A LAWYER FOR a former Penn State assistant football coach accused of molesting boys said last night he didn’t mean to refer to a gay sex phone line when he said anyone who believes university officials thought his client raped a 10-year-old boy and did little about it should call 1-800-REALITY.
The phrase is one attorney Joseph Amendola says he has used for years to mean “get a life,” but the phone number is that of a sex line for ‘gay and bi-curious men’.
Amendola’s quip came Tuesday after his client Jerry Sandusky stunned a packed courtroom and backed out of a preliminary hearing at the last minute, avoiding a face-to-face confrontation with accusers who the lawyer said were just trying to cash in by making up stories of child sex abuse. The remark outraged some of the accusers and advocates for victims of abuse and created a huge stir online.
Amendola, during his lengthy comments to reporters outside the courthouse, said that if former Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary had witnessed a 10-year-old boy being sexually assaulted in a campus shower and had told the head football coach, the athletic director, a university vice president and the university president and “their response was simply to tell Jerry Sandusky that ‘Don’t go into the shower anymore with kids,’ I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY because that makes absolutely no sense.”
He later said he has been using the remark “when people have said things that make no sense.”
“It’s analogous to ‘get a life,’” he said. “I had no idea that was a real number, let alone what it actually is. I will not be using that line in the future!”
Earlier, Sandusky, who has acknowledged showering with boys but says he never molested them and has pleaded not guilty, vowed to “stay the course, to fight for four quarters.”
Read a full report of yesterday’s developments here.
