I'm not ready to throw Paterno under the bus on this. I don't know the guy, but I have a hard time thinking he's the type of person who could know about something as sick as what Sandusky did, not go public with it, and actually be able to live with himself. I'd like to think very, very few people are that type of person.
The evidence doesn't look good in this situation. It seems that JoePa was informed in 2002 by the Grad Asst (I forget his name) and all JoePa did was tell his superior. At a minimum Paterno was required by Pennsylvania law to call the police. But this wasn't the first time Joe had learned troubling things about Sandusky. There were allegations in 1998, FOUR YEARS before the most inflammatory incident in the PSU locker room, which led to Sandusky's resignation - a resignation about which Paterno said nothing despite Sandusky's decades of employment. It would be the same as Charlie McBride suddenly, mysteriously leaving in 1996 and Osborne saying absolutely nothing about it.
Despite these instances, JoePa allowed Sandusky access to the program, the facilities and the players as recently as last week. That is inexcusable. Absolutely inexcusable.