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Penn State University officials betrayed those allegedly sexually abused by former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, the mother of one of the alleged victims said.
"I'm so upset," the mother told the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News. "My son is extremely distraught, and now to see how we were betrayed, words cannot tell you."
The mother shared her contempt for university officials who were slow to react to allegations against Sandusky. In particular, she pointed to university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and administrator Gary Schultz for callous disregard for the alleged victims and their families.
"To see that Graham Spanier is putting his unconditional support behind Curley and Schultz when he should be putting his support behind the victims, it just makes them victims all over again," she told the Patriot-News in a story published Tuesday.
Sandusky, 67, is charged with 21 felony counts for allegedly abusing eight victims over a period of 15 years. A possible ninth victim came forward to police after Sandusky's arrest.
According to the grand jury indictment, a Penn State graduate assistant witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a preteen boy in the showers of the football facility in 2002. That graduate assistant told his father what he saw, according to testimony, and then reported it to head coach Joe Paterno the following day.
Paterno alerted Curley, but university officials did not report the incident to off-campus police. Curley and Schultz, the vice president for finance and business, have been charged with perjury and failure to notify authorities about the allegations.
The woman's son, now 24, is identified as Victim Six in the indictment. He is not the boy allegedly witnessed by the graduate assistant. That boy has not been identified.
The mother of Victim Six was sickened by the allegations of the 2002 incident, and she didn't spare the witness, reported to be current Nittany Lions wide receivers coach Mike McQueary, of her contempt.
"I don't even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel," she told the newspaper. "(The graduate assistant) was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized. . . . He ran and called his daddy?"
Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said Monday the university's failure to report the alleged incidents to police or child-protection officials likely led to further victimization of young boys for several years. Paterno's legal requirement was that he notify his superior, but on Monday, Pennsylvania state police Commissioner Frank Noonan suggested there was a "moral responsibility" for the coach to make sure police were contacted.
The mother of Victim One in the indictment, meanwhile, spoke of her son’s bravery in disclosing his experiences to authorities during the three-year grand jury investigation.
“I’m very proud of him,” she told the Patriot-News. “He’s a brave kid. And his major concern in the whole thing was for anybody else. That was his big thing. He said, ‘I just don’t want this to happen to anybody else.’ ”
For the Patriot-News' detailed report on reaction from alleged victims' families, Click here.
NewsCore contributed to this story.
