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Joe Paterno's upgraded contract will be honored, board says
The day after an internal review blasted Penn State for its handling of a child sex abuse scandal that implicated top administrators, including the school's iconic head football coach, the board of trustees made it clear that a lucrative deal the university made with Joe Paterno that now benefits his estate will still stand.
"Contracts are contracts," Board of Trustees Chair Karen Peetz said Friday during a trustee meeting in Scranton, Pennsylvania. "And no there's no plan to (change) that."
Renegotiations over Paterno's contract began with university officials in January 2011, according to a source, the same month that Paterno testified before a grand jury about what he knew of child sex abuse accusations against Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach on the football team.
Ten months later, Sandusky was arrested. He was convicted last month of sexually abusing children over a 15-year period, with much of the abuse occurring on the Penn State campus.
According to the university website, Paterno's amended contract was finalized in August 2011 and totaled $5.5 million in payouts and benefits, which included a $3 million bonus and title as head football coach emeritus if he retired at the end of the 2011 season.
The package, which was published online in April, also included a $425,000 head coach bonus, $900,000 in television and radio revenue, $250,000 in debt forgiveness, use of the university's luxury box, use of the school's hydrotherapy equipment and $1,000 monthly payment to Paterno's wife for the rest of her life, among other benefits.
Both former university President Graham Spanier and former Vice President Gary Schultz were involved in the renegotiation, while the board of trustees as a whole had been left out of the loop until November when Sandusky was arrested, a source told CNN. Spanier was fired after the grand jury presentment against Sandusky came to light while Schultz was charged along with former Athletics Director Tim Curley with lying to a grand jury and failure to report suspected child abuse.
After being "bombarded with hate mail and threatened with a defamation lawsuit" following Paterno's firing over the scandal, the board eventually approved Paterno's new contract, according to The New York Times, which first reported the story.
"Board members who raised questions about whether the university ought to go forward with the payments were quickly shut down," the newspaper reported.
CNN cannot independently confirm those accounts.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh released the results of the university-funded probe on Thursday, reporting that his team of investigators had found that several school officials had "empowered" Sandusky to continue his abuse.
Paterno also could have stopped the attacks had he done more, Freeh concluded.
"Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State," Freeh wrote.
The 267-page review implicated Spanier, Schultz and Curley in the scandal, but is separate from a government investigation into the charges of perjury and failure to report abuse against Schultz and Curley, whose attorneys blasted the report, calling it a "lopsided document" that did not have access to critical witnesses.
Wick Sollers, a lawyer for the Paterno family, could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.
The former head coach died of lung cancer in January at the age of 85.
On Saturday, a halo that had been painted above Paterno after he died was removed from a State College, Pennsylvania, mural titled "Inspire."
Meanwhile, Sandusky is awaiting sentencing on his abuse convictions.
Source: CNN