Yesterday, Steubenville City Schools superintendent Michael McVey was indicted for helping to cover up last year's rape of a high school girl by two Steubenville High football players. I diaried on the indictment here. While everyone agrees this is a BFD, there are some who wondered why football coach Reno Saccoccia wasn't indicted as well. Well, folks, I would argue that yesterday's indictment of McVey is a much, much bigger deal than any indictment that may come down against Saccoccia.
It won't come as a surprise if Reno is indicted, given that the players claimed via text that Reno would see to it they'd get off the hook. But I doubt that even the most cynical observer believed that McVey would be within an area code of this. It's already been amply established that this school district has its head several miles up its collective rear end. But if the superintendent of schools finds it acceptable to help run interference for a pair of rapists, then there really is something rotten in the state of Steubenville.
The more that's come out about this case, the more obvious it is that Steubenville needs a total housecleaning. To my mind, it would have been easier for the powers that be over there to resist calls for change if it were just Reno being indicted--it could have been chalked up to a guy who was a rogue coach at worst or a coach who didn't have control of his team at best. But that dog no longer hunts now that McVey has been indicted.
I wrote yesterday that McVey's indictment takes the Steubenville affair to the same level as the Penn State sex scandal. However, depending on how you look at it, McVey looks worse here than Graham Spanier. When you get right down to it, Spanier is likely going to jail primarily for being disengaged in a way that a college president cannot be. However, McVey stands accused of tampering with evidence--meaning his role in this was much deeper than Spanier's role was in the Sandusky affair.
Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said that unless new evidence comes to light, the grand jury's work is likely finished. However, it's very likely that new evidence will come to light very soon, since McVey and the other four adults who have been indicted so far are almost certainly spilling the beans about Reno, or are about to soon. But even in the unlikely event Reno does manage to escape being indicted, McVey's indictment is proof that justice has been done in this case. After all, DeWine said yesterday that the and the grand jury wanted accountability. If indicting the man where the buck stops in this school district isn't proof of that, nothing is.