I just spent the last hour looking over Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services website. There is a great deal of information relating to the reporting of child abuse, which is why universities designate specific individuals to serve as the point of contact for filing reports. Joe Paterno’s point of contact was his boss, Athletic Director Timothy Curley.

According to the grand jury, Joe received the eye witness report from Graduate Assistant, Mike McQueary, on a Saturday and reported it to Curley the following morning. The grand jury had no problem whatsoever with Joe acting in a timely manner.

The law mandates that Curley was to have reported the abuse immediately to the police and/or Child Protective Services. As we know, Curley was arrested for failing to do so, even though that particular responsibility is part of his job description, and he was presumably trained in the laws relating to his obligations.

Joe was supposedly fired for failing to follow up on the reported abuse. But, was that a realistic expectation?  If Joe noticed Sandusky continuing to enjoy his professor emeritus privileges on campus could he have contacted Child Protective Services to follow up? Absolutely not!

Child Protective Services functions as an independent entity within the social services system. They are afforded that status for one reason – confidentiality. By law, Child Protective Services workers are prohibited from discussing cases with anyone outside of their immediate circle of supervisors, coworkers, the police and the district attorney’s office.

To find out if there was any flexibility to this mandate, I contacted the former director of a Pennsylvania social services agency. She told me that even in her role as Director she was never able to get any information from Child Protective Services once the referral was made. Any CPS worker who divulges information on an open or closed case would not only be fired, but also arrested and prosecuted.

In other words, if Joe was fired for failing to follow up with Child Protective Services, or with the police to discuss a child abuse case, then he was fired for failing to do the impossible.

The way the system was supposed to work was that Curley was mandated by law to report the abuse. Then Child Protective Services and the police were to conduct an investigation, and hopefully find enough evidence to make an arrest. There is no specific timetable for how long an investigation will take before an arrest is made or the case is closed. If Joe confronted Sandusky after filing his report with Curley, he could have been cited for interfering with a police investigation. Such a confrontation would have tipped the predator that he was being watched.

The Child Protective Services laws are written this way to encourage witnesses to come forward without having to worry about reprisals from the abusers. In effect, it is a team effort. The reporter of abuse performs a specific function, then is cut out of the loop entirely. Joe did his job by immediately reporting the abuse to the designated liaison. It was completely unrealistic for the board of trustees to expect Joe to assume that his boss would commit a felony by failing to pass the report on to the police or CPS.

Once the grand jury report was released to the media, and they learned that Joe had knowledge of the abuse, they went into their usual sensationalist mode to milk the story for all it was worth. The fact that Joe did all that the law would allow him to do was never mentioned. It would not have bolstered TV ratings, sold newspapers, or generated Internet hits.

The media could have used this case as a way of informing the public on how abuse cases are designed to work, and in the process, may have encouraged some victims to come forward and seek justice. Instead we are reminded of just how low the media will go to find the sensational slant. If a good man is sacrificed in the process, so be it.

How has Joe acted throughout this ordeal? As expected. His focus is on the victims and not himself. When the board of trustees fired him, he never attempted to take the focus off of them to plead his case. I’m proud to be a Penn State alumni, and privileged to have enjoyed the benefit of Joe’s hard work on behalf of the university. It’s a shame that the board of trustees did what was popular instead of what was right.