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The legacy of Joe Paterno, and by extension Penn State, appears set to take yet another blow in a world after the Jerry Sandusky scandal first broke.
In a report first filed by CNN, there is evidence that Joe Paterno knew years before Jerry Sandusky's arrest that his longtime assistant might be sexually abusing children. That would contradict the now dead coach's original claim he knew of no such thing.
A CNN source obtained a one-page Pennsylvania state police report that lays out an account from Mike McQueary. For those who don't remember, McQueary reported to Paterno an incident he had witnessed in a locker room between Sandusky and a young boy.
Joe Paterno allegedly told McQueary in 2001 that the claim against Sandusky “was the second complaint of this nature he had received,” according to the police report, which was written after Sandusky's arrest 10 years later.
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McQueary's claim of abuse and other allegations is what led to Jerry Sandusky's conviction in 2012 for sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years. Sandusky is in jail and is currently appealing the court's ruling.
The issue here is logistics, as the police report creates an issue for those who have long backed the denials by Paterno, his family and his loyalists that the coach knew anything of Sandusky's serial molestation before the 2001 incident.
Paterno's own testimony before a grand jury, and his published statement a week before he died in 2012 that he “had ‘no inkling' that Sandusky might be a sexual deviant” until he heard the shocking allegation from McQueary, now appears murky.
Obviously, this report contradicts any such thing.
