3 ex-PSU officials will stand trial

Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa.

Penn State’s ex-president and two former top school administrators were ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges accusing them of a cover-up in the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, a court ruling that promises to prolong the media attention and court battles casting a shadow over the university.

Prosecutors showed enough evidence during a two-day preliminary hearing to warrant a trial for ex-President Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz and ex-athletic director Tim Curley, District Judge William Wenner concluded.

Wenner called it “a tragic day for Penn State University.”

The men engaged in a “conspiracy of silence,” the lead state prosecutor, Bruce Beemer, said during his closing argument. They covered up their failure to tell police about a 2001 allegation that Sandusky was molesting a boy in a university locker- room shower, despite knowing that police investigated complaints about Sandusky showering with boys in 1998, Beemer said.

“When they were finally asked about [the 1998 investigation], it was 2011, and what happened in the interim?” Beemer said.

The key testimony centered on a series of emails among the three defendants that discussed the 1998 and 2001 cases and the account of Mike McQueary, a former team assistant and quarterback who said he immediately had told Schultz, Curley and the late longtime football coach Joe Paterno that he had seen Sandusky molesting a boy — dubbed Victim 2 in court documents — in the shower in 2001.

Sandusky’s conviction includes charges for molesting the boy known as Victim 5 in court papers in those showers a mere six months later, sexually abusing Victim 3 around the same period and molesting Victims 1 and 9 in later years.