STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Over the past 30 years, politicians, sports stars and community leaders heaped praise on Jerry Sandusky and the charity he founded for troubled youngsters, the Second Mile. It was a model program, and the acclaimed football coach was its driving force.
Now, prosecutors say that success enabled Sandusky to find boys and sexually assault them.
Sandusky, 67, was charged last week with molesting eight boys over a 15-year period in a scandal that rocked the Penn State campus and brought down the university’s beloved football coach, Joe Paterno.
In the aftermath, some are wondering whether the Second Mile can survive amid questions about its role in the alleged coverup.
Sandusky was a star assistant coach at Penn State from the 1970s to the 1990s. He founded the Second Mile in 1977 for youngsters from broken homes and troubled backgrounds, building it into an organization that helped as many as 100,000 children a year through camps and fundraisers.
Among the big-time athletic figures listed as honorary directors were Cal Ripken Jr., Arnold Palmer, former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris and Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid.
President George H.W. Bush praised the group as a “shining example” of charity work in a 1990 letter.
But prosecutors said that running the charity gave Sandusky “access to hundreds of boys, many of whom were vulnerable due to their social situations.”
He invited youngsters for overnight sleepovers at his home and took them to restaurants and bowl games. He wrestled in the swimming pool with kids who craved the attention. And he gave them gifts: golf clubs, sneakers, dress clothes, a computer and money, according to the indictment from the Pennsylvania attorney general.
The good-guy aura around Sandusky was so great that when some children questioned behavior that didn’t seem right, no one took the complaints seriously.
Troy Craig recalled attending a week-long sleep-away camp run by the Second Mile on the Penn State campus in the early 1990s. He was never sexually abused, but in other ways the coach’s behavior seemed inappropriate at the time, said Craig, 33, who is now a disc jockey in State College.
Sandusky “had a way of, whether it was a hug or a hand on the leg in the car as we were driving, or just a way of putting his arm around you,” Craig said. “I said this back then to people I knew. Everybody found it hard to believe, or that I was overreacting. I remember feeling as if I was the only one that thought anything was amiss.”
Sandusky has maintained his innocence.
Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and author of several books on abuse and violence in families, said pedophiles typically engage in a “grooming” process in which they select a potential victim and proceed to “break down the inhibitions and establish trust.”
Deborah Small, of the University of Pennsylvania, said she doesn’t think the Second Mile will survive the scandal.
“There’s too much moral hypocrisy going on,” she said. “No one’s going to want to be associated with them.”
Late last week, the Second Mile removed the list of honorary directors from its website.
Ex-coach Sandusky has been off Second Mile’s payroll since 2008
A review of tax forms filed by the Second Mile shows that out of almost $3.3 million in revenue during the 2008-09 year, salaries, wages and payments to directors totaled almost $1.4 million, along with $190,000 for “camp food” and $288,000 for “other expenses.”
Jerry Sandusky, at left, is no longer on the payroll. His last payment was $57,000 in 2007-08, according to tax records. Over the years, the payments to Sandusky totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
