Penn State is still reeling from the horrifying accusations that a former assistant football coach abused and raped young boys—sometimes on campus—and that the school ignored reports of the abuse. In a marked shift from Wednesday night's student riots over beloved Penn State coach Joe Paterno being fired, thousands of students and staff gathered on campus at Old Main last night for a candlelight vigil in honor of the child sex abuse victims. Watch some videos of the event below:
“Let’s make tonight the starting point of setting the standard,” LaVar Arrington, the All-American linebacker who went on to a Pro Bowl career in the NFL, said at the vigil. “The worst crime that we could commit right now is to leave here and forget what happened. It’s on us to restore the fight of Old State.”
Interim school president Rodney Erickson, who took over two days ago after the Penn State Board of Trustees fired University president Graham Spanier, also spoke at the event: “Healing cannot occur until we understand how responsibilities to these children failed and how we can prevent such tragedies in the future,” Erickson said. “We are certainly not adrift.”
Everything is far from over for Penn State with this terrible case: experts agree that administrators,and possibly even Paterno, will very possibly face civil lawsuits seeking extensive monetary damages after the criminal case against former assistant coach Jerry Sandsky is done. “People say there might eventually be 20 victims identified in this case, but who knows if the number might not be 200? The damages sought could total $100 million,” said lawyer Michael Dowd, who has represented hundreds of child abuse clients, told the Times.
There are serious obstacles to civil cases against state universities and their employees—state universities are protected from tort claims by a doctrine known as sovereign immunity—but Philadelphia lawyer Harold Goodman agreed with Dowd's assessment: “The damage to the victims is so profound—pain, suffering and perhaps lifetime injuries—that juries usually are unbridled as to how to calculate the damages. The damages are likely to be immense.”
Later today, Penn State will face Nebraska in the first football game since the child sex-abuse charges were made against Sandusky, and since legendary football coach Paterno was fired. There was a bomb threat early this morning at Beaver Stadium in State College, but police and dogs searched and found nothing.
