silvanthalas
Well-Known Member
And when you consider what's going on at PSU, not nearly enough people have this instinct.
This lawyer thinks JoePa acted correctly both morally and ethically
- Thread starter storminspank
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And when you consider what's going on at PSU, not nearly enough people have this instinct.
blkngldFRO
Well-Known Member
Young Man, what precise point are you trying to draw with your posts in this thread? It sounds strangely like a defense of McQuery's inaction.
I started to write a response to this, but decided to delete it. This is not an argument that any of us should really waste our time on. We all agree they were wrong and handled it badly.
Instead let us all take our time and if you have children, or grandchildren, talk to them right away about what to do. Talk to them and you let them know what predators will try to do and what they need to do if it happens! In the cub scouts the first thing you do with your 6 year old is go over scenarios like this.
blkngldFRO
Well-Known Member
You do know that bullying dose cause people to kill them selfs right? They are not exactly the same, but I would like to think that a loss of life do to bullying would be just as tragic. So ask yourself, if you say you would without a doubt had done something, would you stop someone from being bullied?
tm3308
Well-Known Member
Playing the Good Sumaritan is not as easy as protecting something/someone of your own. When you have no stakes, the shock of what you're seeing can override your instinct to react. When it's your own family, you ignore that shock.
That doesn't excuse his NEVER going to the police, but I won't condemn him for his inaction in that one moment. He does deserve to be condemned for having never gone to the police, even after the initial shock faded.
Young Man, what precise point are you trying to draw with your posts in this thread? It sounds strangely like a defense of McQuery's inaction.
I'm somewhat defending his inaction in that moment when he saw what was happening. By no means did he make the right choice, but I have no idea if I would freeze in that situation or not. I'd like to believe I'd do the right thing on the spot. We all would like to believe that of ourselves. But I've never been faced with anything like that before.
His never going to the police, however, is completely indefensible.
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VintageHawkeye
Guest
I would and have. What's your point?
FalseMirage
Well-Known Member
Same here, including getting arrested in a Denver supermarket for stopping a cretin from beating his own kid.
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VintageHawkeye
Guest
McQuery is a pathetic, weak chickensh!t who did that child (and all the other victims) a life-changing disservice by not intervening first and then immediately dialing 911 once the kid was out of harm's way.
This goes for McQuery's father, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, the janitors, the janitors' supervisor, and everyone else that had knowledge of Sandusky's rapist ways.
There really is NO other conclusion or alternate ending here.
This goes for McQuery's father, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, the janitors, the janitors' supervisor, and everyone else that had knowledge of Sandusky's rapist ways.
There really is NO other conclusion or alternate ending here.
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VintageHawkeye
Guest
*applause*, pal. I would have been first in line to post your bail.
Igothawked
Well-Known Member
Same here. I have even went so far as to take a kid who was bullying a kid, at a local high school football game, to his parents. Where his parents tried to start an argument with me saying he wasn't bullying him and they were just "horsing around."
Not that it is the same situation. But if you have children, especially boys, and you saw something like this happen, you know how you would react.
Igothawked
Well-Known Member
Vint you are 100% correct. Could not agree more. Any child that was abused after this incident, can directly blame these individuals for not putting a stop to this when they should have. Every single one of them served as an enabler for future crimes Sandusky committed.
And they will most likely prove this point in civil court with a lot of lawsuits.
FalseMirage
Well-Known Member
Thanks Vin. That's what happened st the time, other people st the supermarket bailed me out, made statements and eventually the charges were dropped.
FalseMirage
Well-Known Member
Plenty of lawsuits to follow. The number of victims that have come forward was up to 20 last I heard. And the DA said more charges likely.
And when you consider what's going on at PSU, not nearly enough people have this instinct.
Thank you, that is the exact point that I and many others (tm3308 most recently) have been making that you have been misconstruing as defense of Paterno/McQueary/etc. and been arguing vehemently against for some time now.
While the acts of McQueary/Paterno are acts of cowardice and evil, it is a mistake to cast McQueary/Paterno themselves as cowardly or evil. Doing so is a way to convince ourselves that they are different from us and that we could never stoop to such depths. However, this would obscure the fact that we all have the potential to commit cowardly acts. Ignoring this potential is dangerous.
If you convince yourself that you are entirely good and free of reproach, what happens when circumstances result in you actually committing a reproachable act? In your mind you think you are good, thus you must rationalize that your act was also good, or at least justifiable. This prevents you from assessing the act itself, rather you will simply search for a way to make sense of the act within your construct of the perfectly good you.
This thinking probably contributes to the type of negligence we are seeing in this case. A person sees something that shouldn't be taking place. He runs away and doesn't stop it. Now how can he tell someone about it? If he tells someone how awful it was and that he ran away, this does not fit within his construct of a perfectly good person. So when he tells people what happens, he hems and haws. Maybe it was this, maybe it was that. At no point can he explain exactly what happened and that he ran away because that will shatter his construct of who he is as a person.
This could very well be the reason that he does not ultimately do the right thing even though he had 9 years worth of opportunity. If he were able to analyze the act separate from his construct of himself as a perfect individual he would be much more likely to do the right thing.
p.s. - I lied when I said I was out. I am weak and cannot turn away, even though I want to.
Igothawked
Well-Known Member
No offense to you CP, but I find this all to be psycho babble BS. Try to get into their mindset, think what he was thinking, blah blah blah.
Its pure and simple, you do something or you don't. You choose not to and other people (Children in this situation) suffer gravely because of your inaction.
Spineless, gutless, scum is what these people displayed themselves to be.
How do you explain the fact that dozens of people had opportunities to stop this, and none of them did? Logically, I only see two choices:
- Many people have the potential to commit cowardly acts, and our inability to come to grips with and correct those cowardly acts is compromised by the fact that we think only spineless, gutless scum do those sorts of things, and we are not spineless, gutless scum.
- Only spineless, gutless scum commit such acts, and PSU just happened to have the perfect storm of dozens of spineless, gutless scum being involved with this situation, with not 1 decent human being in the bunch.
silvanthalas
Well-Known Member
Well, the first step is admitting it, so I'll give you that.
That said, the lack of said instinct doesn't cover Paterno and McQueary in this case. The police were NEVER called. There's NO excuse for that, regardless of one's instinct, of whether one is a coward at the time of witnessing such a crime.
There was nothing to prevent McQueary or anybody else from calling police after the fact. They simply chose not to, and it lead to who knows how many more victims.
Yes, that makes them cowardly and evil.
Most of us have probably done some bad things in our lives that we are not proud of. I know I have. With that said, no matter how you try to spin it, a person that does nothing to stop or report a 10 year old being raped by an adult is a piece of garbage. As for the rest of them, they were covering for the program, to keep the legacy and image in place and they are all garbage too. I'm sure there were people in the situation that felt this was wrong, but were too scared to come forward. They are cowards. Spin it however you want, but rape of children and covering it up is not defensible. Please stop trying.
tm3308
Well-Known Member
Well, the first step is admitting it, so I'll give you that.
That said, the lack of said instinct doesn't cover Paterno and McQueary in this case. The police were NEVER called. There's NO excuse for that, regardless of one's instinct, of whether one is a coward at the time of witnessing such a crime.
There was nothing to prevent McQueary or anybody else from calling police after the fact. They simply chose not to, and it lead to who knows how many more victims.
Yes, that makes them cowardly and evil.
This part I agree with. No excuse for never going to the police. Not confronting Sandusky/calling 911 on the spot because of the shock value is mildly understandable. But to have never gone to the cops in 9 years IS cowardly/spineless.
I am frustrated by the fact that so many people are having such difficulty understanding that nothing that I have written has been in defense of the acts, and nothing that I have written has been in the defense of the individuals. In addition, so many people refuse to believe that normal people can do bad things when the evidence is overwhelming that this is most certainly the case. I am not sure if the problem lies with comprehension skills or if it goes back to the psychological construct we all have of ourselves as good individuals. Regardless, I am definitely done trying to convince anyone.
In closing, if this negligence truly was part of a conspiratorial plot to "protect the program," it is the most despicable failing in the history of college athletics. The hundreds of millions that PSU will pay in damages will never be enough, and everyone involved should spend long years in jail.
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VintageHawkeye
Guest
Here's where I differ from you: you are separating the two inactions - I am not.
And I don't believe they should be separated, for any of these accomplices. Same guys in the same sequence repeating the same mistakes...possibly deliberately or with cold calculation based on self/job preservation.
I believe there is clear intent in the sequence; you apparently see random action/inaction.
