Late Thursday evening in an interview with Ohio radio station's "The Fan" show, President Barrack Obama said that the $60 million penalty the NCAA slapped Penn State University for its role in the cover up of the child sex abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
President Obama said on the show, "I think it was appropriate to send a message...We have to make sure we're always looking after our kids and we have an affirmative responsibility to make sure we're preventing predators from taking advantage of them," according to Reuters.
The university faces $60 million in fines imposed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for the Sandusky cover-up, $10 million in investigative and public relations expenses and of course millions in settlements with victims. Reports show that in 2011, the University made approximately $1.4 billion from tuition, which is the institution's main source of income.
In an interview with CBS's "Meet the Nation" last week, President of Penn State University, Rodney Erickson said the university is adequately prepared financially to resolve the various lawsuits it faces (or will face) in light of the former football coach Jerry Sandusky's child sex-abuse scandal and the consequential cover-up revealed in the recently released Freeh Reports.
And although Erickson assured CBS' Bob Schieffer that "like any University our size, we believe we are adequately prepared," However, there are reports that suggest the contrary. There are reports that suggest the university will struggle to produce the money.
The institution's insurers Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association Insurance co- the Blue Bell Company has refused to pay general liabilities. The company filed a plea in January that its general-liability, directors & officers policies will not cover any liabilities caused under the Sandusky scandal or related matters.
According to Boston Herald, the university can neither claim sovereign immunity because it "does not typically protect even publicly supported schools from serious liability claims," according to Bostonherald.com
According to a statement released by the university, no philanthropic funds will be used to make payments involved with the scandal. As the nation waits to see what is to become of the university in the next chapter of this disastrous blow, it remains to be seen if Erickon's claims hold true.
In May, Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of child sex-abuse and molestation during his reign as assistant football coach at PSU. The 68 year-old, is currently in Centre County prison awaiting his sentencing. He could face a maximum sentence of 373 years.
Reports released by former FBI director Louis Freeh released a report that implicated top university officials in a meticulous cover-up of the various allegations against Sandusky. .
The 267 page Freeh report, as it now called, report, was formed over seven months of investigation, more than 400 interviews, and a review of over 3.5 million documents. The Freeh report, as it has come to be called, not only implicated top PSU officials, but also revealed that the Board of Trustees handled the matter very poorly and was greatly responsible for the cover-up in the abuse of young students perpetrated by former football coach Sandusky.
The report implicated PSU Head Coach Joe Paterno, Athletic Director Tim Curly, the University President Graham Spanier, and Vice President Gary Schultz in a cover-up of a 1998 shower incident in which the 68-year-old Sandusky was accused of showering with a boy and touching him inappropriately.
The Freeh report has certainly shed light on PSU's "pervasive and damaging culture at Penn State where the levers of power were tightly controlled by four men (the officials)... whose repeated failure to deal with troubling allegations lodged against Sandusky always seemed to be directed by one goal: to avoid the consequences of bad publicity," as mentioned by USA Today.
The most powerful PSU officials "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large," according to the New York Times.
