On Wednesday, Donald Trump decided he would bring the dead back to life. Either that or he just doesn’t give a damn about child sexual abuse.
Speaking at a Pittsburgh rally, Trump asked, “How’s Joe Paterno? We gonna bring that back? How about that whole deal?”
News flash: Paterno died in 2012, just after the child sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach for Penn State who was convicted of multiple incidents of child sexual abuse. An investigation led by former FBO director Louis Freeh found that Paterno among others, had known about allegations of child abuse on Sandusky’s part as early as 1998, and did not disclose them. Freeh said Paterno showed a “striking lack of empathy.”
As a result, Paterno’s statue was removed from the Penn State campus.
If Trump was raising Paterno from the dead, he deserved the mockery he got on Twitter and elsewhere:
On the other hand, if Trump thought Paterno’s statue should be brought back to the campus, he should speak to the multitude of victims of Sandusky. As ESPN reported:
One accuser testified that Sandusky molested him in the locker-room showers and in hotels while trying to ensure his silence with gifts and trips to bowl games. He also said Sandusky had sent him “creepy love letters.”
Another spoke of forced oral sex and instances of rape in the basement of Sandusky’s home, including abuse that left him bleeding. He said he once tried to scream for help, knowing that Sandusky’s wife was upstairs, but he figured the basement must be soundproof.
Another, a foster child, said Sandusky warned that he would never see his family again if he ever told anyone what happened.
And just hours after the case went to jurors, lawyers for one of Sandusky’s six adopted children, Matt, said he had told authorities that his father abused him.