Paterno ‘Didn’t Know How To Handle’ Abuse Allegations

The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins scored the first interview with Joe Paterno since he was fired by Penn State two months ago. The portrait Jenkins paints of the 85-year-old former coach many have accused of not doing enough after he first heard allegations that Jerry Sandusky was abusing children, is of a broken man, who is undergoing debilitating cancer treatment and confused about how his career ended so suddenly after more than six decades. Although he expresses regret for his actions, or at least for not doing more, Paterno also refused to talk badly about the school or about Sandusky. “I think we got to wait and see what happens,” he said. “The courts are taking care of it.”

Although at first Paterno was reluctant to talk to the press, he was so eager to defend his record to Jenkins that he continued with the interview while he was sick and bedridden.

In what is perhaps the most significant revelation in an interview that Deadspin calls “a five page waste of time,” Paterno said he “didn’t know which way to go” when Mike McQueary told him he had seen Sandusky in a shower with a young boy.

“He was very upset and I said why, and he was very reluctant to get into it,” Paterno said. “He told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do.”

In one of the most baffling moments of the interview, Paterno said that McQueary “didn’t want to get specific” and that was fine by him. “To be frank with you,” Paterno said, “ I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, off, rape and a man.” He reported what he had heard to his superiors but then left it at that, noting he did not really think it was appropriate to follow-up because he “did not want to be seen as trying to exert any influence for or against Sandusky,” writes Jenkins.