Psychologist Alerted Penn State’s Police to Sandusky in 1998, NBC Says
More than a decade before the former Penn State football assistant Jerry Sandusky was charged with child sexual abuse, a psychologist warned the university police in an investigation into a suspected assault of an 11-year-old boy that Sandusky’s actions in that case fit a “likely pedophile’s pattern.” But the university seemed to do nothing about Sandusky in the wake of that report in 1998.
What is unknown is whether senior officials at Penn State were unaware of the investigation, or whether they knew of it but chose to do nothing.
The details of the investigation were made public Saturday in an NBC News broadcast. NBC News, which obtained the police report and the assessments of two psychologists who had interviewed the 11-year-old boy, did not release the documents with the article it published online.
The investigation uncovered a clear warning about Sandusky, then the defensive coordinator for the Nittany Lions. Sandusky was charged late last year with more than 50 counts of child sexual abuse. He is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys from 1994 to 2009.
“I was horrified to know that there were so many other innocent boys who had their hearts and minds confused, their bodies violated,” Alycia A. Chambers, a therapist for the boy identified as Victim 6 in the report by the grand jury that indicted Sandusky, told NBC News. “It’s unspeakable.”
Sandusky, 68, has maintained his innocence. Last week, his lawyer, Joseph Amendola, asked a judge to dismiss the sexual abuse charges against Sandusky. On Saturday, Amendola issued a statement saying the NBC report had raised new questions “which will be formulated into additional discovery requests we will submit to the attorney general in the near future, hopefully, for disposition at the April 5 hearing on Jerry’s motions.”
Bill Mahon, a spokesman for Penn State, said in a statement, “The university can have no comment on issues relating to the Sandusky investigations in the past or present.” He added that Penn State was “fully cooperating” with the authorities.
The campus police’s 1998 report totaled almost 100 pages, but the district attorney at the time decided against taking the case to trial. People with knowledge of the active Sandusky case told The New York Times in November that the district attorney’s decision in 1998 was seen as a close call, even with the evidence that the Penn State police had.