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Monday, November 21, 2011

Former FBI director to guide Penn State sex abuse inquiry/ Penn State Scandal: Bullying of Alleged Victim Prompts Paterno to Speak Out

(CNN) -- Former FBI Director Louis Freeh will lead an independent inquiry for Penn State University into the school's response to child sex abuse allegations, trustee Kenneth Frazier said Monday.
"No one -- no one -- is above scrutiny, including every member of the administration of the university, every member of our board of trustees, and every employee of the university," said Frazier, who was appointed to chair the special investigative committee into the university's response to allegations involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
A grand jury reported this month that university officials allegedly knew of allegations of misconduct on Sandusky's part, but failed to fully act on them.
Freeh, who will serve as special investigative counsel, said he extracted pledges of support and non-interference from university officials before taking on the job.
"This assurance is the main condition of my engagement," he said.
He said will appoint a team of former FBI agents and former federal prosecutors from his law firm to assist. Results of the investigation will be released to trustees and the public at about the same time, he said.
It's unclear how effective Freeh will be, said CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
"Louis Freeh is an honorable person, but the question is whether he will have the tools to do a thorough investigation." Toobin said.
With police, the university and even Sandusky's former charity, The Second Mile, conducting their own investigations, it's unclear whether witnesses will want to repeat their stories over and over again, he said.
At the heart of the scandal are accusations that Sandusky, the retired defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team, sexually abused a boy at the university football complex, and that law enforcement officials were not notified.
Yes! Good! Excellent!! Get and keep the FBI on this case! Why, because-->
The boy who first came forward to accuse former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky of sexual assault has been harassed so intensely that he had to leave high school, prompting ousted coach Joe Paterno to speak out against bullying.
The mother of the alleged victim, who set off the investigation that has rocked the world of college sports and led to 40 counts of child sexual assault against Sandusky, told ABC News that students at her son's high school blame him for triggering the sex abuse scandal that led to the firing of Paterno, the beloved head coach who oversaw the university's Nittany Lions football team for 46 years.
Speaking exclusively with "Good Morning America," the attorney representing Paterno said that the former coach denounces bullying, and called for respect in the name of the school.
"Coach Paterno strongly condemns harassment or bullying of any kind, and he asks anyone who truly cares about Penn State to conduct themselves honorably and with respect for others," attorney J. Sedgwick Sollers told ABC News.
Paterno had previously called for a prayer for the victims of abuse in the wake of the scandal breaking. He hasn't spoken publically since his ouster from the school and is reportedly battling lung cancer.
Psychologist Mike Gillum has been counseling the unnamed young man, who is referred to as Victim 1 in the Sandusky case grand jury report, for the past three years while the case was being investigated. He said that scorn and bullying can be a major concern for victims of abuse.
"It's very scary," Gillum told "GMA" this morning when discussing the state of mind of someone who's come forward after being victimized for years.
"You wonder what kind of push-back or what kind of reaction and how far that reaction might go in terms of people in the community. Will people threaten you? How hostile will things become?" he said.
Victim 1, who according to his testimony was 11 or 12 years old when he was first sexually abused by the 67-year-old former defensive coach, has been accused of changing his story as the case evolved. Sandusky's defense attorney has already publically said he's going to go after the credibility of the boy's story based on the fact that his statements escalated.
But Gillum says that victims of abuse often take time to reveal the full details of what happened.
"The level of humiliation, the level of insight into how deviant what's occurred is, means that they're not going to reveal that until they really feel comfortable," he said. "And that may take months, that might take a year or two."

Unfortunately, this only shows what kind of 'Big Business' College Football has become. It has all too often come down to 'The Sacred Win-- and Especially WINS' and those dreaded  loses over and above mere right and mere wrong. Let every one see and hear the character of  people  who live in Pennsylvania!!!  Please, people, please remember that football is only a game.

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