Jerry Sandusky is speaking out and he’s maintaining his innocence.
The former Penn State defensive coordinator maintains he never sexually abused children and even describes himself as a “father figure” to the kids in his life from a recent interview with The New York Times.
“They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever,” Sandusky said. “I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all.”
Since the Penn State abuse scandal, Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts of molestation involving eight boys over 15 years and is free on bail while awaiting a preliminary hearing scheduled for Dec. 13. A grand jury investigating Sandusky said in a report that some of the assaults occurred in the Penn State football showers, including a 2002 allegation in which a graduate assistant testified he saw Sandusky sodomizing a young boy.
The scandal reached a climax when university trustees fired Paterno – dubbed famously as major college football’s winningest coach – four days after charges were filed against Sandusky, amid outcries by a riotous student body and criticisms that university administrators should have done more when the allegations came to their attention.
During his nearly four-hour interview with The Times at his lawyer’s home, Sandusky painted a picture of friendly scenes of sleepovers and wrestling matches, hosted at his State College, Pa., home. He described a family and work life that “could often be chaotic, even odd, one that lacked some classic boundaries between adults and children.”
“It was, you know, almost an extended family,” Mr. Sandusky said of his relationship with children from the charity he founded, The Second Mile. He characterized his experiences with the children as “precious times,” and said the physical aspect of the relationships “just happened that way.”
But three attorneys representing one of the alleged victims released a statement Saturday, with attorney Andrew Shubin calling Sandusky’s comments “an entirely unconvincing denial and a series of bizarre explanations.”
“Pedophiles often horribly mischaracterize the abuse they perpetrate as something that their victims sought or benefited from,” said Justine Andronici, who represents one accuser.
A third attorney, David Marshall, added that Sandusky’s interview “goes a long way toward corroborating the victims’ accounts” because Sandusky acknowledges “he `wrestled’ and showered alone with boys, gave them gifts and money, and travelled with them.”
Sandusky told the newspaper he and Paterno, who had a working relationship of over 30 years, never spoke about the alleged incidents, saying, “I never talked to him about either one. That’s all I can say. I mean, I don’t know.”
Still, the state’s top cop has criticized the way school leaders handled allegations and said Paterno and other officials had a moral responsibility to do more.