Paterno died in January 2012.
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The late Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno was long aware of a sex-abuse allegation against his assistant, convicted serial child molester Jerry Sandusky, according to a court document that came to light Thursday.
The order stems from a case filed by Penn State’s liability insurer, Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Insurance Co., which denied coverage on litigation in the case, prompting the university to file a breach of contract suit.
Lawyers for Sandusky can pursue several issues at the May 20 hearing, including the competency of his trial attorney, whether prosecutors and the judge who oversaw the grand jury withheld evidence and whether the state attorney general’s office leaked sealed grand jury material to a reporter in an effort to persuade additional victims to come forward.
Penn State fired an 84-year-old Paterno midseason in 2011 as a result of charges of mishandling the case despite the veteran coach’s state decision to retire after the last game of the year’s campaign.
The insurance company also alleged that Sandusky sexually abused children in the 1980s, according to the court filing.
However, the line in the documents about Paterno’s knowledge of the situation directly stirs a national debate that has raged since the original allegations surfaced: Did Paterno know, and did he cover anything up? The PennLive article also notes that there are “separate references in 1987 and 1988 in which unnamed assistant coaches witnessed inappropriate contact between Sandusky and unidentified children, and a 1988 case that was supposedly referred to Penn State’s athletic director at the time”. At least 30 men were involved in a civil settlement with Penn State, and the number of victims could be even higher.
In 2011, Paterno told a grand jury that he did not know of any other incidents involving Sandusky, who retired from Penn State in 1999.
Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers said late Thursday there is no evidence to corroborate the new disclosure and that Paterno never covered up Sandusky’s actions. To the contrary, the evidence clearly shows he shared information with his superiors as appropriate.
Three administrators who worked with him as high-ranking university officials await trial on criminal charges for their handling of the Sandusky scandal.
University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz were all forced out of their jobs.
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He was convicted four years ago on more than 40-counts of child sexual abuse.
