At the close of Friday afternoon’s Penn State Board of Trustees meeting, trustee Al Lord took to the podium at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel and read a letter delivered to him from Sue Paterno earlier in the afternoon.
The letter came following newly stoked debate about what her late husband, former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, knew and when regarding alleged acts of child sexual abuse by former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
A single line from a court document from Penn State’s suit with its insurer, Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance (PMA), said that PMA had claimed that in 1976 a child allegedly told Paterno he had been molested by Sandusky. No other details or context were available. Sandusky was convicted in 2012 on 45 counts of child sexual abuse.
The alleged incident would have occurred a year before Sandusky was made defensive coordinator and founded his Second Mile charity for at-risk youth, where prosecutors in his 2012 trial said he found and groomed his victims.
With a single line raising a new media firestorm about Paterno, Sue Paterno asked that Penn State to open its records on the case.
The letter, addressed to the board, Chair Keith Masser and President Eric Barron stated:
Dear Chairman Masser, President Barron, and Members of the Board of Trustees,
As we learned yesterday the dark cloud of the Jerry Sandusky tragedy continues to hang over this institution. With one line in a court filing, the tidal wave of media coverage has been unleashed that once again claims there is definitive evidence that Joe Paterno and others participated in a decades-long cover-up. I am deeply saddened by this latest allegation because it follows exactly the pattern of four years ago.
We have also been notified by a media outlet of another decades-old allegation of abuse and cover-up. We told them that any such allegation is in total conflict with all the facts we know. I write to you today because I know we are all better than this. We cannot allow this situation to be ruled by allegations and speculation.
The seriousness of this matter demands that we all insist on facts and due process. My family and I have no knowledge of the allegation released yesterday. No party has shared any information with us, and yet it is now taken by many as a confirmed fact.
From the first day, Joe and I have called for the full record to be made public. I do not fear the facts, and I know everyone will be better served if the complete story is made available for all to review. My family, Penn State, the victims and everyone who hopes to prevent future Jerry Sanduskys have to come together to demand a more transparent and and complete process for reviewing allegations. To deny this right is to guarantee that the full truth will never be known.
I call on the Board of Trustees to open Penn State’s records, lift your objections to transparency, give everyone a chance to see the truth about what you know. I’m confident there is a way to do this while still protecting the rights of the victims. I also call on the NCAA to do the same, and anyone else who has information critical to this matter.
It is time to end this endless process of character assassination by accusation. In the spirit of our love for Penn State and our duty to the victims, let’s stop fighting about process and start fighting for the truth.
Sincerely
Sue Paterno
‘The harm visited on this university by random and out-of-context allegations is incalculable,’ Lubrano said. ‘The secrecy and confidentiality that the university sometimes demands only feeds suspicion and innuendo. As a fiduciary, I am troubled that this Board of Trustees appears to be once again unprepared. So I am asking, no, I am pleading with you, Chair Masser, to direct university counsel to release all the details related to this stale and highly suspect allegation so that all the stakeholders, but most importantly we the trustees of this university can evaluate and understand the context surrounding this claim.
‘We must correct course now. Mr. Chair, I am very confident that once you demand the release of this information we will see this allegation for what it is — an uncorroborated, baseless claim lacking in veracity.’
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