Now this I agree with. Joe Paterno made a mistake. A mistake that in retrospect was horrible. At the same time, trying to remove my emotions from it, you have a grad student telling you that one of your longest lasting friends and someone you've put a lot of trust in was doing something henious like this. You don't want to believe it because it just makes no sense to you but you do your duty to report it to your superiors. You don't see anything done and, since its a long time friend, you just assume...maybe blissfully ignorant in a way...that nothing came of it and its all okay.
Taking the emotion out of "OMG 10 year old being anally raped, how did you not do anything, RARRR!" I can actually understand a situation where Paterno does what he did.
That doesn't mean I think its right, doesn't mean I don't think he should've been fired, doesn't mean his actions didn't play a part in this. It just means I can understand HOW he could've done what he did without it being done in such a way that was purposefully callous towards Children or dirty caring only about football and protecting his schools good name.
I do think Paterno is in general a good person. You don't last as many years as him with the sterling reputation of Penn State trying to instil a moral and upstanding character into the kids that came through there without it being somewhat true. I think the fact that, in hindsight, he realizes he SHOULD'VE done more is going to eat at him until the day he dies...and if he wasn't a good man I don't think that'd be the case.
Sadly though, good men must suffer for their actions just like bad men do, and Joe's gotta take his lumps for this one.