BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A former Penn State assistant coach who was a central figure in 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.”
Jerry Sandusky was standing naked in the showers behind a boy, slowly moving his hips, Mike McQueary told the jury.
McQueary, one of the star witnesses in the child-sexual- abuse case against Sandusky, said he had no doubt he was witnessing anal sex. He 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, when 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.
McQueary was composed during his testimony, and when asked if he knew Sandusky, he looked right at him with a sharp glance that Sandusky returned.
McQueary’s account differed little from the one he gave in December at a preliminary hearing for two Penn State administrators charged with failing to report the shower episode to authorities. One difference: He said it took place in 2001 instead of 2002.
Sandusky attorney Karl Rominger pressed McQueary during cross-examination about discrepancies in his estimate of the boy’s age.
McQueary replied: “If (you) want to argue about 9, 10, 11, 12 … the fact is he had sex with a minor, a boy.”
Earlier Tuesday, the teenager who triggered the grand-jury investigation that rocked Penn State became the second of the 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, labeled Victim No. 1 by a grand jury, said he eventually confided in a school- district guidance counselor that Sandusky was molesting him, only to be told by school officials: “He has a heart of gold, and he wouldn’t do something like that.”
“So they didn’t believe me,” the teenager said.
School officials ultimately referred the case to the county’s child-welfare agency, which found his account credible.
During cross-examination, Sandusky attorney Joe Amendola asked the teen whether he had financial motives for bringing his accusations.
“All I know is I’m here to tell the truth about what happened to me, just like everybody else,” he replied.
Amendola pressed the accuser about his initial statements to a counselor and later the grand jury that were less detailed than later testimony. The teen, who graduated from high school last week, responded that it was an embarrassing subject.
“I don’t believe anybody would want to talk about it,” he said.
Sandusky didn’t visibly react to the teen’s account and looked straight ahead during his testimony.
