McQueary testifies of shower scene

Associated Press

BELLEFONTE, Pa.

A former Penn State assistant coach who was a central figure in Joe Paterno’s downfall testified Tuesday that he heard a “skin-on-skin smacking sound” in a campus locker room one night in 2001 and saw something that was “more than my brain could handle.”

Jerry Sandusky was standing naked in the showers behind a boy, slowly moving his hips, Mike McQueary told the jury.

McQueary, one of the star witnesses in the child sexual abuse case against Sandusky, said he had no doubt he was witnessing anal sex. He testified that he slammed his locker shut loudly as if to say, “Someone’s here! Break it up!”

Then, he said, he went upstairs to his office to try to make sense of what he had seen.

Sandusky, 68, is on trial on charges he molested 10 boys over a 15-year period. Authorities say he abused them in hotels, at his home and inside the football team’s quarters. The former assistant coach and founder of an acclaimed youth charity has denied the allegations.

Paterno was fired last fall, shortly after Sandusky’s arrest, when it became known that McQueary had told the head football coach about the shower episode a decade ago. Two months after his dismissal, Paterno died of lung cancer at 85.

McQueary was composed during his testimony, and when asked if he knew Sandusky, he looked right at him with a sharp glance that Sandusky returned.

McQueary’s account differed little from the one he gave in December at a preliminary hearing for two Penn State administrators charged with failing to report the shower episode to authorities. One difference: He said it took place in 2001 instead of 2002.

Sandusky attorney Karl Rominger pressed McQueary during cross-examination about discrepancies in his estimate of the boy’s age.

McQueary replied: “If [you] want to argue about 9, 10, 11, 12 ... the fact is he had sex with a minor, a boy.”

Testifying on Day 2 of Sandusky’s trial, McQueary said that he went to the football team building one night and walked into the support staff locker room to put away a pair of new sneakers. As he entered the locker room, he said, he heard a noise.

“Very much skin-on-skin smacking sound,” he said. “I immediately became alert and was kind of embarrassed that I was walking in on something.”

He said that he glanced over his shoulder at a mirror at a 45-degree angle and saw Sandusky “standing behind a boy who was propped up against a wall.” He estimated the boy to be 10 to 12 years old. He said that the boy’s hands were up on the wall and “the defendant’s midsection was moving” subtly.

McQueary said he went to Paterno’s house the next morning and relayed what he had seen, but did not describe the act explicitly out of respect for the coach and his own embarrassment.

He said Penn State administrator Tim Curley called him a week later, and McQueary met with him and another school official, Gary Schultz. They “just listened to what I had said,” McQueary testified. A week or two later, he said, Curley called him to say they had looked into it.

McQueary, 37, was a graduate coaching assistant at the time and later became an assistant coach. He has been on paid leave since the scandal erupted.