The defense of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky hasn’t started off too well. In an obvious knock to the defense, all eight boys alleging he sexually abused them will willingly testify during preliminary hearings that kick off next week in Centre County, Pa., according to ABC News.
Sandusky, 67, has denied wrongdoing, but he still faces charges of molesting eight boys over a 15-year period, including a rape allegedly witnessed by a then-Penn State graduate assistant in the school’s football facilities in 2002.
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ABC News reports that Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lawyer, says one of the eight boys has actually denied he was abused and Sandusky has claimed that all the boys were like family to him, boys he met while doing charity work for his foundation, Second Mile. Sandusky went as far as to say that the times “roughhousing” with the boys were “precious times.”
Prosecutors claim that Second Mile was nothing more than a way for Sandusky to groom his victims by building trust (and giving them gifts and money) and attorney Michael Boni, now representing one of the victims, says that his so-called precious moments were actually “vile, horrendous, unspeakable moments for his victims.”
In what could be viewed as another blow to Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State head coach fired for his role in the alleged cover-up of the Sandusky scandal, Sandusky told the New York Times that he never spoke to Paterno about a Penn State Police investigation into a 1998 child molestation complaint (Sandusky was the Penn State defensive coordinator at that time) or the alleged 2002 rape.
And with the Sandusky preliminary hearings about to bring the scandal back into the spotlight, don’t expect much joy in Happy Valley.