There's an interesting comment on the Moor Larkin blog from Misa:
jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.com/2017/03/po...is-910ths-of-it.html

Referring to a broadcaster called John Ziegler and his "brilliant interviews about the Penn State scandal", to which Misa includes links, Misa writes:

"Later in the same interview he says, “I can go through detail by detail as to why this happened the way that it did. But mostly it happened because the focus shifted at the beginning of the case — think about this case as a mathematical equation. A complex mathematical equation. One number times another number times another number. Everyone thought the first number was something other than zero. Well, I did the math and said, “Wait a minute. The first number is zero.” Which means the whole equation, zero times anything is still going to be zero.”

It made me wonder whether the first number would be the first person to come forward or could be the actual question "Were you abused by Mr X?" If Mr X wasn't an abuser, the first number would be zero whatever the first person replied.