Former Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary filed a $4 million “whistleblower” lawsuit against the university on Tuesday, Oct. 5. A whistleblower is someone who reports any illegal doings within their company. There are laws that protect the whistleblower, but McQueary believes they were broken when he was not asked to come back to coach at Penn State, as well as not being supported financially by the university when it came down to legal fees associated with the Sandusky trial. This past June, McQueary had been a key witness in the Sandusky case when he recounted his story in court. In fact, he was the only eyewitness to testify against Sandusky after he had seen him inappropriately touching one of the victims in the Penn State locker room. His testimony aided the prosecution immensely as they were able to convict Sandusky for the majority of the accusations.
McQueary has received much criticism for his involvement in the Sandusky case, especially from Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan who believed both he and Joe Paterno should have reported the incident to authorities right away, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He also had the opportunity to physically stop the assault himself but instead, he did nothing and left the locker room. The bulky, 6 foot 4 inch former football star surely would have been no match for Sandusky if it came down to a physical altercation in order to save the young boy, but it seems that even a physically strong man like McQueary couldn’t figure out what to do right at that moment. During his testimony in June he described himself in the locker room, “Severly shocked, flustered, hastened, frantic.” People want to paint him the villain, but in all honesty none of us can say what we would have done when put in such a situation. Yes, McQueary admits that he knew something was obviously inappropriate between Sandusky and the child and he could have saved the victim from a lot of pain, but his state of shock withheld him from it.
McQueary went to his boss, Paterno, the next day and told him what he had seen. The following week he went to the athletic director, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz the university vice president, but they failed to bring Sandusky to justice. Curley and Schultz had put together a plan to contact the charity organization where one of the victims was a part of, as well as tell Sandusky to avoid bringing the boys into the locker room. Schultz had kept notes of this plan which were included in the case’s Freeh report. They knew what was going on. If they didn’t fully believe Sandusky was guilty why would they ask him to stop going into the locker rooms with young boys? There were also a number of custodians who witnessed the assaults, but failed to come forward in fear that they would lose their job. Well, McQueary spoke up and now he has lost his job. He has been used as a scapegoat by Penn State, and as a result has lost a part of his life: football.
In his lawsuit against the university he has also claimed that he was never reimbursed for his legal fees nor paid his severance check on time. Does a $4 million lawsuit seem reasonable though? In terms of how much he would get paid each year as a football coach, yes it absolutely is reasonable. Last year he was paid $140,000, which may not seem much compared to $4 million, but when you think of how long a coaching career is, at least 25 years, he could have made that amount in total.
McQueary could have done more; there is no doubt about that. He could have stopped Sandusky in the locker room. He could have gone straight to the police instead of reporting the incident to Paterno. But when he testified about the locker room incident, it’s clear that his failure to intervene was just a pure mistake, not a choice he made based off fear for the security of his job. In regards to telling school officials, he did what he believed was right. It was Curley and Schultz’s failure to hold zero tolerance against Sandusky that proved to be a critical point in this case. However, Penn State is paying for Curley and Schultz’s defense rather than McQueary’s. We can all continue to point the finger at someone, but in the end it was McQueary’s testimonies in court that helped convict Sandusky on four of the five charged counts.
Vanessa Righeimer can be reached at vanessa.righeimer@spartans.ut.edu
What Mike McQuery did was right. I was a whistleblower against Penn State University too. In the effort to coverup the entire fiasco and negligence surrounding oversights with child care clearances, PSU removed from the degree program I was in, and terminated in my employment when I filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights for Education, and twisted my lawsuit into that of sexual harassment in employment while refusing to allow ANYTHING that mentioned ,Education to come out.
It was skewed by attorneys with conflicts of interest and dismissed by a judge who has been awarded a PSU honorary emeritus award! It’s going to take people like Mike McQuery to stand up against this corrupt machine and make justice prevail, and I will be right behind him, with any luck, as I proceed with my Motion to Reopen in the United States Supreme Court next week.