The late disgraced Penn State football coach Joe Paterno may have been aware of sexual-abuse allegations involving longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky several years earlier than previously admitted, according to a new report.
A newly obtained police document alleges Paterno once said that a 2001 complaint concerning Sandusky’s conduct with children was the second of its kind, CNN reported Saturday, suggesting the former Penn State coach lied about the extent of his knowledge about Sandusky’s sex crimes.
The one-page-long previously undisclosed Pennsylvania State Police report was written in 2011 after Mike McQueary — a former Penn State football assistant who later testified in the Sandusky case — recalled to investigators a conversation he had a decade earlier with Paterno, CNN reported.
Mr. McQueary told state police that he visited Paterno on a Saturday morning in 2001 and told him he had witnessed “an extreme sexual act occurring between Sandusky and a young boy” the previous evening, the document says, according to CNN.
“Paterno, upon hearing the news, sat back in his chair with a dejected look on his face …. [and] appeared to well up with tears,” the report said, according to CNN.
“Then he made the comment to McQueary this was the second complaint of this nature he had received about Sandusky.”
Sandusky was convicted in 2012 for sexually abusing 10 boys over the course of more than a decade, including three victims after the 2001 incident, CNN reported. He’s currently serving a 30-year prison sentence pending appeal.
Before dying in 2012, Paterno claimed he “had ‘no inkling’ that Sandusky might be a sexual deviant” until hearing from Mr. McQueary.
Attorneys for the Paterno family and Sandusky’s wife did not respond to requests for comment, CNN reported.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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