'Profound failure'

Paterno family calls Freeh report 'profound failure'

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The Paterno family commissioned an analysis of the findings in the report issued last summer by former FBI director Louis Freeh, which was used by the NCAA and Penn State officials to issue and accept punishments related to the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. The report released Sunday includes the opinions of four experts brought in by the family who described the Freeh investigation as "a rush to injustice" and "fundamentally flawed.

Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, former FBI profiler Jim Clemente, Washington attorney Wick Sollers and Dr. Fred Berlin, director of The Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit, all weighed in in a massive report that can be found in its entirety at www.paterno.com.

The Paterno family report nitpicks nearly every angle of the Freeh report involving late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. It also attacks Freeh's investigation, motives and conclusions.

Original story here.

I haven't gone through the entire report--it's hundreds of pages, inclusive of appendices and end notes.

I have read most of Jim Clemente's report, and it's that one that presents the most compelling argument on the flaws of the Freeh Report. Clemente is an expert on child sexual predation and is a retired FBI profiler. His career has been spent identifying and describing how these sick individuals game the system, groom their victims and perpetrate their crimes as "pillars of the community."

He takes the Freeh report to task for not understanding how Sandusky did what he did, and how successful he was at deceiving all of those around him.

The Paterno response is an attempt to create reasonable doubt in a case where there was  little due process. Regardless of where you fall in this case, no one can deny that the Freeh report was a rush to judgment and that the ensuing NCAA sanctions were a conviction based on the indictment.

Clemente fairly well wrecks the indictment.

If you read any of these documents in total, make sure that Clemente's report is one of them.

You can find it here (PDF, 366 kb).