The thing is he did the exact same thing Paterno did, with he added bonus of actually witnessing the event.  He notified his supervisors.  How is this different then what Paterno did ?

I would hardly consider an after the fact email as fact, but who knows.  If he stopped it, then good for him, he did what any reasonable adult would have done.

The line about him contacting the police doesn't jive with the actions and firings IMO.  There would be no need to even tell Paterno if the cops were involved and certainly no reason to fire him.  The assumption is that Paterno didn't do enough, but more then the cops ?

How do you know the boy would not have been injured further in the struggle?  Perhaps traumatized worse than he already was?  How do you know that Sandusky wouldn't have threatened the boy, wouldn't have threatened to accuse Mcqueary of the deed and been successful, destroying not only Mcqueary's career, but destroying any possible credibility as a witness, wouldn't have done a dozen harmful things that might have been worse for the victim in the long run?

It always works out great in the movies.  Not necessarily so in life.

Likewise lawyers at a trial might do the same thing with their questioning.  There is of course supposedly another lawyer on the other side to contest what is said.

(I know I am probably singing to the choir here.)

Personally I was and am offended that the purpose of the defense and the prosecution isn't to garner the truth but rather to "win" their case in what is called adversarial law.  We can easily see that the best lawyers win a lot because of their skills and resources rather than what the truth of the matter is.  People are imprisoned all the time because of these processes.  We know this because later they are freed when better lawyers get a chance at the case.

A few times when I testified in the military, I realized that the lawyer that was questioning me was attempting to elicit what I considered to be a partial answer that really didn't address the facts but that would help his side. Some showed considerable skill at it.  

And something else to consider: if there is an ongoing investigation into activities or actions that involve people in their capacity as employees, which leads to being subpoenaed to testify, I'm pretty sure there also had to be ongoing involvement on the part of the university's legal team - first, in being contacted by authorities to get permission to speak to these employees, and then, in having in-depth conversations with these employees about what they were likely to be asked, which had to involve knowing what they knew.  Because, let's remember that the university's lawyers' jobs would have been to determine what, if any, liability Penn State may have had in this whole mess - and that has to mean making sure they had identified every single worm that could possibly be in the can that was being opened up.

Meanwhile, in this two-year period, there was little effort to curtail Sandusky's on-campus access; it's one thing to presume someone innocent until the judicial system has concluded its process, but it's another to risk the well-being of children while that all plays out.