In 1998, Buying $400 Worth Of Clothes For A Player Got You Banned From Penn State. Being Investigated For Child Sexual Assault Did Not.

One of the central themes of the Freeh Report is the hopelessly twisted moral compass of the former Penn State administration. The report concludes that university leaders were far more concerned with protecting the school from bad publicity than they were with protecting the victims of abuse:

...the Special Investigative Counsel finds that it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders of the University—Spanier, Schultz, Paterno, and Curley—repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, The University Board of Trustees, the Penn State community, and the public at large.

For a concrete example of the priorities of these men in action, the report describes former university president Graham Spanier's handling of a sports agent in relation to his handling of Jerry Sandusky.

According to the Freeh report, in 1998 Spanier took aggressive steps to ensure that a sports agent, who had bought one of Penn State's football players $400 worth of clothes, was banned from the Penn State campus for life. Spanier claimed that the agent had, "fooled around with the integrity of the university, and I won't stand for that." Penn State conducted a thorough investigation of the matter, and on May 13, 1998, Spanier wrote in an email, "The idea is to keep [the sports agent] off campus permanently, to keep him away from current athletes, and to keep him away from current students or graduates whose eligibility has recently expired."

On June 9, 1998, Spanier received his final update from police chief Thomas Harmon about his department's investigation of Sandusky's showering with Victim No. 6 on May 3, 1998. Fully updated on the details of the investigation and aware of Sandusky's actions, Spanier took no steps to limit Sandusky's access to Penn State facilities. The Freeh report found no evidence to suggest that Spanier, Schultz, Curley, and Paterno ever stopped to consider amending the university's relationship with Sandusky at that time.

While an agent was being run out of Penn State on a rail for buying a player some clothes, Sandusky was allowed to continue walking the campus freely, and maintained his unlimited access to the Penn State facilities.

Jerry Sandusky was convicted of assaulting five different boys at the Penn State football facility after May of 1998.

Read all our coverage of the Freeh report here.