Prosecutors in Sandusky case present new, graphic details

Prosecutors have laid out more precise, graphic details in their case against Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach set to stand trial next month on allegations of sexually assaulting young victims over 14 years.

The “amended” information, filed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, was presented in court documents released online Friday evening by the Centre County courts.

Sandusky’s trial is scheduled to begin June 5. His lawyer Joe Amendola, however, filed a motion earlier this month asking for it to be delayed.

The former Penn State defensive coordinator and founder of the Second Mile charity has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He remains under house arrest until his trial.

The number of counts, 52, Sandusky is charged with according to the revised documents released Friday is identical to those announced earlier. The number of victims, 10 identified by number but not by name, is also the same number as before.

Yet significantly more detail is offered, for each victim and each count, in the amended documents. The state had made a motion on Friday to amend the documents, which Sandusky’s defense team did not oppose.

Whereas previously public information had given broader age and time ranges, as well as more generic locations, what’s presented in the documents out Friday is more specific. That includes identifying the various types of sexual activity that Sandusky is accused of having with the young victims, as well as places where the alleged illicit incidents occurred – many on them on Penn State’s campus, though some were also reported at area hotels and, in one case, at a middle school.

The case dates to “between September 1995 and December 1996,” when Sandusky allegedly tried to and had “indecent contact” with a person then between 9 and 11 years old, the attorney general’s office wrote in the “amended bill of particulars.” These incidents allegedly occurred at Sandusky’s home in State College and in the East Area Locker room, which is in an area with several Penn State athletic facilities.

From September 1997 to July 1999, Sandusky is further accused of “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse” with a 10- to 12-year-old in, among other places, his car and an outdoor pool in University Park.

The first instances of impropriety at the Lasch Football Building – a centerpiece, along with Beaver Stadium, of the Nittany Lions football program – in the prosecution’s case came in 1998. Victims and witnesses suggested that such acts occurred there for several more years, according to the documents.

One such incident occurred on February 9, 2001. Then football graduate assistant Mike McQueary’s account of what happened that evening in the Lasch building eventually led, years later, to the ouster of legendary head coach Joe Paterno and charges being filed against Penn State administrators Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, on accusations of perjury and failing to report the allegation to police.

Another witness described how, nearly three months earlier while the football team was gone for an away game, Sandusky engaged in illicit activity with an adolescent in the assistant coach’s locker room in the same building.

Prosecutors refer to several one-time offenses in the amended documents released Friday, as well as allege inappropriate sexual activity involving Sandusky and specific victims that spanned several years.

That includes Victim 4, who prosecutors say was abused more than 50 times between 1996 and 2000 at various locales, such as the Toftrees Resort and Conference Center.

Another was between 11 and 15 when Sandusky victimized him in, among other places, the Central Mountain Middle School in Clinton County over parts of four years. The most recent incidents outlined in the prosecutor’s documents occurred in December 2009.

InSession’s Jessica Thill contributed to this report.