The family of the late coach Joe Paterno released reports Sunday morning in response to Louis Freeh’s findings on the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case in July, calling the Freeh Report “factually wrong, speculative and ‘fundamentally flawed.’ ”
In July, Freeh’s findings claimed Joe Paterno was one of four top officials at Penn State who didn’t do enough to stop Sandusky, who was found guilty on 45 counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. The reports from the Paterno family were released at 9 a.m. Sunday, and the three investigators involved in them — former United States Attorney General and Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh, retired FBI agent Jim Clemente and Paterno family lawyer Wick Sollers — spoke with ESPN’s Bob Ley on Outside the Lines.
On the air, Thornburgh said he was surprised there were so many shortcomings in Freeh’s report.
“There are three basic defects in the report as I see it,” Thornburgh said. “First of all, it’s incomplete, second of all it is full of inaccuracies, and thirdly it fails to reach the kind of conclusions that he or I insisted on in our investigation from our investigators. So I found much was overlooked, much was misrepresented in the report and the fact is it really isn’t deserving of being the kind of basis for action that’s insinuated here.”
Dr. Fred Berlin, the founder of Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic also released a report on the family’s website, but did not appear on “Outside the Lines.”
On the website, the family presented an overview of the reports, which featured key points of the investigator’s critique of Freeh’s findings. One of the points reads “each one of the Freeh report’s main observations about Joe Paterno is wrong: each is either contradicted or unsubstantiated by the evidence. The authors of the Freeh report chose not to present alternative, more plausible, conclusions regarding Joe Paterno’s role in the events involving Jerry Sandusky.”
It’s stated in the Paterno’s reports that the family of the late coach did not influence the scope of the Freeh report critique. And in the overview, it’s noted Freeh’s report was “uniformly biased” against Joe Paterno.
The overview also stated Sandusky was a “skillful manipulator,” which is something Clemente, a sex crime investigation expert, reiterated on Outside the Lines.
“[Sandusky] is hiding his behavior behind this outward persona of being a nice guy and an altruistic person,” Clemente said. “ Everybody believed he actually cared about children.”
Freeh responded Sunday morning in the form of a statement, and called the Paterno family’s reports “self-serving.”
Nine days after the release of the Freeh report, the NCAA hit Penn State with harsh sanctions including a $60 million fine and a four-year postseason ban for the school’s football team, based on what was found by Freeh.
The family’s reports can all be found at Paterno.com. An exclusive interview with Sue Paterno by Katie Couric will air on the “Katie” program Monday.