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http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/07/turning_another_page_on_sandus.html

Turning another page on Sandusky scandal, Penn State prepares to own costly mistakes

July 12, 2013 at 8:37 PM, updated July 12, 2013 at 9:03 PM



Penn State trustees took another resolute step Friday toward putting the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal behind them.

The board, after hours of private sessions over the last three weeks but with no public discussion, voted unanimously to make monetary settlement offers to “a majority” of the roughly 30 men who claim they were sexually abused by Sandusky as children.

[Did Duke's BOT meet and discuss Duke's response to the lax cases? For how long? What did they decide? (Curiously, we aren't even allowed to know if they met to discuss these things.)
Moreover, we aren't
allowed to know what they were informed about the case, how and when they decided to back Brodhead
"each step of the way"; if they agreed with Steel's remark; and whether at any time there was any dissent.]


That move - if other institutional sexual abuse settlements are any gage - could likely cost Penn State tens of millions of dollars.

But it also, President Rodney Erickson and several trustees said afterward, is a tangible sign of a university owning up to past mistakes and committed to making things better.

[Duke won't even say this much.]

(snip)

The trustees released no specifics Friday on the deals they hope to advance; they have in the past committed to a final, aggregate report on how much was spent in settlements.

[And Duke?]

(snip)

It is also a potentially expensive step for Penn State, which has already booked costs totaling more than $100 million from the Sandusky scandal, including the $60 million NCAA fine to be paid over five years.

University leaders hope insurance coverage will pay the bulk of any settlement payouts, but Penn State’s primary liability carrier has thus far refused to cover Sandusky-related claims.

Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Co. has argued it should not be made to pay for Sandusky's crimes because evidence shows that university leaders concealed knowledge about Sandusky's abuses.

[Did Duke's leaders have knowledge about Nifong's wrongdoing? And did they help him out (FERPA); and even agree (March 29?) that there would have to be arrests and a prosecution, regardless of innocence? Duke's insurance companies need to know those things; Duke's stakeholders need to know those things; and the victims of the case need to know those things.]


Regardless of that outcome, however, Penn State officials have said they are prepared to make good on whatever reasonable settlements they can reach.

[Did Duke ever say as much?]

It has other insurance coverages, including from Nittany Insurance, a company the school created and owns, and United Educators, a consortium that specializes in coverage for tragedies and wrongful conduct on campus.

The university has also noted that if need be, it has other sources of funds that it can tap without dipping into student tuition payments, donor gifts or taxpayer funds.

[Has Duke explained as much to its stakeholders and potential donors?]

Last year, it told the Middle States Commission on Higher Education it has identified an "initial pool" of approximately $51 million in interest proceeds from internal loans the university made over the years to self-supporting units, including Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and the athletic department.

Attorneys for several Sandusky claimants have said in recent weeks they were close to agreement with Penn State's negotiators, contingent on the board's approval.

Lubert said trustees were briefed on the hoped-for settlements on June 25 and again Friday morning, both times in executive session.

Trustees, reached after Friday’s vote, said they were satisfied with what they heard.

“It’s going to cost what it’s going to cost, but I think we’ve got the best people working for us and … we’re trying to negotiate the fairest and best arrangement possible,” said trustee Joel Myers.

“I think the good thing about it is that we move forward,” added trustee Keith Eckel. “Hopefully… this will bring closure to the vast majority” of Sandusky’s victims.

[Have any Duke trustees said anything about settlements--or about bringing closure to the victims?]

(snip)

It is also clear a number of board members had insisted all claims to be vetted as thoroughly as possible.

[See above. Have any of Duke's trustees expressed an interest in insisting that all claims be vetted as thoroughly as possible?]

Plaintiff’s attorneys saw this week's meetings as a "critical moment" for the process, with eight new members joining the 30-member Penn State board for their first meetings this week.

[How does the Penn State Board acquire new members? That might make an interesting comparison to Duke's
closed shop.]

But in the end, even new members who have argued vehemently against some of the findings of the Freeh Report that found the university very much at fault in the Sandusky scandal appeared to concede that the settlement effort made sense from a business standpoint.

(snip)

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http://www.centredaily.com/2013/08/19/3745136/penn-state-student-trustee-peter.html

Penn State student trustee Peter Khoury says pressure from board leads him to withdraw from Paterno lawsuit against NCAA
Published: August 19, 2013 Updated 21 minutes ago

Penn State’s student member of the board of trustees is withdrawing as a plaintiff in the Paterno family’s lawsuit against the NCAA, saying he was threatened with being removed from the group that’s searching for the next university president if he didn’t drop out.

Peter Khoury, a master’s student, said Monday night that he didn’t want to jeopardize the role in which he serves as the voice of more than 84,000 undergraduate and graduate students across all university campuses on the board. Court papers seeking his withdrawal from the suit will be filed soon, he said.

“My decision to come off of the suit entails looking at my unique position being a student who represents the university’s interest and also looking at what would be best to continue ensured and effective participation of a student in critical university matters here,” said Khoury, who declined to discuss the specific events that to led the ultimatum and his decision.

Penn State’s board spokesman, David La Torre, declined to comment on Khoury’s withdrawal and the threat. Penn State is not a party in the suit, though four trustees, with Khoury’s departure, and four professors are plaintiffs.

Khoury’s decision comes after trustees who are plaintiffs in the suit were pressured by the board to withdraw from it, trustees said. And last month at the board’s executive session in southwestern Pennsylvania, football coach Bill O’Brien delivered a presentation about a plan to ask the NCAA to modify the sanctions, and one slide said that lawsuits will not help the university’s cause.

The Paterno family and their supporters sued the NCAA in May to reverse the sanctions against Penn State.

Five trustees signed on, including Ryan McCombie and Adam Taliaferro, and two of them, Anthony Lubrano and Alvin Clemens, said they were asked to withdraw but won’t back down.

“I’m disappointed that board leadership resorted to those tactics,” Lubrano said. “I have no plans to withdraw from the lawsuit.”

Clemens said he is continuing with the fight against the NCAA, calling the organization “out of control” for the way it handed down harsh sanctions against Penn State based on the Freeh report’s findings.

Khoury, 23, of Allentown, is a member of the presidential search council, a group that includes 12 trustees tasked with selecting the successor to Penn State President Rodney Erickson.

Khoury said the support from student groups for his joining the lawsuit was “overwhelmingly positive,” and he doesn’t want his withdrawing from the suit to affect the other trustee plaintiffs.

“My original intent for joining the suit was to get the truth for how things developed with the NCAA, to uncover the truth,” he said. “Certainly, the individuals who are participating in the suit have their hearts in the right place, in terms of going ahead and trying to uncover the truth and really work towards what is right.

“Just because I’ve come off of it, I hope that others can respect that others are still on it.”

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http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/08/turning_point_settlements_in_s.html#incart_m-rpt-2

Turning point? Proposed settlements put a lot of legal fallout from the Sandusky scandal in Penn State's rearview mirror

August 19, 2013 at 9:55 PM, updated August 20, 2013 at 12:02 AM


When the history of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State is complete, we may look back at this week as a turning point.

Within the next few days, the university in one fell swoop will have: Cleared its deck of most of the potential civil cases expected from the scandal; Know much more about the final financial costs from the scandal; and seized back a bit of the moral high ground after nearly two years of unrelenting public relations body blows.

It won't be cheap.

[Who writes like this about Duke's agreeing to settle? Who writes anything
about Duke's motivations to settle? Who in the Durham media ever criticize Duke for anything?]

Barring surprises on the way to the signing table, the university is expected to pay out in round numbers about $60 million this week to settle claims made by 25 men judged to have credible claims that they were molested by the former assistant football coach.

But lawyers and higher education officials considering Penn State’s latest step Monday were unanimous in calling the proposed settlements a clear step forward for a university trying to move out from the shadow of scandal.

They cite three major reasons:

1. The settlements take civil claims that many thought would dog the university for years and put them largely in the “finished” category.

“The number one rule in risk management is containing the problem,” said Kelly Clark, a Portland, Ore. attorney with a national reputation in representing victims of child sexual abuse.

“If that means you’ve got to write a big check to make all of this go away? Write the damn check.”

[Again, who writes anything about Duke's motivations for settlements?]

Of the six known claims still out there, the university’s lawyers believe three are not credible. Two others are currently in court with no talks at present, and the last remains in negotiation.

So a battlefield filled with 31 possible claims ms likely been reduced to no more than five.

And if $60 million seems like a lot to pay, attorneys close to the deals noted that Penn State built in smart terms that, while guaranteeing payments to victims, left it wide latitude to seek reimbursement from its own insurers and those covering outside entities like The Second Mile, the youth charity through which Sandusky selected most of his victims.

[See above.]

2. Penn State, by honoring commitments made by President Rodney Erickson last summer to enter into a process where Sandusky’s victims would be compensated quickly and fairly with a minimum of red tape, has –most observers agree – done the ethical thing.

Now, a university badly-scarred by allegations that its most senior leaders either ignored or covered up a child sexual assault can also hold its head up as the university that made sure the victims were helped - even in cases where the state’s legal deadlines could have left some without any recourse in court.

“You can’t argue with the sincerity of the university in coming to grips with this crisis,” said Thomas R. Kline, the attorney for Sandusky’s so-called Victim 5, who was subjected to a molestation attempt by Sandusky several months after university officials failed to report a February 2001 incident to police or child welfare officials.

[And Duke? How about suing KC Johnson to find out his sources? How about bad-mouthing Pressler after
his settlement? How about Coleman still saying that rich white kids could get better justice (instead of
admitting that it was only because they were rich white kids that they were prosecuted)? How about Duke's
officials claiming to have forgotten almost everything (Wasiolek, Steel, Smith) so they can't be of help?
Is that showing a university which did the right thing morally to help the victims? (MOO)]

It is, for Penn Staters, a refreshing place to be.

“They could have dragged a lot of these people through a very unpleasant and time-consuming process,” said Michael Rozen, a principal in the Feinberg Rozen firm hired to lead the mediation process.

“That they chose not to do that speaks volumes about the trustees and the Penn State administration.”

[See above.]

3. The university still faces a whistle-blower suit from former assistant football coach Mike McQueary, and possible contests with its insurance companies and the aforementioned claimants’ cases.

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his top aides still face criminal charges.

But with the bulk of the civil cases behind it, Penn State takes another solid step toward its post-Sandusky future.

“This puts a terribly bad period of time for Penn State largely behind them,” said Rozen, “and that is a great thing.

“Because this university’s mission is not about the acts uncovered in this scandal. It is about educating a large number of young people around this country and especially in the state of Pennsylvania. So moving past this is certainly in the best interests of everyone.”

Not everyone was ready to give Penn State complete absolution Monday.

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the reported settlements are a great step toward healing for the victims, only time will tell if Penn State’s reform efforts are successful.

“It’s too early,” he said in an interview Monday. “Because assuming the best about an institution that has ignored or concealed child sex crimes is reckless.

“The key test will be what happens when the limelight fades and the legal struggles end.”

But a leader of one of the nation’s leading higher education advocacy groups said she would recommend Penn State’s handling of these civil claims as a model in similar future cases.

[This COULD have been said about Duke--but Duke chose another route.]

Ada Meloy, general counsel for the Washington D.C.-baesd American Council of Education, said she appreciated that the university took time to evaluate each claim and did not simply “throw money” at every one.

That said, Meloy added that getting the bulk of the claims settled appears to be one of the few win-win’s to come out of the Sandusky tragedy.

“It is important both for the healing of the victims and the university,” she said, “since this is something that’s going to be a cloud over Penn State for as long as it is out there.”

Specifics of individual deals are not being released due to confidentiality agreements. Penn State officials are expected to disclose the total expenditure from the settled cases when the current round of paperwork is completed.

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Darryl Hunt fights on

[Jan. 2012]



Coleman hoped the lesson from the Duke Lacrosse case was that anyone could be falsely accused of a crime, and the prosecutor should pay a price for it, as Mike Nifong did when he was disbarred, but that doesn’t appear to be what happened, he said.

“It appears, though, that the lesson has been, you won’t get away with it if you do it to white kids from Duke,” he said.


[Is that the mantra now? How about, "the only reason you can get away with a false prosecution on the level of the Duke case is if the defendants are white kids from Duke"?

Not only is that remark ill-informed and insulting, it might be said to violate a settlement agreement
made with the Duke Three (if Duke is supposed to not comment about the case, nor disparage
anyone involved). It recounts an inaccurate rendering of what transpired during the case,
and a re-fashioning of events to suit a narrative, imho.

Certainly I regard that remark as belittling what they went through, and questioning
that their status as victims; (recall Burness' disparaging Pressler).
People might be inclined to disregard them as victims after
that remark--which may even display or result in animus directed at them because of their race. (MOO) ]


*ETA: I imagine that if one of the falsely-accused had said, "It appears, though, that the lesson has been, you won’t get treated the same way as other students at Duke if you're a white, wealthy, New England student", that Duke would allege that was a violation of the confidentiality/non-disparagement agreement.