Keith Masser, a Penn State trustee, said in an interview that he initially thought the scandal was about a failure of administrative oversight of the football program. Now he suspects it goes deeper.
When the board of trustees ousted former Penn State President Graham Spanier on Nov. 9, four days after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's arrest, it was "because we didn't have confidence in his ability to lead us through this crisis," Masser said. "We had no idea (at the time) he would be involved in a cover-up."
Sandusky is charged with 52 counts of sex abuse. His trial began last week in Centre County and is ongoing.
Masser stressed he was speaking for himself and not the board at large, and said he wants to be careful not to draw premature conclusions. But he said it now appears like "top administration officials and top athletic officials were involved in making the decision to not inform the proper authorities."
With prosecutors focused on the sex-abuse allegations against Sandusky, the trial isn't intended to yield evidence of a possible cover-up. That's the job of Louis Freeh, the former FBI director hired by the board of trustees to investigate the scandal. His report could be released in late summer.
Spanier, who has not been charged with any crime, did not respond to email and phone messages. His attorney did not return a phone call.
Former assistant football coach Mike McQueary said he saw Sandusky having what he believed to be anal sex with a young boy in 2001. But his report to Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz went nowhere. McQueary's dad testified that during a conversation, Schultz said he was suspicious of Sandusky, and NBC reported this week that emails between former university President Graham Spanier and Schultz aiming to keep McQueary's allegation from going further were turned over to the attorney general.
The law firm defending Curley and Schultz against charges they lied in their grand jury testimony and failed to report suspect abuse said in a statement this week they "conscientiously considered" McQueary's account and "deliberated about how to responsibly deal with the conduct and handle the situation properly." They did not respond to follow-up questions posed by the AP.
Masser said the Freeh investigation is helping Penn State get to the bottom of the scandal.
"I hope the truth comes out, and from a board standpoint it was Judge Freeh's investigation that found these emails that relate Spanier, Curley and Schultz to the suspected cover-up," he said. "I want the alumni to understand and the stakeholders to understand that this independent investigation is uncovering this information."
Sandusky was charged in November and December with more than 50 counts of abuse. The scandal brought disgrace to Penn State and led to the ousters of both Spanier and Joe Paterno, the Hall of Fame coach who died in January at age 85.
The testimony of eight of the 10 of the individuals named in a grand jury report prompted disgust and revulsion from Penn State alumni and others who took to Twitter last week to express their dismay — and to call for the heads of anyone involved in concealing abuse. "Anyone who knew and didn't report should burn!" tweeted one.
The grim depictions of abuse also hit at least one former player hard.
The person referred to as "Victim 4" told jurors that Sandusky let him wear star linebacker LaVar Arrington's jersey and gave him a magazine autographed by the former NFL All-Pro, who played at Penn State in the late 1990s.
Arrington apologized to the man a day after his testimony, writing in The Washington Post that he felt awful for having missed the warning signs.
"He always seemed mad or kind of distant. I remember distinctly asking him: 'Why are you always walking around all mad, like a tough guy?'" Arrington wrote. "I guess with everything that I had going on, it certainly wasn't a priority for me to try to figure him out."
Arrington continued, "I hate everything that has happened, and now I must admit I feel even worse, knowing what allegedly was happening so close to me, and that I was unaware."
Ann Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame, attributes the failure to stop Sandusky to a phenomenon she calls "motivated blindness," a tendency, whether subconscious or deliberate or sometimes both, to ignore unethical or even criminal behavior by others when you perceive it to be in your best interest to do so. Motivated blindness "means I don't probe, I don't ask, I don't believe," Tenbrunsel said. "I have evidence in front of me but choose to disregard facts."
Some people could have kept quiet about their suspicions because they wanted to protect Penn State and its beloved — and highly lucrative — football program, or their own jobs, she said. Others might not have wanted to believe the sainted Sandusky capable of the abuse he's now charged with.
"You have all kinds of examples of people who either did not notice, or when they did notice didn't engage in behaviors that would have stopped it because it wasn't in their best interests to do so," said Tenbrunsel, co-author of "Blind Spots," a book that explores why otherwise decent people sometimes fail to do the right thing.
Some of the alleged assaults appear to have been interrupted, if unwittingly. One young man said Sandusky coerced him into engaging in oral sex in a hotel bathroom in Texas around the time of the 1999 Alamo Bowl — Sandusky's last game before retiring — stopping only when the coach's wife entered the hotel room. The same person, "Victim 4," testified about another occasion in which former assistant football coach Tom Bradley was showering in the team headquarters while he and Sandusky were behind a curtain in another stall.
"I can't say what (Bradley's) thoughts were, but I think he was suspicious of something because he stayed in the shower until everything was done," the man testified without elaborating.
Bradley did not return several messages from The Associated Press.
A wrestling coach told jurors that he found the person referred to as "Victim 1" and Sandusky rolling around on the floor in the high school weight room one evening.
Joseph Miller said that while he found it odd, he gave the famed coach a pass. "It was Jerry. Jerry Sandusky. He's a saint. What he's doing with kids, it's fantastic," Miller recalled thinking. "So I didn't think anything of it."
The trial is scheduled to enter its fifth day Monday as prosecutors near the end of their case. Sandusky denies all the charges, saying that while he showered with boys, he never touched them sexually. His attorney has suggested the accusers are twisting the truth because they intend to sue.
___
Associated Press writers Mark Scolforo and Genaro C. Armas in Bellefonte, Pa., contributed to this report.
