Twitter Scandal: Does Ashton Kutcher Support the Sexual Abuse of Children?

It sounds like an offensive and salacious question, but one a lot of Ashton Kutcher's 8.2 million followers ended up asking yesterday when they saw his Tweet in response to the Joe Paterno and Penn State child sexual abuse scandal.

“How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste" wrote Kutcher via Twitter.

In case you've been under a rock or refuse to read newspapers, Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was fired yesterday for his role in not reporting a truly horrific sexual abuse scandal involving one of his former coaches.

In a recent Grand Jury indictment, former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was accused of multiple instances of extreme sexual abuse of children, including one instance of an actual rape that occurred in the Penn State locker room.

When he was informed of sexual abuse allegations against Sandusky, Paterno contacted university officials but did not inform the police or report the matter to child protection agencies. No one has accused Paterno of committing any sexual abuse acts himself, but he has clearly stated that he did not at any time contact the police when learning of these incredibly disturbing allegations, and completely let the matter lie once he had one single conversation with university administrative officials.

Since Paterno's a college football coach, the folks at Adultingblog.com drew up a handy-dandy diagram for how Paterno should have proceeded:

And well, yeah, that didn't happen. All it takes is one thorough reading of the actual Grand Jury indictment (warning: it's really, really awful), and the actual detailed descriptions of the kind of truly horrific things were going on (oftentimes literally in the Penn State Athletic facilities, and typically under the auspices of charity) for just about anyone to realize exactly how messed up the situation was/is at Penn State.

Which is the conclusion Kutcher came to quickly. When he had initially heard about Paterno's firing, he thought it was because Paterno was simply really old and washed up (which is true).

When he learned more, the "Two and a Half Men" star was apparently mortified.

"Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet!" Kutcher said quickly after his first tweet. "Didn't have full story. #admitwhenYoumakemistakes"

As he began to realize exactly how bad the situation, and his mis-reading of it was, he Tweeted:

"As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case."

Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore run the Demi and Ashton Foundation, and regularly serve as vocal advocates against child prostitution and sexual abuse. Ironically, the website for their foundation currently also has a front page devoted to a promotion called "Football for Good." Not the best timing, @aplusk...

Given the serious implications of the scandal, and how seriously Kutcher is taking his mistake, he has temporarily suspended his Tweets and is apparently removing himself from the Twitterverse completely.

The actor released this statement today:

"A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible for delivering an informed opinion and not spreading gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I've come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I'm going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of it's content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I have offended. It was a mistake that I don't think will happen again."

While Kutcher made a mistake with his first tweet and admitted it, do you think he's doing the right thing by stepping away from the social media platform? What do you think about the Penn State scandal?