What I see is not a malicious conspiracy to selfishly protect the university and football program at the expense of the safety of children, but a failure to really look at what was happening open-eyed and deal with it. In short, the events at Penn State (other than Sandusky's, of course) were not acts of evil but failures to do good.
At least nine people (other than Sandusky and the victims) knew about the instances of abuse. Three, McQueary and two janitors, witnessed it directly. Six more - another janitor, McQueary's father, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, were aware second- or third- hand. And none of them went to the police. None of them. Most people, including most of the people in this thread, conclude that the reason for that is that they all feared Paterno. I don't think this is true. I say that not out of naivete but out of a profound cynicism; I think the reality is that most people when confronted with such vile acts will within reason deny them, avoid making decisions related to them, and ultimately try to forget they ever existed. I think that's what happened here.
Of the two janitors who saw something, neither intervened directly. One saw Sandusky pinning a boy against the wall and performing oral sex on him - and did absolutely nothing. The other had heard of this account and saw Sandusky leaving the shower with a boy. He didn't confront Sandusky, and he didn't report it. His reasoning was that "Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone." I'm not denying this was true, but it is a weak excuse. It is tantamount to putting one's own job security ahead of the welfare of children. What could Joe Paterno do to a janitor that could possibly compare to what Jerry Sandusky could do to those boys? I think it is an after-the-fact rationalization, and that the reality is that both janitors (and the third janitor they told) were so horrified that they didn't know what to do. Even in the moment, when they would have presumably just been reacting on instinct rather than thinking about long-term ramifications, the janitors did nothing.
I think McQueary falls into the same boat. He didn't confront Sandusky after what happened. Here is a quote from the Freeh report regarding McQueary's actions after seeing Sandusky "having some type of intercourse" with a boy in the shower:
McQueary testified that he slammed his locker shut and moved toward the shower. He said Sandusky and the boy separated and looked directly at McQueary without saying a word. Seeing how the two separated, McQueary said he "thought it was best to leave the locker room."
He thought it was best to leave the locker room, leaving Sandusky and the boy he had just raped alone together. And his first action was not to yell or rush to intercede, it was to slam his locker. Basically, it was to signal to Sandusky that someone was there so Sandusky could "separate" from the boy and maintain plausible deniability that no one had seen him, and so McQueary could plausibly pretend he hadn't seen anything, not for sure.
McQueary's next action was not to go to the police, it was to call his father for advice, because he still didn't know what to do. McQueary's father didn't call the police, he passed the buck to Paterno. Paterno made a big show about how McQueary "did what he had to do" and then he would take it from there. He then passed the buck to Curley and Schultz, who passed it to Spanier. No one wanted to deal with it. They came up with a half-assed action plan, and as soon as Curley / Paterno suggested a plan where they do even less, they all readily agreed. Curley met with the Second Mile people, who decide they didn't need to do anything. Hell, even the cops who investigated in 1998 didn't seem like they wanted to really pursue this; they heard Sandusky say "I want to die" but declined to push the issue and concluded there was no criminal activity. I think all of these people (other than McQueary) can claim, truthfully, that they didn't know Sandusky was a pedophile, but that's only because they didn't want to seriously contemplate the question.
McQueary took a full-time job at Penn State a couple years later, and probably ran into Sandusky from time to time. He was probably in the locker room where the rape happened several times a week. I bet he blocked out of his head what really happened. Per the Freeh report, Paterno told him at the end of their meeting that he would let McQueary know what would happen next. Do you think Paterno ever updated him? Do you think McQueary ever asked? I'm guessing no and no.
I've been kind of thinking about this post for three days, and only today did it occur to me that I have more direct experience. There are two instances that I know of third-hand of child sexual abuse between one family member and another. I only became aware of these years after they happened, and since both happened a while ago and the victims are adults know I don't really think it's my place to say anything. That's what I tell myself. I try not to think about it much. Neither incident was reported to the police. I can't imagine I'm the only one here who knows of something like this going unreported. Maybe some good will come of this whole PSU debacle, and the next time someone hears about child abuse this will clarify in his mind what the right thing to do is.