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[–] afterbernerthrowaway [S] 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Third, in a widely publicized 2011 case unveiling the decades-long cover-up of child sex abuse by Penn State official Jerry Sandusky, the public learned that Sandusky had groomed and sexually abused dozens of at-risk boys from his "The Second Mile" nonprofit under the willful cover-up by Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. [[As an aside, I was just reading the Sandusky and Second Mile Wikipedia articles. Both articles source a since-deleted ABC News article that details George H.W. Bush having praised the charity in a 1990 letter as a "shining example" of charity work and one of that president's much-promoted "Thousand points of light" encouragements to volunteer community organizations. I finally found a 2011 archive of 2/3 pages of the sourced ABC News article [archived here]]]

Though the 2011 charges against Sandusky had followed two years of Grand Jury investigation into the allegations, this was not the first time Sandusky's activities had been investigated in Centre County, PA. In 2005, then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar--a well-respected man months away from retirement who had a strong history of prosecuting violent crimes using circumstantial evidence archived here--vanished.

From the deleted ABC News article:

But prosecutors said that running the charity gave Sandusky "access to hundreds of boys, many of whom were vulnerable due to their social situations."

He invited youngsters for overnight sleepovers at his home and took them to restaurants and bowl games. He wrestled in the swimming pool with kids who craved the attention. And he gave them gifts: golf clubs, sneakers, dress clothes, a computer and money, according to the indictment from the Pennsylvania attorney general.

And:

The grand jury said that Penn State officials in 2002 told Jack Raykovitz, executive director of The Second Mile, that there had been an issue with Sandusky and a minor. But the charity took no action against Sandusky because, it said this week, Penn State did not find any wrongdoing.

And in 1998, Sandusky was investigated after he was accused of "behaving in a sexually inappropriate manner" with a boy in a shower at the football team's facilities, the grand jury said. The report said an attorney for Second Mile who was also university counsel, Wendell Courtney, was aware of the allegations.

From an April 2015 Penn Live article - [archived here]:

"Everybody knew him and everybody has a theory," an employee at an ice cream parlor across from the courthouse said recently between scoops. He offers his own, that Gricar entered the witness-protection program and will reemerge at the end of a very-long-lived investigation into the mob. Which mob, exactly? "Who knows?"

[. . .] There was no activity on Gricar's email, bank accounts or credit cards. But it soon became clear that Ray's laptop, which he was seen with on Thursday, was missing.

[. . .] In 2011, the news broke that Gricar declined to prosecute an alleged case of sexual assault of a minor against Jerry Sandusky. The 1998 decision put Gricar's name back in the national spotlight as it came amid news of an indictment against the former Penn State assistant football coach. It also spurred a wave of speculation that Gricar's disappearance was connected to the disgraced coach or the cover-up.

Buehner believes Gricar was killed, but doubts it had any Sandusky connection.

"Who in the Sandusky case would have the motive to do any harm to Ray Gricar?" he said. "Gricar might have been the best witness [for Sandusky] had he been alive . . . and any victim probably wasn't old enough, I don't think, to be abducting the DA and making him disappear."

So who in the Sandusky would have the motive to do any harm to Ray Gricar? Perhaps the people above Sandusky in the trafficking ring--powerful people whose involvement in child trafficking they would prefer to keep a secret.

Gricar's laptop was discovered under the Route 45 bridge in Lewisburg in July 2005, with its hard drive physically ejected. The hard drive was found about two months later in the shallows further upstream.

Investigators also learned that Gricar had purchased software to wipe the laptop; they would later find Internet searches from his home computer included phrases like "how to wreck a hard drive."

And also from the Penn Live article:

Nearly a decade ago, Beswick, an attorney, represented one of the witnesses who saw Gricar here. She and Hollywood joined in the search along the park's muddy riverbank that spring.

"Anybody who lives down here thinks about it," she said. "It's weird because they could come up with no explanation."

Beswick, like even casual observers, has her own theory: Gricar was silenced after he threatened to expose a conspiracy to cover up the Sandusky molestation case.

And from this 2011 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article [archived here] describing then-Centre-County-DA Ray Gricar in 1998 squashing any investigation into allegations made against Sandusky:

Retired University Park Detective Ronald Schreffler believed he had enough evidence in 1998 to charge then-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky with something after the man admitted to a boy's mother to showering naked with her son.

"At the very minimum, there was enough evidence for some charges, like corruption of minors," Mr. Schreffler said on Wednesday, the day after Mr. Sandusky chose to waive his preliminary hearing on 52 counts that accuse him of molesting 10 boys over the last several years. Instead, then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar told Mr. Schreffler he could not file charges. The detective said Mr. Gricar gave no explanation.

"You don't question Ray," Mr. Schreffler said, calling him the best prosecutor he'd ever worked with. "Ray was not a person to be intimidated. If he didn't feel the elements were there ..."

At the time, Mr. Gricar spoke to Mr. Schreffler's police chief, Tom Harmon, and that was it.

[. . .] Mr. Schreffler speculates that the district attorney declined to press charges because the state Department of Public Welfare didn't indicate a charge of abuse, which would have made the prosecution's case even more difficult.

"It'd be a little hard for them to prosecute, when you have the state saying there wasn't any abuse."

Also from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article:

Mr. Schreffler speculates that the district attorney declined to press charges because the state Department of Public Welfare didn't indicate a charge of abuse, which would have made the prosecution's case even more difficult.

"It'd be a little hard for them to prosecute, when you have the state saying there wasn't any abuse."

[. . .] In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, [PA State Department of Public Welfare child abuse investigator] Mr. Lauro said he closed the case because he lacked substantial evidence that there was abuse.

"It didn't meet the criteria," Mr. Lauro said. "If I really thought there were any child abuse ... I definitely would have indicated it."

[. . .] Michael Madeira, who took over the district attorney's office in January 2006 and left last year, said there were no records explaining the declination of prosecution -- nor would he expect there to be.

So it seems like Ray Gricar knew the scale of this went far broader and deeper than just Sandusky. In 1998, he was telling local law enforcement to stop looking into Sandusky. Maybe in 2005 he decided he was going to stop playing along with the cover-up, and he was murdered because of it. The PA State Department of Public Welfare (as well as the Centre County Department of Children and Youth Services) both looked into Sandusky abuse allegations in the late nineties, and both agencies found nothing worth further investigation/prosecution. This lends some support to the theory that government child protection agencies are involved in the trafficking.