Your points are your points. Internet courage is strong in this one :thumb:

There were lots and lots and lots of Germans who did not support the nazis, did not stand idly by, and FOUGHT against them, to the point of death.

You are right, yes. That shit happens where people do nothing. Those people are guilty pieces of weak shit. I pray that if I'm ever in that situation, that I am not a weak piece of shit. Because, if I do nothing, that's EXACTLY what I would be.

Just because you would be too scared to do the right thing does not mean that most people would not automatically step in to stop child molestation.

It's not internet tough guy syndrome in a situation like this. It is just a reality. You just so happen to be in the minority, and to keep from looking weak and pitiful you have to spin it as if it were some difficult decision that not just anybody can make on the spot.

Sorry, but the spin job just ain't workin' for ya'.

And again, I dont think you can call them weak without understanding repercussions. What do you say about doing unspeakable things if you fear for your life? How would you act if a general told you to massacre a village? What if you caught a mob boss doing something like this.
I think to the school bus where no kid stood up as bullies harassed that old woman. I think of football fans watching an asshole pelt a young kid with soda and call a six year old girl a whore.

This wasnt just some guy. This is a guy people in power were pulling strings to protect. And aagain, we speak of inaction, but he did speak up to three guys high up the ladder. And thete is nothing to suggesy the raping continued after mcqueary was there.

You're also assuming Sandusky wouldn't kill you with his bare hands and make you dissappear. Feel free to describe your entire altercation with the pedo, blow for blow. :p

...irrelevant.

Ah, okay. I see by this that you're just trolling.

Precisely.

:facepalm: JFC......

I think this whole debate was best described by the Team America dicks, pussies and assholes speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=HDPQumbccCY

Whistleblowing is an enormous problem in the military. And some witness some major atrocities. Why would they be afraid? Are we calling them cowards? If a private caught a captain raping a villager eould you say its an easy decision to beat the shit out of him?

Or do we acknowledge that there are some people so powerful they are hard to take down. Do we acknowledge there are some "codes" that are difficult to break? To work in athletics, there is an unwritten code that you have a high tolerance for letting shit slide. And there is an unwritten code that you don't jeopardize the team unless your coach says so.

WTF man? No, we don't acknowledge any of those ridiculous things. Let's acknowledge that several young boys were forcibly ****ed in the ass by someone they trusted. That's really all that's necessary. We don't need any stories you think are relevant to assess this individual situation. Our society must protect our children from predatory monsters. That's more important than any of that other shit you listed. Lots of people failed to do that in this case, and they needed to be held responsible. It's that simple. Whistleblowing issues in other areas don't fit into the conversation.

Unwritten codes don't apply when kids are being hurt in ways that damage them for life. It's baffling that you can't see the difference.

This idea of McQueary being scared to bring down a superior seems moot in light of his testimony.

He fully admits that he should have done more the night he saw Sandusky in the shower. He says he saw them in the shower through the reflection in a mirror, slammed his locker shut so they would hear it, and then looked in the shower and saw they had stopped. Then he left. But he feels he put a stop to it.

He told Paterno. Then he told the Penn State higher-ups, one of whom was in charge of the campus police, which McQueary says he took as having reported what he saw to the authorities.

Then... nothing. Everyone can argue about what they would have done had they walked in on something like the shower situation, but like Paterno, where McQueary really fails is after the fact. Personally, if I reported that I saw someone ****ing a kid, and that guy was still out on the street, I think that after a week... or a month... or six months... or a year... I might have followed-up on it with the people I told. Or I might have told someone else.

McQueary didn't do anything for 10 years, except apparently walk out of the room anytime Sandusky came in. The defense lawyer pressed him on why he didn't do anything more. McQueary didn't talk about being afraid. He rejected the notion that he was worried about the university firing him.

What he did say is that he loved Penn State. Even though Sandusky was still around the program, McQueary loved his job too much to leave in protest. So if you wanted to attach a specific reason to his failure to follow up, it was probably more out of his reverence for the great JoePa and the mighty Nittany Lions, not out of fear of "breaking codes" or any of that. He had his dream job and didn't want to rock the boat too much.

Then when he was asked about his departure from Penn State and his whistleblower lawsuit, he said "I didn't do anything wrong to lose that job".

Perhaps he intended his answer to apply simply to his job duties, and wasn't commenting on the larger Sandusky issue. But if you're in a position with some degree of authority at a university, you witness a sexual assault right there on school property, and you don't do everything you can to get to get it sorted out, then you've failed your station in my view. No parent is going to say "Sure, I trust Mike McQueary to do everything possible to protect my son or daughter" after this, so how would he justify his continued employment at a school of all places? Because he can read defenses?

Point being, he didn't come off like a guy who wanted to do more, but was just too scared to act.

It's a shame in some respects because it is true that McQueary did more than everyone else around Penn State. If the people in charge had done something after he told them, McQueary would be talked about like one of the heroes in this story. On the other hand, if he'd done absolutely nothing, little would have changed and McQueary wouldn't be attached to the story at all. He'd still be at Penn State with his reputation fully intact.

But it's a good lesson to learn. There are no A's for effort, no shiny gold star for being the one who tries the hardest. McQueary did something, but he didn't do enough. He surely knew he didn't do enough. Yet that knowledge didn't spur him into any further action. And who knows how many kids Sandusky went onto rape after that?

Well said.

This is about as good of an account as I've seen, and thanks for the thought that went into it. Like I said, he's not a hero. But again, I stand by my example. If you're a private witnessing a captain raping a girl, it's a little more complicated to just beat the shit out of a ranking officer. I think they'd have to think about reporting it, knowing the negative backlash that would soon follow for a guy who dared to do the right thing. Like I said, in the military, whistle blowing is a very, very, very big problem. And it's not because they're cowards. It's not because they're terrible people. It's because a system with such a power imbalance makes it very difficult for a person with no power to do much of anything without repercussion. Couple that with McQueary having a split second to make a decision in that locker room, likely in shock and stunned by what he saw. He made a bad decision in a panic.

He should have done more. But research shows that over 90% of whistleblowers, I believe, do not come forward. He told a legendary coach and powerful guy that his best friend and his ranking "officer" was a pedophile. He told the VP, the AD, the campus police. He even went on the stand and took down the University, even if that ultimately doomed his career at Penn State. It wasn't nearly enough. It could have and should have been more. I just think people are talking unrealistically when they try to dream up scenarios of how they would have acted in the same situation. Again, there is droves of psychological evidence to suggest that most people in this spur-of-the-moment situation would likely NOT make a particularly good decision.