EX PENN STATE assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was jailed last night after new child sex abuse charges were filed against him based on the claims of new two accusers, one of whom says he screamed in vain for help while Sandusky attacked him in a basement bedroom.
The latest accusers are the ninth and 10th described as victims in grand jury reports that claim Sandusky befriended and then molested boys he met through his charity for troubled youths, The Second Mile.
A grand jury document released yesterday echoed an earlier report, saying Sandusky gave the boys gifts while making advances on them.
One of the new accusers said Sandusky kept him in a basement bedroom during overnight visits to Sandusky’s home, forced him to perform oral sex and attempted on at least 16 occasions to anally penetrate him, sometimes successfully.
“The victim testified that on at least one occasion he screamed for help, knowing that Sandusky’s wife was upstairs, but no one ever came to help him,” the grand jury report said.
Sandusky now faces criminal accusations from 10 young men and more than 50 charges stemming from what authorities say were assaults over 15 years on boys in his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere. The scandal has provoked strong criticism that Penn State officials didn’t do enough to stop Sandusky.
The scandal prompted the ousting of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno and the school’s longtime president, Graham Spanier.
‘Horsed around’
Sandusky, 67, has said repeatedly that he is innocent and has vowed to fight the case. In interviews with NBC and The New York Times, he said he showered and horsed around with boys but never sexually abused them. His lawyer, Joseph Amendola, said yesterday that he had not read the latest grand jury report but had no reason to doubt Sandusky’s claims of innocence.
Sandusky was wide-eyed and quiet during the arraignment in a cramped district magistrate’s office outside the small town of Bellefonte. He could not immediately pay $250,000 cash bail and was driven to Centre County jail by agents from the state attorney general’s office.
He had been arrested at his home, handcuffed behind his back and driven to court wearing a blue and white Penn State wrestling jacket and matching sweat pants.
After the hearing, Sandusky avoided eye contact and did not speak to about two dozen reporters and photographers waiting before authorities placed him in the back of a sedan that would shuttle him to jail.
The new accusers, who contacted officials after Sandusky’s initial arrest on 5 November, told the grand jury they met him through the charity he founded in 1977.
Sandusky in his booking photo at the Centre County Correctional Facility in Bellefonte, Penn. (AP Photo/Centre County Correctional Facility)
He said he was 11 or 12 when he first met Sandusky in 2004 and Sandusky took him to Penn State football games, gave him gifts and money and sexually assaulted him for years, according to the grand jury report.
The 10th accuser told the grand jury he was referred by a counselor to The Second Mile in 1997, when he was 10 and experiencing problems at home.
He also attended Penn State games with Sandusky, spent time at Sandusky’s house and was subjected in the basement to “wrestling sessions” that led to Sandusky performing oral sex on him, the report said. The accuser also detailed being molested in a pool on the Penn State campus and a time when he said Sandusky exposed himself in a car while driving and requested oral sex from him.
The boy refused, and after Sandusky expressed his displeasure, the boy told his foster mother he didn’t want to see Sandusky any more, the report said.
The grand jury report did not say whether the boys told anyone else about the assaults before testifying.
A preliminary hearing on the latest charges was scheduled for Tuesday, the same day as a hearing on the previous charges.
