STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Just hours after stepping down, two high-ranking Penn State administrators face arraignment Monday on charges they lied to a grand jury investigating former defense coordinator Jerry Sandusky and failed to properly report suspected child abuse, a case that has left fans reeling.
Late Sunday, after an emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees, university President Graham Spanier announced that Athletic Director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, the school's senior vice president for business and finance, would be leaving their posts.
Curley requested to be placed on administrative leave so he could devote time to his defense, and Schultz will be going back into retirement, Spanier said. Both men have maintained they are innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with the probe into whether Sandusky sexually abused eight boys over a 15-year period.
State Attorney General Linda Kelly and state police Commissioner Frank Noonan are expected to hold a 1 p.m. news conference about the case Monday a few miles from the Harrisburg district court. The arraignment is scheduled for immediately after that.
WTAE.com will show live video of the news conference at 1 p.m. Look for a link at the top of our homepage 10 minutes prior to start time.
Sandusky was arrested Saturday on charges that he preyed on boys he met through The Second Mile, a charity he founded for at-risk youths
The charity said in a statement Sunday that Sandusky has had no involvement with The Second Mile programs involving children since 2008, when Sandusky told the foundation that he was being investigated on child-sex allegations.
The case has rocked State College, a campus town routinely ranked among America's best places to live and nicknamed Happy Valley. Under head football coach Joe Paterno -- who testified before the grand jury and isn't considered a suspect - the teams were revered both for winning games, including two national championships, and largely steering clear of trouble.
In a statement issued Sunday, Paterno said the charges were "shocking."
"The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling," he said. "If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers."
Sandusky, whose defenses were usually anchored by tough-guy linebackers, spent three decades at the school. The charges against him cover the period from 1994 to 2009.
Sandusky retired in 1999 but continued to use the school's facilities, but university officials said Sunday they were moving to ban him from campus in the wake of the charges.
Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, told The Associated Press on Sunday that whether Paterno might testify was premature and nothing more than rampant speculation.
"That's putting the cart way ahead of the horse," he said. "We're certainly not going to be discussing the lineup of potential witnesses."
The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before a state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized.
Sandusky's attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.
"He's shaky, as you can expect," Amendola told WJAC-TV. "Being 67 years old, never having faced criminal charges in his life and having the distinguished career that he's had, these are very serious allegations."
Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault.
The first case to come to light was a boy who met Sandusky when he was 11 or 12, and physical contact began during his overnight stays at Sandusky's house, the grand jury said. Eventually, the boy's mother reported the sexual assault allegations to his high school, and Sandusky was banned from the child's school district in Clinton County. That triggered the state investigation that culminated in charges Saturday.
But the report also alleges much earlier instances of abuse and details failed efforts to stop it by some who became aware of what was happening.
Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said.
And in 2002, Kelly said, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said.
Curley and Schultz met with the graduate assistant about a week and a half after the attack was reported, Kelly said.
"Despite a powerful eyewitness statement about the sexual assault of a child, this incident was not reported to any law enforcement or child protective agency, as required by Pennsylvania law," Kelly said.
There's no indication that anyone at school attempted to find the boy or follow up with the witness, she said.
As a summary offense, failure to report suspected child abuse carries up to three months in jail and a $200 fine.
Sandusky was arrested Saturday and charged with 40 criminal counts.
Curley denied that the assistant had reported anything of a sexual nature, calling it "merely `horsing around,"' the grand jury report said. But he also testified that he barred Sandusky from bringing children onto campus and that he advised Spanier of the matter.
The grand jury said Curley was lying, Kelly said, adding that it also deemed portions of Schultz's testimony not to be credible.
Schultz told the jurors he also knew of a 1998 investigation involving sexually inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with a boy in the showers the football team used.
But despite his job overseeing campus police, he never reported the 2002 allegations to any authorities, "never sought or received a police report on the 1998 incident and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002," the jurors wrote. "No one from the university did so."
[...]
Reply With Quote
6 Member(s) thanked for this post
1 Member(s) liked this post
Originally Posted by Saffron
Bookmarks