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SUBSCRIPT: Let's take another look at the sex criminals' cover ups and the victim selection... Sandusky, Moffat... Powerful guys who carefully screen their victims can get away with this stuff and have their crimes covered up by even more powerful people for years, even decades...

George N. Schmidt - November 10, 2011

While the State of Pennsylvania is still being rocked by the outpouring of revelations about the criminal misconduct of some of its most powerful officials (including Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and Penn State's president), the case should revive some historical memories in Chicago as well. When Substance and I covered the sex crimes of former Chicago Deputy Superintendent of Schools James Moffat from 1984 through 1988, the same pattern early became clear to us: powerful men who surround themselves in a circle of power and carefully select their victims from the powerless can get away with rape for a long long time. It's another story of the power of the "one percent", but with a very perverse twist.

In a nutshell, the story is simple. A powerful public school official was a serial sex criminal over years. He was finally brought to justice, not through the workings of the system, but because a handful of people refused to allow the cover up to continue. So after years of being a predator, James Moffat was investigated, tried, and convicted of crimes against children. But we need to remember that the investigation was never done by Chicago Board of Education officials. Board officials actually helped clear Moffat of the charges in an administrative procedure that released its findings, ironically, at the same time the Cook County State's Attorney indicted the guy for 35 different acts of sexual predation against five different victims, all of whom had been students at Kelvyn Park High School at the time of the crimes.

The formula was as simple as then, or now. A man has great power. He selects victims from among the powerless. Clout usually sins. Moffat, as principal of Kelvyn Park High School, was able to carefully screen his victims, thereby making it even more difficult to bring him to justice. (We elaborate below).

Sandusky under arrest November 2011.Once his crimes came out, however, it was even possible for Moffat to call on numerous friends and powerful acquaintances to help in the cover up.

Nobody in Chicago should forget that James Moffat, the most notorious sex criminal in the history of public life in Chicago, was defended at the criminal trial by Anne Burke.

That's right, the same Anne Burke who went on to lead the "investigation" into the misconduct of Catholic priests. The same Anne Burke who is now a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court. When guys this powerful carefully select their victims from among the powerless, they also often share their victims with others, often equally powerful.

And even after justice is done, the historical coverups can continue. One of the more salient facts about the Moffat case is that it has been written out of the histories of sexual misconduct in America's public schools, even though it is arguably the largest and most dramatic anywhere, in terms of power and scope. Whenever such criminal activity is recounted in publications like Education Week, the usual teacher creeps are recounted and often portrayed, often with photographs. Often the narrative begins with Mary Kay LeTouneau, the Seattle teacher who actually married her student victim. Most of the photographs you will find when such stories break are of female teachers who were caught with guy students. Not once has "American education's newspaper of record" recounted Moffat's crimes in these narratives.

Moffat's crimes were first reported in Substance. At the time we exposed him as a sex criminal who preyed on the weak — after carefully screening them using his power as principal of Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago — Moffat had only recently been demoted from the job of Deputy Superintendent for Management Services in Chicago's public schools. During his years in top management, as we later learned, Moffat had given, and received, many favors during the regimes of Richard J. Daley and Jane Byrne. Only the financial crisis of 1979 brought Moffat down from the heights of power. Moffat was also "cluster coordinator" for the doctoral program of Nova University, and head of night security at the Marshall Field State Street flagship store.

Even after he had been convicted of crimes involving five students (four boys and a girl) during a month-long criminal trial, Moffat still had enough clout to avoid prison in the general population at Stateville. Instead, he spent the five years he was incarcerated in the special unit at Cook County Jail.

And after his release, despite the notorious record he had established, within a few years Moffat s

Later, as I investigated portions of the story (which Substance covered in more than 60 news stories over three years) Moffat's use of his power over information about potential victims became more and more clear. The first report (the "propositioned" report) was the tip of an iceberg. But one of the more disturbing things about it was that the victim's mother was working as a teacher assistant at Kelvyn Park High School and desperately trying to hold her family together, working the only job she could find, while her husband was in prison. It was years before I finally was able to interview the mother, who told a sad tale of how a powerful man could manipulate such a situation.

It sounds now like an echo, as more and more spills out about Jerry Sandusky and the network of powerful men (no women so far) who facilitated his criminal predations.

One of the things we had heard but never reported was that Moffat had shared more than titilating stories with some of Chicago's more powerful people during the years he was preying on adult women and on male and female children. Some joked at the time that those memories were a king of "life insurance" for Moffat.

Now, on November 10, 2011, an eerie echo of Moffat's crimes can be heard in the latest reports on Jerry Sandusky of Penn State. Here is one that came out today:

RADIO NEWS REPORT FROM PITTSBURGH, NOVEMBER 10, 2011:

iIn April, Pittsburgh radio host Mark Madden wrote a story revealing Penn State for much of the cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's alleged child rape that has been exposed in the past week. While it didn't raise many eyebrows back then, six months later it looks to be incredibly accurate.

On Thursday morning, just hours after legendary head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired by the school's board of trustees, Madden was asked on The Dennis and Callahan Show what he believes the next piece of news will be.

What he said was twice as shocking as anything that's been released thus far.

"I can give you a rumor and I can give you something I think might happen," Madden told John Dennis and Gerry Callahan. "I hear there's a rumor that there will be a more shocking development from the Second Mile Foundation -- and hold on to your stomachs, boys, this is gross, I will use the only language I can -- that a href="http://www.infowars.com/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors/"Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak."/a

After the news spread, Madden later explained via Twitter why he went public with the rumors.

"I normally abhor giving RUMORS credence," Madden wrote. "But whole Sandusky scandal started out as a RUMOR. It gets deeper and more disgusting all the time. One of state's top columnists investigating. That adds credence. I am NOT rumor's original source. [Why does] Sandusky deserve benefit of doubt?"

Madden also spoke more definitively on Dennis and Callahan to the cover-up efforts at the school and beyond that he expects will be made public soon.

"The other thing I think that may eventually become uncovered, and I talked about this in my original article back in April, is that I think they'll find out that Jerry Sandusky was told that he had to retire in exchange for a cover-up," Madden said. "If you look at the timeline, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

"My opinion is when Sandusky quit, everybody knew — not just at Penn State," Madden added. "I think it was a very poorly kept secret about college football in general, and that is why he never coached in college football again and retired at the relatively young age of 55. [That's] young for a coach, certainly." ">omehow had his name erased from the Illinois Sex Crimes data base, as we reported earlier in Substance.

One of the things we had heard but never reported was that Moffat had shared more than titilating stories with some of Chicago's more powerful people during the years he was preying on adult women and on male and female children. Some joked at the time that those memories were a king of "life insurance" for Moffat. Now, on November 10, 2011, an eerie echo of Moffat's crimes can be heard in the latest reports on Jerry Sandusky of Penn State. Here is one that came out today:

The Second Mile was one of the ways Sandusky gained access to young victims.In April, Pittsburgh radio host Mark Madden wrote a story revealing Penn State for much of the cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's alleged child rape that has been exposed in the past week. While it didn't raise many eyebrows back then, six months later it looks to be incredibly accurate.

On Thursday morning, just hours after legendary head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired by the school's board of trustees, Madden was asked on The Dennis and Callahan Show what he believes the next piece of news will be.

What he said was twice as shocking as anything that's been released thus far.

"I can give you a rumor and I can give you something I think might happen," Madden told John Dennis and Gerry Callahan. "I hear there's a rumor that there will be a more shocking development from the Second Mile Foundation -- and hold on to your stomachs, boys, this is gross, I will use the only language I can -- that Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak."

After the news spread, Madden later explained via Twitter why he went public with the rumors.

"I normally abhor giving RUMORS credence," Madden wrote. "But whole Sandusky scandal started out as a RUMOR. It gets deeper and more disgusting all the time. One of state's top columnists investigating. That adds credence. I am NOT rumor's original source. [Why does] Sandusky deserve benefit of doubt?"

Madden also spoke more definitively on Dennis and Callahan to the cover-up efforts at the school and beyond that he expects will be made public soon.

"The other thing I think that may eventually become uncovered, and I talked about this in my original article back in April, is that I think they'll find out that Jerry Sandusky was told that he had to retire in exchange for a cover-up," Madden said. "If you look at the timeline, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

"My opinion is when Sandusky quit, everybody knew -- not just at Penn State," Madden added. "I think it was a very poorly kept secret about college football in general, and that is why he never coached in college football again and retired at the relatively young age of 55. [That's] young for a coach, certainly."

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