of Paterno’s 5 kids, Jay Paterno, a former Penn State assistant coach, has turn into essentially the most recognizable public face of the household and maybe essentially the most frequent defender of his father’s legacy.

Whereas by no means charged with a criminal offense and with prosecutors saying they didn’t discover proof that he took half in any effort to hide Sandusky’s baby sexual abuse, Joe Paterno didn’t escape the reckoning that got here within the months and years that adopted his dismissal. In July 2012, former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was employed by Penn State to conduct an impartial investigation into Sandusky, launched his findings in a 267-page report.

“Our most saddening and sobering discovering is the entire disregard for the protection and welfare of Sandusky’s baby victims by essentially the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh stated at a information convention on the day his report was launched. “Mr. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley repeatedly hid important information referring to Sandusky’s baby abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, Penn State group and the general public at massive.”

Jay Paterno factors to the truth that prosecutors “stated there was no try to hide, no conspiracy,” he instructed ESPN in an August 2021 interview.

“It is simple to talk towards the lifeless. It is very tough to talk for the lifeless,” Paterno stated. “To imagine that [my father] would throw 61 years {of professional} integrity away for one thing like this, it defies all perception.”

Regardless of Joe Paterno’s firing and the general public condemnation that adopted, the Paterno household has remained an integral a part of the Penn State group. Jay Paterno has been a member of the Penn State board of trustees for almost 5 years. His older sister, Mary Kay Hort, is an administrator within the college’s Faculty of Liberal Arts, and Sue Paterno, 82, is an lively fundraiser for the Penn State pupil meals financial institution and quite a few different causes.

Jay Paterno additionally highlights the generations of gamers who had been impacted by his father’s teachings.

“His legacy would be the bedrock of the values that had been true, the integrity with which he lived his life … actually begins along with his household. Then the gamers he coached. … On the finish of the day, he took a transparent conscience with him.”

Relating to Joe Paterno’s statue, in an announcement to ESPN, a Penn State spokesperson stated the varsity has “no plans for extra honors or a reinstallation of the statue.” The 7-foot, 900-pound bronze likeness of the coach stays saved in an undisclosed location.

Jerry Sandusky

Jerry Sandusky, 78, is an inmate on the State Correctional Institute at Laurel Highlands in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, a low-security geriatric facility for male inmates roughly 100 miles southwest of State Faculty. In an interview with ESPN, he maintained his innocence.

Eight males testified at Sandusky’s June 2012 trial that he sexually molested them as minors, and prosecutors finally introduced proof referring to 10 victims, resulting in Sandusky’s conviction on 45 of 48 counts of kid sexual abuse.

On 4 separate events, essentially the most not too long ago in January, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court docket has denied Sandusky’s enchantment for a brand new trial. In November 2019, Sandusky’s 30- to 60-year jail sentence was upheld.

In early April, Sandusky filed his newest enchantment, this time in federal court docket, arguing that he obtained ineffective counsel. He will not be eligible for parole till he’s 98.