Child Abuse

Penn State removed the statue of former coach Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium on Sunday in advance of NCAA sanctions that could cripple the football program for years. The NCAA, a methodical and procedural organization not known for tipping its investigative hand, has scheduled a Monday morning news conference at which, it stated, it will levy "corrective and punitive measures" against the school because of the child sex abuse scandal that led to the conviction of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Fittingly, the most chilling part of Louis J. Freeh's lengthy condemnation of Penn State University and its legendary football coach Joe Paterno involves two men more fearful of a football program than a child molester. According to the 267-page internal report released Thursday, in the fall of 2000, two janitors spotted former longtime Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky behaving inappropriately with a young boy in the campus showers. The men said they didn't to go to police because they were afraid that Paterno would order them fired.

Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball. There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the "hard" ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the "soft" ones ( psychology, sociology)

Re "County wins neglect case over car seat," July 6 I am appalled at the misguided ruling of the California Supreme Court to allow social workers to place children in foster care after a car accident in which a sibling died as a result of not being restrained by a car seat or seat belt. The measures taken by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services have nothing to do with child welfare or protection. This is state-sanctioned child abuse with life-altering consequences.

Jerry Sandusky will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. With Sandusky behind bars, advocates say, the focus should shift to victims - not only those who told their stories and faced Sandusky in the Centre County Courthouse, but of sexual abuse on a broader scale. “We can't let the national focus that this case brought upon child sexual abuse [fade] after these cameras are turned off,” Pennsylvania Atty. Gen. Linda Kelly said at a televised news conference. “We have to continue to … shine a bright light in those dark, dark places.” Kelly spoke late Friday night, not long after the jury in Bellefonte, Pa., convicted the former Penn State assistant football coach of 45 charges related to sexual assault - including grooming and abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period, in locker room showers, the basement of his home and hotel rooms on the road.

Jurors weighing the fate of former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky listened to fiery closing arguments and began deliberations Thursday, while outside their hearing one of Sandusky's sons said he too had been abused by his father. Almost 81/2 hours after deliberations began, jurors asked to rehear testimony about an alleged shower encounter between Sandusky and a boy of 10 or 12. Jurors wanted to revisit the testimony of Mike McQueary, who said he saw a sex act, and of McQueary's friend Dr. Jonathan Dranov, who described a less graphic version that he said McQueary told him in 2001.

The jury in the Jerry Sandusky case has reached a verdict that will be announced Friday evening, court officials announced. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated about 20 hours over two days before reaching the verdict on the charges against the former Penn State University football coach. Sandusky, 68, is charged with 48 counts of abusing 10 boys over 15 years. If convicted on all counts, he could face hundreds of years in prison. Earlier, Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's lawyer, told reporters that he would “die of a heart attack” if his client were acquitted on all counts.

Re "A reluctant catalyst," Obituary, June 18 The tragedy of Rodney King's life began long before his 1991 beating exposed the disgrace of police brutality. His book "The Riot Within" describes matter of factly, with the same confused gentleness we saw in his "can we all get along" speech, the routine and brutal beatings he suffered as a child at the hands of his abusive alcoholic father. Alas, no one was there to videotape those beatings. It seems poignant that King died onFather's Day, a holiday likely to have aroused conflicted feelings, including pain and rage.

Three people were convicted last week for their roles in a high-profile child torture case that revealed breakdowns in Los Angeles County's troubled child protective services agency. A 5-year-old boy, known only as Johnny, was rescued from a dark closet in San Bernardino County in 2009. Much of his body had been burned by a glue gun and hot spoons. He had been starved and sodomized, taunted and punched, forced to eat soap and crouch motionless in corners. Martin Roland Morales, 35, and Juan Carlos Santos-Herrera, 22, were found guilty of torture, child abuse and sodomizing a child under 10 years of age. Crystal Rodriguez, 35, was convicted of child endangerment after failing to protect a 12-year-old victim from the perpetrators, according to the prosecutor, David Foy. Morales could be sentenced to more than 78 years in prison.