Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn., Mark Wiedmer column

March 26--What price for innocence lost? What is a fair penalty for protecting the image of an institution over the heart and soul of an individual?

In other words, how hard should the sentencing judge come down on former Penn State president Graham Spanier? He was convicted Friday of one count of child endangerment for his handling of a child sex abuse complaint against retired Nittany Lions assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

By most accounts, Spanier was a highly respected administrator before the Sandusky child sex abuse scandal came to light. He'd won numerous national honors, had grown Penn State to an overall enrollment of 97,000 and earned the favor of NCAA president Mark Emmert, who came to see Spanier as one of those too-rare folks who believed athletic success should never compromise academic integrity.

And there is little or no evidence Spanier ever endangered the university's academic reputation to win football games under the late Joe Paterno, whose 409 career victories are the most in the history of the sport.

In fact, until the Sandusky scandal surfaced, Spanier seemed to be the poster president for getting this uneasy relationship between athletics and academics right, which is an incredibly difficult task.

But when it came to protecting innocent children from the monster who was Sandusky, Spanier couldn't have gotten it more wrong.

His decision, and his decision alone, to handle the Sandusky scandal internally rather than report it to law enforcement is one of the more egregious actions by a university president in American history. And given that, it would seem that some prison time would far better serve justice in this case than the possible probation Spanier could be given.

Or as Pennsylvania state prosecutor Laura Ditka told the jury during the trial: "They took a gamble (not telling the authorities). They weren't playing with dice. They were playing with kids."

It all started in 2001, when former Nittany Lions graduate assistant football coach Mike McQueary approached then-athletic director Tim Curley and then-school vice president Gary Schultz to tell them he'd seen Sandusky -- who had retired in 1999 -- sexually molesting a young boy in an athletic department shower.

Curley, Schultz and Spanier always have maintained McQueary never said the boy was being sexually abused. McCreary disagrees. Regardless, Curley and Schultz pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment charges a week ago. They also testified against Spanier.

An email exchange among the three administrators didn't exactly prove they were aware of the sexual abuse, but it showed they were more than willing to cover something up to protect the image of the school and its storied football program.

After the three originally agreed they would inform the state Department of Public Welfare, Spanier decided against it.

"The only downside for us," he informed them in the email, "is if the message isn't 'heard' and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it."

Trouble was, at least four victims who later came forward in Sandusky's trial were molested after Spanier's decision to remain quiet. The school eventually paid out more than $90 million in civil claims to more than 30 accusers, but that didn't return their innocence or lessen their trauma.

Instead, in the words of deputy attorney general Patrick Schulte, "evil in the form of Jerry Sandusky was allowed to run wild" for several more years.

Amazingly, Spanier was terrorized by a physically abusive father in his youth, so much so that in a 2014 New York Times article, he said: "I've had to have four operations to correct serious deformities inside my head from beatings my father gave me. They had to rebuild me from the inside out."

Now we know at least four of Sandusky's victims have had to rebuild themselves from the inside out because Spanier was more concerned with his university's reputation than its responsibility to protect those unable to protect themselves.

Regardless of how much we love our college sports and the images of the schools they serve, Spanier's conviction should be another stark reminder that protecting an individual is always more important than protecting an image.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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