Mcqueary gives testimony
Ex-coach says he saw Sandusky molesting boy
BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A former Penn State assistant coach whose account led to Joe Paterno’s downfall testified Tuesday that he heard a “skin- on-skin smacking sound” in a campus locker room one night in 2001 and saw something that was “more than my brain could handle.”
There was Jerry Sandusky standing naked in the showers behind a boy, slowly moving his hips, Mike McQueary told the jury. He said he had no doubt he was witnessing anal sex.
McQueary, one of the star witnesses in the child sexual abuse case against Sandusky, testified that he slammed his locker shut loudly as if to say, “Someone’s here! Break it up!”
Then, he said, he went upstairs to his office to try to make sense of what he had seen.
Sandusky, 68, is on trial on charges he molested 10 boys over a 15-year period. Authorities say he abused them in hotels, at his home and inside the football team’s quarters. The former assistant coach and founder of an acclaimed youth charity has denied the allegations.
Paterno was fired last fall, shortly after Sandusky’s arrest, after it became known that McQueary had told the head football coach about the shower episode a decade ago. Two months after his dismissal, Paterno died of lung cancer at 85.
Testifying on Day 2 of Sandusky’s trial, McQueary said that he was at home, in bed, watching the movie “Rudy,” when he decided to go to the football team building. He said he walked into the support staff locker room to put away a pair of new sneakers and, as he opened the door, heard a noise.
“Very much skin- on-skin smacking sound,” he said. “I im- mediately became alert and was kind of embarrassed that I was walking in on something.”
He said he glanced over his shoulder at a mirror at a 45- degree angle and saw Sandusky “standing behind a boy who was propped up against a wall.” He estimated the boy to be 10 to 12 years old. He said that the boy’s hands were up on the wall and “the defendant’s midsection was moving” subtly.
“The glance would have taken only one or two seconds. I immediately turned back to my locker to make sure I saw what I saw,” he said.
He said he wasn’t sure whether Sandusky saw him. After slamming his locker to make some noise, he left .
“It was more than my brain could handle,” he said. “I was making decisions on the fly. I picked up the phone and called my father to get advice from the person I trusted most in my life, because I just saw something ridiculous.”
He said he was extremely vague with his father, who told him to leave immediately.
McQueary said he went to Paterno’s house the next morning and relayed what he had seen, but did not describe the act explicitly out of respect for the coach and his own embarrassment.
He said Penn State administrator Tim Curley called him a week later, and McQueary met with him and another school official, Gary Schultz. They “just listened to what I had said,” McQueary testified. A week or two later, he said, Curley called him to say they had looked into it.
The identity of the boy who was said to have been in the showers is a mystery.
Earlier Tuesday, the teenager who triggered the grand jury investigation that rocked Penn State, labeled Victim No. 1 by a grand jury, became the second of Sandusky’s alleged victims to take the stand.
Choking back tears, he said Sandusky kissed him, fondled him and engaged in oral sex with him during numerous sleepovers in the basement of Sandusky’s home while the coach’s wife was upstairs.
The accuser said he eventually confided in a school district guidance counselor that Sandusky was molesting him, only to be told: “He has a heart of gold, and he wouldn’t do something like that.”
“So they didn’t believe me,” the teenager said.