by Ray Blehar
When reading something like the Freeh Report, it's easy to evaluate what's there. However, what sets an average analyst apart from a very good analyst is determining what's not there.....
The Freeh Report correctly reports several times that Gary Schultz, Tim Curley, Graham Spanier, and Joe Paterno did not report Sandusky to the authorities. In these reports, Freeh states that the authority to be contacted is the Department of Child Welfare.
So, what is missing?
Turn to Chapter 8: FEDERAL AND STATE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE REPORTING REQUIREMENTS, pages 110 and 111, and start reading. Freeh goes into great detail on the reporting requirements fo the Clery Act, but makes no mention of the Pennsylvania child abuse reporting statutes in those findings.
Please note that in the fifth finding, Freeh calls out Paterno, Curley, and McQueary by name as persons obligated to report under the Clery Act.
As you turn to page 111, you realize there are NO KEY FINDINGS that PSU violated the Pennsylvania child abuse reporting statute. Why would Freeh exclude that finding from the report, when his report repeatedly states that Penn State officials failed to report the incident to authorities? They are missing for a reason -- Freeh knows that Curley and Schultz did not violate the law that was in effect in 2002 (see paragraph 2, page 117). He also never adds the qualifier "as required by law" to any statement about PSU's failure to report the 2001 incident.
Want more proof that PSU was not required by law to report the abuse to DPW...
Chapter 8 is broken into five sections:
I: The Federal "Clery Act"
II: The Unversity's Failure To Implement the Clery Act
III: Pennsylvania Child Abuse Reporting Statutes
IV: Implications of The University's Failure to Report Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse
V: Improvements in Clery Act Compliance Since November 2011
Freeh's crafting of Chapter 8 is typical, set the grounds for reporting in one section, then cite the failures in the next, then use the final section to discuss any progress in improving. What is plainly obvious to anyone who reads this report is that section IV doesn't follow the pattern. It simply provides more details on who didn't report based on the Clery Act and makes NO STATEMENTS about anyone violating the PA statutes.
What Freeh does is pretty crafty - he makes an introductory statement that Curley and Schultz were charged with failure to report in Section III, but the SIC's conclusions about compliance with PA statutes are noticably absent in Section IV and instead they have been swapped out for the Clery Act to provide the illusion that what follows in IV is relevant to III, when it is not.
This report is full of holes. The PSU officials who accepted this report are grossly incompetent.
