For two Democratic lawmakers with an interest in Penn State, the Paterno family's commissioned critique of the Freeh report gives rise to the need for yet another investigation.

Sen. John Yudichak and Rep. Scott Conklin said the Paterno family-commissioned critique of Freeh report prompts the need for a "thorough" investigation into Penn State's handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex scandal.

The next one that needs to be done, they say, should be done without any preconceived ideas with a goal of getting to the bottom of what really happened when Penn State officials heard allegations of Jerry Sandusky's child sex crimes.



In reacting to today's release of the Paterno report, Sen. John Yudichak, D-Luzerne County, a Penn State alumnus, and Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, who represents the area around the university's main campus, also accused Penn State's leaders and the NCAA of jumping too quickly to accept the conclusions of the Freeh report as fact.

“Leaders in these situations need to pause and not worry about the chaos going on around them and get to the facts,” Yudichak said.

The senator said the university should have called on the General Assembly to form a special committee with subpoena powers, which Freeh’s team lacked, to handle the probe.

Both lawmakers said today's report confirms their concerns about the veracity of the Freeh report which relied on limited access to pre-2004 emails and included no personal interviews with key players.

“It’s time we do a real investigation,” Conklin said.

He suggests Attorney General Kathleen Kane expand her probe of how the Jerry Sandusky investigation was handled to get to look into why Sandusky’s child sex crimes weren’t detected sooner.

He also is open to the General Assembly getting involved in probing aspects of the situation and looking at university governance changes.Yudichak said the Senate State Govenrment Committee plans to look into the university's governance structure.

Both also said the NCAA should lift its sanctions until it does its own thorough investigation.

“The governor and board of trustees should never have agreed to any sanctions until a thorough investigation was done,” Conklin said. “The way this was done is not the way things should be done.”