According to new court documents unsealed in a Philadelphia court, Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State Head Coach, was aware of the abuse in the 1970s perpetuated by Jerry Sandusky, one of Penn State’s former assistants who was convicted in 2012 of 45 counts of sexual abuse of young boys.
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The victim, who was identified in court records as John Doe 150, gave graphic testimony in 2014 about an abusive touching incident he said he suffered at the hands of Sandusky when he was in a shower while attending a football camp at Penn State.
“Specifically, yes”, the man replied.
“Yeah, I mean, he always tried to play things in a different way than what was happening, yeah, for sure”, John Doe 101 said when asked by a PMA attorney if Sandusky tried to cover up what he was doing. “I said, is that all you’re going to do?”
According to the man, called “John Doe 150” in the court documents, this happened in 1976. Jurors determined that Sandusky, who retired from Penn State in 1999, used his access to university facilities and his foundation for underprivileged youths to sexually abuse the boys.
Schiano has since gone on to be a head coach at Rutgers, where he spent 10 years with the Scarlet Knights. The court documents were just recently unsealed because of a “legal dispute between the university and an insurance company over the responsibility for almost $93 million the school paid in settlements with victims”, according to The Washington Post.
Paterno family lawyer Wick Sollers said in a statement that there were “numerous specific elements of the accusations that defy all logic and have never been subjected to even the most basic objective examination”. But the one coach the man named said he wasn’t working there at the time.
The Paternos’ spokesman, Dan McGinn, said family members aren’t doing additional interviews on Tuesday’s release now because the information is as new to them as it is everyone else and they want time to review it.
State over sex assault claims involving ex-assistant coach Jerry Sandusky says the payments of as much as $5.5 million appeared high to “extremely high”.
Here are the other explosive details revealed in the documents, which were part of a civil suit.
Once a steadying presence for a program rocked by the unthinkable, Bradley has now become yet another Penn State employee with documented knowledge of Sandusky’s actions well before his eventual arrest. With this latest release of information, the total mishandling of the Sandusky investigation is highlighted once again. Schiano was a graduate assistant and defensive backs coach for the Nittany Lions from 1990 to 1995.
The provider claims that Penn State officials covered up the allegations, which in turn failed to prevent future instances of abuse.
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A judge had previously disclosed that there were allegations Paterno fielded a complaint about Sandusky in 1976.
