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At Penn State, Who Knew What About Jerry Sandusky? (Photos)

Accusations about the coach date back to the ‘90s. Who may have known early on about alleged abuse at Penn State?

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At the center of the Penn State sexual-abuse scandal is the Second Mile charity for underprivileged children. The Pennsylvania state attorney general suggests Jerry Sandusky may have used the charity, which he founded in 1977, to find some of his reported victims, allegedly molesting at least eight Second Mile boys over a period of 15 years. Several reports indicate the charity knew something of abuse allegations. In 1998, Victim 6 told his mother that he had showered with Sandusky in the Penn State football team's locker room. The boy’s mother told the university police, who opened an investigation and listened in as Sandusky reportedly admitted to showering with the boy. One of the people who likely reviewed the investigation—which never resulted in charges—was Penn State attorney Wendell Courtney, who also represented Second Mile. In 2008, when the new investigation began, Katherine Genovese, an executive vice president at Second Mile, acknowledged that the charity already had concerns about Sandusky. Then there’s the question of a possible coverup. Officials with Second Mile say that several years of the organization’s records are missing and may have been stolen, which investigators fear may limit their ability to determine whether Sandusky used charity resources to target victims or buy their silence.  

Patrick Smith / Getty Images
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Katherine Genovese is still at Second Mile, but her husband, Jack Raykovitz, the charity’s former CEO, resigned as the scandal broke. If Raykovitz wasn't alerted to Sandusky by Second Mile's lawyer, Wendell Courtney, after the 1998 investigation, he got a second warning sign in 2002, when Penn State athletic director Tim Curley reportedly told him that Sandusky was seen with a 10-year-old boy in a shower at the university’s football facility. Curley also said he told Raykovitz that Sandusky was barred from bringing children onto the campus. Raykovitz maintains that he had been told only that a graduate student was made “uncomfortable” when he saw Sandusky in the shower with a young boy. 

Centre Daily Times, MCT / Getty Images
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Mike McQueary’s testimony that he witnessed Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in 2002 was pivotal in the investigation into Sandusky—but police didn’t get it until eight years after the fact. When McQueary reportedly happened upon Sandusky allegedly raping a boy in the Penn State shower, he went up the chain of command—telling his coach, Joe Paterno, who in turn told athletic director Tim Curley. Police say it wasn’t until they found a post on a football forum that they contacted McQueary, and that he opened up about what he’d seen. McQueary told a friend about the incident in an email recently obtained by the Associated Press. 

Chris Gardner / Getty Images
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When McQueary told Paterno, Paterno told athletic director Tim Curley. In doing so he fulfilled his minimum legal obligation, says Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan, “but somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child.” 

Rob Carr / Getty Images
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Tim Curley, Penn State’s athletic director, is one of the two Penn State officials who have been charged with perjury and failure to report abuse allegations. When Paterno and McQueary told him of Sandusky’s alleged rape, he did not notify police, according to the charges. Instead, he met with Gary Schultz, the university’s vice president of business and finance (who also oversaw the campus police), and decided to revoke Sandusky’s locker-room privileges. Curley did tell Second Mile, but only that "the information had been internally reviewed and that there was no finding of wrongdoing,” according to the charity.  

Matt Rourke / AP Photo
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Gary Schultz, Penn State’s vice president for business and finance and the other university official to be charged with perjury, met with McQueary and Paterno a week and a half after McQueary reported what he had seen, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly. Schultz, who oversaw the campus police, claims McQueary told him only that Sandusky was “horsing around” and “Sandusky might have inappropriately grabbed the young boy's genitals while wrestling.” McQueary told the grand jury that he told Schultz of the alleged rape in detail. In any case, Curley allegedly failed to report the incident to law enforcement. “Their inaction likely allowed a child predator to continue to victimize children for many, many years,” said Kelly of Schultz and Curley.  

Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General / AP Photo
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Like Paterno, Penn State President Graham Spanier was cleared of any legal wrongdoing but widely criticized for not doing anything to stop Sandusky’s alleged abuse, and like Paterno, he was fired by Penn State’s board. Schultz and Curley met with Spanier and told him "to report an incident with Jerry Sandusky that made a member of Curley's staff ‘uncomfortable,'" according to the grand jury report, but Spanier reportedly did not notify police. He approved the plan to ban Sandusky from bringing children into the locker room, but claims he was never told Sandusky’s misconduct was sexual in nature.  

Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo
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The second investigation into Sandusky began at Central Mountain High School, where Sandusky volunteered as a football coach after retiring from Penn State. In 2008, a student at the school reportedly told the principal that Sandusky molested him, and the police were called. But in grand jury testimony, both the school's athletic director, Steven Turchetta, and the wrestling coach, Joe Miller, said they had reason to suspect Sandusky before the boy came forward. Turchetta testified that Sandusky was "clingy" and "suspicious" with the boy, and sometimes visited the school to pull him out of class and meet with him privately. Miller, the coach, testified that in 2006 or 2007 he walked in on Sandusky one night, laying on the floor of the weight room, face-to-face and in physical contact with the boy. Surprised, Sandusky allegedly jumped up and said he was just practicing wrestling moves. There are also questions about whether the school may have discouraged the boy's mother from contacting the police. The superintendent says they contacted police immediately, but the boy's mother and other sources say school officials discouraged her.

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In the fall of 2000, two years before McQueary would walk in on Sandusky (the incident McQueary testified he saw), a temporary janitor named James Calhoun reportedly had an almost identical experience. He told his co-workers that he'd just walked into the Penn State locker room and seen Sandusky performing oral sex on a child, according to grand-jury testimony. The janitorial staff told Calhoun to report what he'd seen, but it seems he never did. Calhoun now suffers from dementia and couldn't testify, but his co-workers told the grand jury that he came to them distraught that night, saying that he'd “fought in the Korean War ... seen people with their guts blown out, arms dismembered … I just witnessed something in there I'll never forget.”

Matt Rourke / AP Photo

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