Court case raises new questions about Paterno

Sandusky allegations

may go back to 1970s

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA

A new legal document that claims a boy told Joe Paterno in 1976 that Jerry Sandusky had molested him has dropped like a bombshell and reignited debate about what the Penn State coach knew about his longtime assistant decades before his arrest.

Details of the testimony remain hidden inside a sealed deposition in Penn State’s court fight with the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Insurance Company.

Paterno family members immediately dismissed the accusation, and even an attorney for victims of Sandusky cautioned that he did not know of irrefutable evidence supporting the claim.

Paterno, who died in 2012, had said that an assistant’s report in 2001 of Sandusky attacking a boy in the shower was the first he knew of such allegations against Sandusky.

Details of the 1976 claim were not included in the court document — a judge’s ruling in Penn State’s dispute with its insurer — and a lawyer for the company declined to comment.

In another claim, CNN reported Friday that a man has alleged he was hitch-hiking as a troubled teen in 1971 and was picked up by Sandusky and subsequently raped in a Penn State locker room by Sandusky, then 27.

CNN reports that the victim’s foster family encouraged him to report what happened to two Penn State officials, including one man allegedly named Joe, whom the victim claims was Paterno.

The man, now 62, told CNN the men accused him of fabricating the story and threatened to report him to the authorities.

CNN reported that the man was never interviewed during an investigation of Sandusky four decades later because of the statute of limitations on such crimes in Pennsylvania.

Also Friday, NBC news reported allegations that as many as six Penn State coaches witnessed “inappropriate behavior” between Sandusky and boys, dating to the 1970s.

Sandusky is serving a lengthy prison sentence for his conviction in the sexual abuse of 10 children. The university has also paid out more than $90 million to settle 32 civil claims involving Sandusky. How far back in time all the acts occurred has not been made public.

Penn State’s insurer claims there is evidence of several early acts of molestation by Sandusky, and not just the one by a boy who allegedly went to Paterno with his report in the 1970s, according to the ruling by Philadelphia Judge Gary Glazer. He said the events are described “in a number of the victims’ depositions.”

The insurer’s evidence includes an allegation that one assistant coach saw “inappropriate contact” between Sandusky and a child at the university in 1987 and a second assistant “reportedly witnessed sexual contact” between Sandusky and a child a year later, the judge said. Also in 1988, the insurer claims, a child’s report of his molestation by Sandusky was referred to Penn State’s athletic director.

The judge wrote there was no evidence that reports of the incidents went “further up the chain of command at PSU.”

In his ruling, the judge found that Penn State had to assume the costs of settlements stemming from claims over most of the 1990s because its insurance policies did not cover abuse or molestation.

When Sandusky abused children at his home or at events held by the children’s charity he started, “he was still a PSU assistant coach and professor, and clothed in the glory associated with those titles, particularly in the eyes of impressionable children,” Glazer wrote.

“By cloaking him with a title that enabled him to perpetuate his crimes, PSU must assume some responsibility for what he did both on and off campus,” he said.

Penn State issued a statement late Friday saying it has “no records from the time to help evaluate the claims,” noting Paterno could not defend himself.

Tom Kline, a lawyer who settled an abuse allegation with Penn State, said he and other lawyers were aware of claims dating to the ’70s.