Rumor Claims Sandusky “Pimped Out” Boys to Rich Donors

[Ed Jewett]

Joe Paterno is from Brooklyn, where child-rape scandal hits close to home

For local legendary football coach Pudgy Walsh, horrible memories come flooding back

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Originally Published: Thursday, November 17 2011, 7:00 AM

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Pudgy Walsh, a legendary football coach in his own right with the Brooklyn Mariners, also works with Good Sheperd Church in Brooklyn where Joe Paterno attended. Walsh says he was sexually assaulted as a boy.

DANIEL HULSHIZER/AP

Joe Paterno is from Brooklyn, but doesn't seem to remember that in wake of sex-abuse scandal.




Joe Paterno grew up here.
Joe Paterno went to school and Mass here. Joe Paterno learned his core Christian values at Good Shepherd School and church on Brown St. here in Marine Park, a rugged, working-middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood that also produced baseball legend Joe Torre, with the local Little League named after him.
Joe Paterno played sports here, learning a fierce Brooklyn street code of right and wrong, and later was a running back at the Jesuit-strict Brooklyn Prep High, before graduating Brown and going to Penn State to win a record 409 football games and national glory.
Sports have always been a very big deal in Good Shepherd parish.
So, now, is pedophilia.
Last month the Rev. Msgr. Thomas Brady, 78, once chaplain of the FDNY and pastor emeritus of Good Shepherd, was arrested on charges of abusing two boys.
Then, hut-one, hut-two, right behind that sack came the Penn State child-rape scandals, with Joe Paterno accused of looking the other way.
After Good Shepherd's 7 a.m. Mass yesterday, parishioner Joe Stemberger, a transit worker, said, "How could they abuse the disadvantaged kids who came to them for hope and then cover it up? The way the church covered up these priest scandals?"
There might be no better man to help answer that question than Pudgy Walsh, a legendary local football coach of the semi-pro Brooklyn Mariners with 588 wins over 55 seasons.
Pudgy also attended Brooklyn Prep.
"Like everyone from the neighborhood I greatly admired Paterno," Pudgy says in a local diner. "And I know Msgr. Brady for 25 years and love the guy. I spent 31 years on FDNY, retired as a lieutenant. I worked with Brady when he was chaplain. He's had three strokes. Sickly. I haven't accepted it yet. If it was just one kid you might think they could be making it up. But two. . .?"
He sighs deeply, for good reason.
"These scandals affect me personally," he says. "Brings me back to June of 1943, I was 8, wearing shorts, walking with two pals, when a guy, maybe 19, 20, pulls upon a bicycle on Flatlands and E. 37 St. He takes one pal for a ride around the corner. Then takes my second pal. Fast. Then he took me. . . ."
The young man rode young Pudgy Walsh to a cluster of trees by Utica Ave. and Glenwood Road. "I will never forget the savage look in his eyes when he said, Take off your pants or I will kill you,'" Pudgy says, eyes glittering some seven decades later like a boy's. "Crying my eyes out, I took off my pants. The next hour is a blackout. Then he rode me on his bike to Coleman St. and Flatlands and said, I'm going in the Marines tomorrow. Pray for me.' I hope somewhere a Japanese soldier had a good eye."
Pudgy didn't tell his mother or retired-cop father. Shame made him bottle it. "I couldn't even confess it to a priest," Pudgy says. "I thought I'd committed an unforgivable sin."
He carried that shame into manhood before he told his siblings.
When the Msgr. Brady and Paterno scandals broke back-to-back, Pudgy Walsh was stunned. "If Paterno knew and did nothing it means he traded shame for fame," Pudgy says.
"That kid with his hands against the shower wall? I know what that feels like. It's abject fear for your life as a giant takes advantage of you. It's shame. It's horror. No guy I've ever met from Brooklyn, except the one who abused me, could ever stand by and do nothing. No player I ever coached, no fireman I ever worked with, no guy from Joe Paterno's neighborhood could turn the other way as kids were abused."
Why does he think Paterno did so little to stop it?
"Paterno was set up there, so high up in the steam, that everyone had to look up to see him," Pudgy says. "He stopped looking down; he forgot where he came from. If he remembered he was from here, from Marine Park, Brooklyn, he might have done more. It brought back horrible memories for me. But I'll never forget I'm from Brooklyn even though I have more wins than Joe Paterno."



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