Joe Paterno’s statue was removed Sunday morning and shortly after the NCAA announced it would hold a press conference Monday morning where sanctions would be issued against Penn State.
The 7-foot, 900-pound statue erected in 2001 to honor Paterno, was taken down with a forklift outside of Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., with more than 100 Penn State students watching.
The statue’s removal was in response to the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal in which Paterno, former Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz were mentioned in an alleged cover-up in the report conducted by former FBI director Louis Freeh. The Freeh Report was released last week.
According to the report, the officials did not report Sandusky’s actions to child welfare in 2001 and he continued to molest boys. Last month, Sandusky was found guilty of 45 of 48 counts. In the child sex-abuse trial, eight young men testified against Sandusky, saying they were abused. The 68-year-old former assistant coach at Penn State faces sentencing in the next few months.
“I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse,” Penn State president Rod Erickson said in a statement early Sunday.
According to an Associated Press report, the process to remove the statue began just after dawn Sunday. The streets and sidewalks around the statue were barricaded with a chain-link fence and the statue was covered in a blue tarp.
“I think it was an act of cowardice on the part of the university,” Mary Trometter told the Associated Press.
On Friday, Paterno’s widow, Sue, and two of their children visited the statue. In a statement Sunday after the statue’s removal, the family said, “Tearing down the statue of Joe Paterno does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State Community. We believe the only way to help the victims is to uncover the full truth. The Freeh report, though it has been accepted by the media as the definitive conclusion on the Sandusky scandal, is the equivalent of an indictment—a charging document written by a prosecutor—and an incomplete and unofficial one at that.”
NCAA president Mark Emmert will make the announcement Monday morning regarding the sanctions against Penn State. In its announcement Sunday, the NCAA said it will hand out “corrective and punitive measures” against Penn State.
''This is completely different than an impermissible benefits scandal like (what) happened at SMU, or anything else we've dealt with. This is as systemic a cultural problem as it is a football problem. There have been people that said this wasn't a football scandal,'' Emmert told PBS. ''Well, it was more than a football scandal, much more than a football scandal. It was that but much more. And we'll have to figure out exactly what the right penalties are. I don't know that past precedent makes particularly good sense in this case, because it's really an unprecedented problem.''
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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