Top Penn State officials demonstrated little concern for the welfare of Jerry Sandusky's victims until after his arrest, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh found in his investigation of the case.
Freeh's 267-page report, released Thursday, singled out former university president Graham Spanier, vice president Gary Schultz, coach Joe Paterno and athletic director Tim Curley. Freeh, now a federal judge, was also highly critical of Penn State's board of trustees.
"The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims," Freeh wrote in his report.
"There was no 'attempt to investigate, to identify Victim 2, or to protect that child or any others from similar conduct except as related to preventing its re-occurrence on university property,'" Freeh wrote, quoting an earlier grand jury report.
In June, a jury found former assistant football coach Sandusky guilty of 45 out of 48 charges of child sex abuse. The university appointed Freeh as a special investigator in November 2011 to review the case.
Penn State's top administrators "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade," the report claims. "These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the university community and authorities. They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001."
The report also criticized school leaders for failing to notify authorities, after assistant football coach Mike McQueary reported seeing Sandusky with a victim in the locker room shower on Feb. 9, 2001. "They exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity," according to the report.
"These individuals, unchecked by the Board of Trustees that did not perform its oversight duties, empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to the university's facilities and affiliation with the university's prominent football program.
"Some coaches, administrators and football program staff members ignored the red flags of Sandusky’s behaviors, and no one warned the public about him," Freeh wrote.
The report goes on to state that Spanier failed in his duties as president of Penn State by not promptly telling the board of trustees about the 1998 and 2001 allegations against Sandusky. Freeh also claims the board failed to oversee Spanier and other top university officials by not inquiring about important university matters and "by not creating an environment where senior university officials felt accountable."
Penn State officials are currently reviewing the report.
"We want to ensure we are giving the report careful scrutiny and consideration before making any announcements or recommendations," the school said in a statement. "We are convening an internal team comprising the Board of Trustees, university administration and our legal counsel to begin analyzing the report and digesting Judge Freeh's findings."
School officials vowed to "take every action to ensure that events like these never happen again in our university community," reports Campus Safety Magazine.
Read the full report here.
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