File-This July 12, 2012, file photo shows former FBI director Louis Freeh speaking about the Freeh Report during a news conference in Philadelphia. Penn State’s trustees are getting together to discuss a 2-year-old report by former FBI director Louis Freeh’s team that concluded Joe Paterno and top administrators concealed key facts about Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of children to avoid bad publicity. The topic for the Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014, meeting in State College, Pa., is a push by alumni members to re-examine the report, which many alumni feel used flimsy evidence and unfairly blamed the school’s football culture for Sandusky’s criminal acts. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) (The Associated Press)
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Penn State's trustees plan to meet to discuss the 2012 report by former FBI director Louis Freeh's team that concluded football coach Joe Paterno and top administrators concealed key facts about Jerry Sandusky's abuse of children to avoid bad publicity.
The topic for the meeting Tuesday at a State College hotel is a push by alumni members to re-examine the report, which many alumni feel used flimsy evidence and unfairly blamed the school's football culture for Sandusky's criminal acts.
The board will meet in private for about an hour and then have an open discussion.
Alumni board member Anthony Lubrano said Monday he hopes the board will appoint a group to examine the Freeh Report and develop questions, and then bring in Freeh and members of his team to provide answers.
"What we're saying here is this board has never formally adopted the Freeh report in any fashion," Lubrano said. "Yes, we've implemented the recommendations. But we've never formally adopted the Freeh report. Certainly, as they pertain to the conclusions, I think we have an obligation to have that debate and discussion."
Lubrano and three other trustees have been working to develop compromise language ahead of the meeting, but so far that process has not borne fruit, he said.
The Freeh report, issued shortly after Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, recommended widespread changes in the school's operations and governance. The university, which hired Freeh, has used it as a blueprint to change its governing structure, how children are supervised on campus and other procedures.
At the time it was released, Penn State issued a statement calling it "sad and sobering in that it concludes that at the moment of truth, people in positions of authority and responsibility did not put the welfare of children first."
Three administrators have been charged with a criminal cover-up of complaints about Sandusky and are awaiting trial in county court in Harrisburg. Former president Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley have all vigorously denied the allegations and have sought to have their cases thrown out.
The judge in that case has entertained arguments about the role in the case played by the school's former general counsel, Cynthia Baldwin, but has not determined whether the defendants' legal rights were violated or scheduled the case for trial.
Paterno died of lung cancer in January 2012, before the Freeh Report was released. Sandusky, the school's retired defensive coach, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.
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