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New Lawsuit Filed Accusing Jerry Sandusky Of Abuse

New Lawsuit Filed Accusing Jerry Sandusky Of Abuse

By Mark Dent, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new lawsuit has been filed against Jerry Sandusky, Penn State University, and The Second Mile by a man who claims Sandusky sexually abused him in 2008 and possibly in 2009.

Any abuse in 2009 would have occurred after Victim 1’s November 2008 accusation to Clinton County Youth and Children Services that later led to the investigation of Sandusky, a former Penn State football assistant coach. Victim 1 was the first person to come forward against Sandusky, and state officials who investigated him said they knew of no incidents of abuse that occurred during their probe, which lasted from March 2009 to November 2011.

The new lawsuit, however, indicates that abuse may have occurred even after Sandusky was notified of the investigation in November 2008.

The suit was filed late last month in Philadelphia County Common Pleas Court. The plaintiff, identified only as D.F., seeks compensatory and punitive damages from all parties of greater than $50,000.

According to the lawsuit, he met Sandusky in 2004 at a function of The Second Mile, an organization Sandusky ran for underprivileged youths. The plaintiff says he was 8 at the time and attended Second Mile functions until 2012.

On Aug. 30, 2008, according to the lawsuit, Sandusky, a former Penn State football coach who retired in 1999, took the plaintiff to a home game against Coastal Carolina. They left in the third quarter, and the plaintiff alleges he was driven to Sandusky’s home and sexually assaulted.

The suit claims another act of sexual abuse occurred in either 2008 or 2009, after which Sandusky took the youth on a shopping trip in the plaintiff’s hometown.

According to the lawsuit, state police interviewed the plaintiff in April 2012 after uncovering evidence from Sandusky’s house.

The pattern of interactions and alleged abuse claimed in the lawsuit reflects the experiences of the victims Sandusky, 70, was convicted of abusing. Many of the victims were groomed after Sandusky met them through Second Mile activities. Some of them also said Sandusky gave them gifts and took them to Penn State football games.

Sandusky was convicted in June 2012 of 45 counts of child sex abuse concerning 10 victims and was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison the following October.

Bret Southard, a Williamsport-based attorney who is representing the plaintiff, could not be reached.

The timing of the claims in the latest lawsuit would indicate abuse after authorities were alerted of Sandusky’s activities if the incident occurred in 2009. Victim 1, who has publicly come forward as Aaron Fisher, first claimed in November 2008 that he was sexually abused by Sandusky.

The case was referred to the Clinton County District Attorney’s Office in January 2009, the Centre County District Attorney’s Office in February 2009, and finally to the state Office of the Attorney General, which launched a grand jury investigation in March 2009.

This past June, Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a report on the Commonwealth’s investigation, which began when current Gov. Tom Corbett was attorney general. Kane concluded that politics had not slowed the office’s investigation but accused the investigators of a lack of urgency and inexplicable delays.

After the report’s release, Kane said two victims may have been abused by Sandusky during the state’s investigation, despite what the investigators said.

Frank Fina, who led the state’s investigation, told The Philadelphia Inquirer in June that a person made allegations in 2012, stemming from abuse that allegedly occurred in 2008 or 2009. Fina said the person gave two different accounts of when he was abused and then said he wasn’t sure when it happened.

Fina told The Inquirer that the Commonwealth did not prosecute his claim, partially because the lack of certainty would make him an unreliable witness. He termed as completely false. Kane’s claim that two people may have been abused during the state’s investigation.

The office of the attorney general declined to immediately comment. Fina, who now works in the District Attorney of Philadelphia’s office, did not respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiff is suing Penn State and The Second Mile for not taking affirmative action that could have prevented Sandusky from abusing him. The suit said Penn State and The Second Mile had knowledge or should have had knowledge of Sandusky’s abuse.

Penn State, per its protocol with lawsuits, declined to comment. Last year, the university settled with 26 Sandusky victims for a total of $59.7 million.

Dave Woodle, CEO of The Second Mile could not be reached for comment. The Second Mile disbanded in 2012, transferring its assets to Arrow Child & Family Ministries, a Texas-based children’s charity with operations in Pennsylvania.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Pennsylvania AG Cites ‘Crucial Missteps’ And Delays In Sandusky Investigation

Pennsylvania AG Cites ‘Crucial Missteps’ And Delays In Sandusky Investigation

By Angela Couloumbus and Craig R. McCoy, The Philadelphia Inquirer

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane said Monday that the state’s three-year investigation into pedophile Jerry Sandusky took too long because of “crucial missteps” and “inexplicable delays” by her predecessors.

“The facts show an inexcusable lack of urgency in charging and stopping a serial child predator,” Kane said in a statement, noting that the investigation only picked up in the last of the three years it took to investigate, and ultimately charge, the former assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University.

Kane’s comments came as she opened a news conference to release a long-awaited report into prosecutors’ handling of the case, an inquiry that she had made a cornerstone of her 2012 campaign for office.

While the report that she commissioned raises questions about certain lulls and delays in the inquiry, it ultimately concludes that the prosecutors on the case had reason to take their time to gather evidence against Sandusky and build a case around multiple victims.
It also does not fault them for using a grand jury to investigate Sandusky — and found no evidence that politics or a lack of resources influenced the investigation.

The Sandusky investigation began in 2009, while Gov. Tom Corbett was Attorney General, and continued while Corbett was running for the state’s highest office in 2010. Sandusky, a onetime top assistant to Joe Paterno, wasn’t charged until November 2011.

Kane’s review “revealed no direct evidence that electoral politics influenced any important decision made in the Sandusky investigation,” the report states.

In her 2012 bid for office, Kane questioned whether Corbett deliberately slowed the investigation for political purposes. Instead of using a grand jury, “I would have had (Sandusky) arrested after the first victims came forward,” she said then.

Kane, a Democrat, also had suggested that Corbett, a Republican, delayed the probe to avoid angering voters and donors. Politics, she told one newspaper editorial board, “probably” drove his decisions.

On Monday, she defended her decision to undertake the review, even though it did not unearth any proof of political influence. “Why those delays took place, we don’t know,” she said, but added that it was important for her to present the facts to the public and let it decide.

The report, which took 16 months to complete and runs, with appendices, more than 330 pages long, was authored by Geoffrey Moulton, a former federal prosecutor and law professor.

Corbett was interviewed during the inquiry but chose not to write a response to be attached to Kane’s report.

A spokesman for him on Monday said: “The investigation was conducted with a single purpose, which was to ensure justice for the victims and their families. It was a thorough and thoughtful review and in the end, a child predator can no longer victimize anyone else, and was convicted on 45 of 48 counts.”

Moulton’s review notes that prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s Office felt strongly that testimony from the first boy to accuse Sandusky would likely not have been enough to convict the former assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University.

But it also questions some of their decisions along the way. For instance, the report points out that prosecutors took too long to take certain investigative steps, including gathering reports on Sandusky from other law enforcement agencies.

And it notes that one of the prosecutors in the case was prepared to charge Sandusky in 2010 — and had even drafted charges — but that she could not get an answer from superiors as to whether to proceed with an arrest.

It also identifies several months in 2010 when the inquiry appeared to have ground to a halt.

Moulton’s report also notes that prosecutors waited too long to ask Penn State to turn over any records of complaints against Sandusky, who spent two decades at the school and maintained a campus office even after stepping down from his coaching post.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Pennsylvania Attorney General To Release Sandusky Report Next Week

Pennsylvania Attorney General To Release Sandusky Report Next Week

By Angela Couloumbis, The Philadelphia Inquirer

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will release her long-awaited report into the investigation that led to the prosecution of serial child sex abuser Jerry Sandusky and top officials at Pennsylvania State University on Monday, her office announced Friday.

Sources told The Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this month that the review found no evidence that then-Attorney General Tom Corbett delayed the investigation for political gain, but that it raises questions about the pace of the inquiry and some decisions of prosecutors. Corbett is now the governor.

Kane has declined to comment on those claims.

A pledge for a deeper look into the three-year Sandusky investigation was a cornerstone of Kane’s 2012 campaign to become the state’s top prosecutor. She contended that her predecessors — Corbett and his successors, William Ryan and Linda Kelly — wasted too much time by taking the case to a grand jury and allowed Sandusky, a serial predator, to remain on the streets.

After taking office in January 2013, Kane commissioned a former federal prosecutor, H. Geoffrey Moulton to lead the probe.

Moulton’s inquiry included interviews with dozens of people, including Corbett and former Chief Deputy Attorney General Frank G. Fina, who headed the investigation. Kane’s office also went through the process of recovering scores of internal emails her staff believed had been permanently purged by her predecessors.

Those who have read the report said Moulton lays out an exhaustive timeline of the 33-month Sandusky investigation, which began in spring 2009 under Corbett, and examines virtually every aspect of the probe from the moment the first victim came forward to when Sandusky was charged in November 2011.

The report could have lingering impact — particularly as the Republican governor campaigns for a second term and as Kane, a Democrat, ponders her own political future.

It’s also likely to be widely read by legions of Penn State fans and supporters of Sandusky’s boss — the late coach Joe Paterno — who have challenged every aspect of the case and its aftermath.

Sandusky is serving 30 to 60 years in prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting 10 boys. Former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two other ranking administrators are awaiting trial on accusations that they concealed concerns about his conduct or lied to the grand jury.

Photo via WikiCommons

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