Moreover, after publication of the grand jury report, Paterno took pains to assert: "It was obvious that the witness [McQueary] was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report."
On November 11, 2011, Sara Ganim further sharpened the apparent contradiction separating the testimony of McQueary and Paterno, when she reported: "Paterno said this week that he had stopped the conversation before it got too graphic. Instead, he told McQueary he would need to speak with his superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and with Schultz." [Harrisburg Patriot-News] (When I questioned her about the source behind her reporting, Ms. Ganim responded by saying it came from a public statement made by Scott Paterno, Joe's son.)
An even stronger reason to believe Joe Paterno can be found on page ten of the grand jury report. It reads: "Schultz did not ask the graduate assistant [McQueary] for specifics. No one ever did."
But, if we believe Paterno and the grand jury report on this point, we must then ask ourselves, "How do we reconcile such information with that part of the grand jury report that claims McQueary "went to Paterno's home and told him what he saw?'" If Paterno did stop McQueary's conversation "before it got too graphic," how could McQueary have "told him what he saw?"
That very question suggests that we don't really know what McQueary actually told Paterno in 2002. Moreover, given the fact that McQueary didn't testify to the grand jury until December 2010 and Paterno didn't testify until early 2011, one can be almost absolute certain that both McQueary and Paterno have creatively reconstructed what they saw and heard almost nine years earlier.
In Chapter 4 of his book, The Birth of Christianity, John Dominic Crossan attempted to answer the question: "Does Memory Remember?" Crossan examined the scholarly literature devoted to memory, including a very persuasive study conducted at Emory University, where psychology students were asked to complete a questionnaire about the Challenger spacecraft explosion (in January 1986), a mere day after it exploded. When representatives from Emory asked those same students the same questions three years later, they found their answers to be significantly different. These students had "constructed" different memories during those three years without realizing it -- leading Crossan to conclude: "Memory is as much or more creative construction as accurate recollection."
Like the stark fact of the Challenger explosion, it's unlikely that McQueary would creatively construct an anal rape, but surrounding details might have succumbed to creative construction. The same holds true, perhaps more so, for Paterno, who never had his mind riveted by the anal rape.
The possibility of creative construction -- as well as the possibility of intentional deception -- must be kept in mind, not only when examining the conflicting testimony of McQueary and Paterno, but also when examining the testimony of Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz (who was in charge of campus police). They also testified in 2011 about an event that occurred in 2002.
Nevertheless, regardless of the "specifics" related in that conversation between McQueary and Paterno, they proved to be sufficient to persuade Paterno that allegations of sexual misbehavior by Sandusky were being made by McQueary and that such allegations needed to be reported up the administrative hierarchy.
Thus, according to the grand jury report, Paterno testified that he "called Tim Curley"Penn State Athletic Director and Paterno's immediate superior, to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the graduate assistant had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to the boy." (p. 7)
By reporting to Curley, who, administratively speaking, was a direct report to President Spanier, Paterno fulfilled the requirements of Pennsylvania's mandatory reporting law (23 Pa. Cons. Stat"6311), which requires that reports go to "the person in charge of the institution." Those people who rushed to castigate Paterno for not doing more might want to reconsider, given that the same law "does not require more than one report from any such institution, school, facility or agency."
According to Wendy Murphy -- a leading victim's rights advocate and nationally recognized television legal analyst -- in Pennsylvania "the law is explicit that employees need not report directly to outside authorities and can satisfy their reporting obligations by reporting only to a supervisor." But she adds, in "chain of command" states, employees who report directly to outside law enforcement and child protection service agencies face employment sanctions, including termination, for reporting outside the chain of command." [Wendy J. Murphy: "Prosecute Penn State for "chain of command' cover-up," The Patriot Ledger Nov. 14, 2011] Although it is hard to believe that Penn State might sanction someone for reporting outside the chain of command, the very same law that requires reporting also contains provisions for redress in the event an institution sanctions someone for issuing an unauthorized report.
Moreover, Wes Oliver, an associate professor at Widener School of Law in Harrisburg, has noted the unintended consequences that could occur if every report was filed directly with law enforcement.
"Law enforcement may get bombarded with false (information) from people who have axes to grind, want to make trouble and are seeking whistle blower status," said Oliver.
According to the most recent 2010 Child Abuse report by the state Department of Public Welfare, which investigates child abuse reports, 3,656 of the 24,615 reports investigated qualified as child abuse. ChildLine, the state's child abuse hotline, received 121,868 calls in total. [Caleb Taylor, the Pocono Record16 November 2011]
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