Sue Paterno, the widow of former Penn State University head coach Joe Paterno, commented on the controversial Freeh report in a letter to a PSU alumnus released Friday.
6 News accessed the letter published on Penn State alumnus Michael Robinson’s website. Robinson is a current NFL player with the Seattle Seahawks and played football for Penn State from 2004-2005 as a running back.
In the letter she wrote to Robinson, Sue Paterno said, “I knew Joe Paterno as well as one human being can know another. Joe was exactly the moral, disciplined and demanding man you knew him to be. Over the years I watched as he struggled with countless personal and professional challenges. Never – not once – did I see him compromise his principles or twist the truth to avoid bad publicity or protect his reputation. Joe was tough, sometimes difficult, always opinionated and extremely demanding. He was also scrupulously honest, rigidly moral and absolutely unafraid of the consequences of doing the right thing.”
– Click here to read Sue Paterno’s letter to PSU alumni Michael Robinson it its entirety
The Freeh Report was Penn State’s internal investigation into the Jerry Sandusky case. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired by university trustees to lead the investigation, which said Sandusky’s sex abuse might have been prevented if university officials had banned Sandusky from bringing children onto campus after a 1998 inquiry.
-Click here to read the Freeh report
In the letter to Robinson, Paterno wrote, “When the Freeh report was released last July, I was as shocked as anyone by the findings and by Mr. Freeh’s extraordinary attack on Joe’s character and integrity. I did not recognize the man Mr. Freeh described. I am here to tell you as definitively and forcefully as I know how that Mr. Freeh could not have been more wrong in his assessment of Joe.”
The 267-page Freeh report was the result of an eight-month inquiry and said that senior leaders disregarded the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s victims. The report said that President Graham Spanier, football coach Joe Paterno, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse because they were worried about bad publicity. It also says the men “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.”
In her letter to Robinson, Sue Paterno said she has directed her attorney, Wick Sollers of the King & Spalding firm in Washington DC, to undertake a review of the Freeh report and Joe Paterno’s actions. She said she directed her attorney to “engage the best, most respected experts, to take whatever time he needed and to go wherever the facts led.”
At 9 a.m. Sunday, Paterno said her attorney and his team of experts will release their full report. The report and additional information will be available at paterno.com.
Paterno also criticized out the PSU Board of Trustees with what she called the board’s “rash and irresponsible decision to fire Joe without ever speaking with him.”
Also on Sunday, ESPN is expected to air a program with more on the scandal, with references to the NCAA sanctions and whether a new lawsuit against that organization will be filed, possibly with the backing of Joe Paterno’s family.
On Monday, an interview with Sue Paterno is scheduled to be aired on Katie Couric’s talk show.
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