A Pennsylvania state police report obtained by CNN revealed late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno may have received a sexual abuse claim about assistant Jerry Sandusky well before anyone originally believed.
CNN published details of the report Saturday, and they center around former Nittany Lions receivers coach Mike McQueary, who was a key witness in Sandusky’s 2012 conviction on 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over the course of 15 years.
The following is a passage from an article by CNN’s Sara Ganim explaining the one-page report:
McQueary, a one-time Penn State football assistant who became the star witness in the case against Sandusky, told state police in 2011 that he’d visited Paterno on a Saturday morning 10 years earlier to tell him that the previous evening he had witnessed “an extreme sexual act occurring between Sandusky and a young boy” in a football locker room shower, according to the report by Pennsylvania police.
“Paterno, upon hearing the news, sat back in his chair with a dejected look on his face,” the report states, adding that McQueary “said Paterno’s eyes appeared to well up with tears.”
“Then he made the comment to McQueary this was the second complaint of this nature he had received about Sandusky,” the report states, citing McQueary’s recollection.
Paterno and McQueary had “no discussion of the previous complaint at that time or any other time,” the report states.
The report contradicts Paterno’s claim in his 2012 grand jury testimony shortly before his death that he had no knowledge of Sandusky’s crimes before McQueary’s 2001 report. CNN found McQueary was never asked about the second complaint under oath.
Thumbnail photo via Matthew O’Haren/USA TODAY Sports Images
