The warning signs were there for more than a decade, disturbing indicators that Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was breaching boundaries with young boys - or maybe worse.
Yet the university's top administrators kept allowing, even encouraging, Sandusky to invite those boys into campus sports buildings. Too many, from the university president to department heads to janitors, knew of troubling behavior by this revered, longtime coach, but the circle of knowledge was kept very limited and private.
The fact that so few say they knew is all anyone needs to know about the insular culture surrounding Penn State - a university cloaked in so much secrecy, in large part, because it is exempt from the state's open records law - and a football program that prided itself on handling indiscretions internally and quietly.
School, traditions share blame
While official allegations so far target only three people, an investigation by The Associated Press suggests that blame also rests on Penn State and the entrenched traditions of now-fired head football coach Joe Paterno. The AP investigation reveals:
• The special handling of a 1998 sexual abuse complaint by child welfare workers;
• A clash between investigators over what the evidence showed at that time;
• Extraordinary retirement perks that gave Sandusky access to places on campus where he is accused of abusing children;
• A determination by a nearby county child-welfare agency that Sandusky sexually abused a boy in 2008 in a case that sparked the state criminal case;
•A passionate defense by Paterno's wife and her vigorous assertion that his superiors are responsible for any mistakes in the handling of the 2002 abuse complaint.
Missed opportunity
The first known complaint made to authorities came in a 1998 phone call to Penn State police. A mother was troubled after her 11-year-old boy told her he had showered naked with Sandusky on campus.
That complaint would trigger a separate review by Centre County's Children and Youth Services.
But it was the Penn State police department, overseen by a top university administrator, that led a comprehensive criminal investigation. Those investigations also represented the school's first known missed opportunity.
Ronald Schreffler, the lead detective from the university police, filed a still-sealed report that runs about 100 pages. The grand jury report that led to the first 40 charges against Sandusky on Nov. 5 cites extensively from his work. Schreffler testified his boss told him to close his investigation. The county prosecutor decided against charges, for reasons still unknown.
Mysterious exit
In the months following the investigation, Sandusky retired suddenly. His departure remains clouded in mystery, leaving many to theorize Penn State gave him a push. The university showed it was more than comfortable with Sandusky's retirement, giving him special honors as a professor emeritus. He got a parking pass, kept keys to football facilities, and had a personal office inside.
Above the rules
Paterno ruled, and preferred handling problems internally. But many saw the coach differently, as somehow above the rules. Vicky Triponey was Penn State's standards and conduct officer when she wrote a 2005 email that stirred controversy after Sandusky's arrest.
Her email said Paterno was "insistent he knows best how to discipline his players and I think he was saying we should treat football players different from other students in this regard."When Triponey was called last week for comment, her husband explained a Penn State lawyer had sent her a letter taking issue with her characterizations.
"It flies in the face of transparency," said Robert Meacham, Triponey's husband, especially from a university that pledged new openness in the aftermath of the scandal.