Last week, Penn State reached settlement agreements with seven men who were sexually abused by the school’s former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was convicted last June on 45 counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. Penn State has reportedly set aside $60 million to settle claims related to Sandusky’s abuse.
I am pleased to see that Sandusky’s victims are receiving compensation from Penn State, but no amount of money can fully make up for years of incompetence and malfeasance at Penn State. Penn State provided Sandusky with a platform, authority, power and, most importantly, access to young children that enabled him to groom and then sexually abuse numerous young boys. Worse yet, leaders at Penn State failed to act when confronted with overwhelming evidence that Sandusky was a predatory pedophile. This failure to act led to the abuse of countless innocent young boys.
The Penn State sexual abuse scandal reveals a pattern of conduct that the trial lawyers at Hurley McKenna & Mertz, P.C. are well acquainted with—a man in a position of power at a loved and respected institution uses his position to abuse children, and the officers of the institution not only refuse to stop the evil conduct, but actively work to protect the abuser. In our experience, that same pattern has consistently played out when we investigate allegations of sexual abuse by priests and brothers affiliated with the Catholic Church and troop leaders in the Boy Scouts.
