“I just saw Coach Sandusky in the showers with a boy and what I saw was wrong and sexual,’’ McQueary recalled telling his father that night in 2002. He repeated it the next morning to coach Joe Paterno, who slumped deep into his chair at his kitchen table.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ ’’ McQueary said.
McQueary’s testimony yesterday at a preliminary hearing for two Penn State officials accused of covering up the story was the most detailed, public account yet of the child sex abuse allegations that have upended the university’s football program and the entire central Pennsylvania campus. Paterno and the university president have lost their jobs, and officials Tim Curley and Gary Schultz are accused of lying to a grand jury about what McQueary told them.
A Pennsylvania judge yesterday held Curley, the university’s athletic director, and Schultz, a retired senior vice president, for trial after the daylong hearing.
Curley said that McQueary never relayed the seriousness of what he saw, and said he was only told that Sandusky was “horsing around’’ with a boy but that his conduct wasn’t sexual.
Curley said he told the university president about the episode and the top official at a children’s charity that Sandusky founded, but never told university police. “I didn’t see any reason because I didn’t think at the time it was a crime,’’ he told the grand jury, according to testimony read into the record yesterday.
Curley, Schultz, and Paterno have been criticized for never telling police about the 2002 charges. Prosecutors say Sandusky continued to abuse boys for six more years. Sandusky has denied having inappropriate sexual contact with boys.
He said he did not give Paterno explicit details of what he believed he'd seen, saying he wouldn’t have used terms like sodomy or anal intercourse out of respect for the longtime coach.
Paterno told the grand jury that McQueary reported seeing Sandusky doing something of a ‘‘sexual nature’’ with the youngster but that he didn’t press for details.
‘‘I didn’t push Mike ... because he was very upset,’’ Paterno said. ‘‘I knew Mike was upset, and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster.’’
McQueary said Paterno told him he'd ‘‘done the right thing’’ by reporting the encounter. The head coach appeared shocked and saddened and slumped back in his chair, McQueary said.
Paterno told McQueary he would talk to others about what he'd reported.
Nine or 10 days later, McQueary said he met with Curley and Schultz and told them he'd seen Sandusky and a boy, both naked, in the shower after hearing skin-on-skin slapping sounds.
‘‘I told them that I saw Jerry in the showers with a young boy and that what I had seen was extremely sexual and over the lines and it was wrong,’’ McQueary said. ‘‘I would have described that it was extremely sexual and I thought that some kind of intercourse was going on.’’
McQueary said he was left with the impression both men took his report seriously. When asked why he didn’t go to police, he referenced Schultz’s position as a vice president at the university who had overseen the campus police
‘‘I thought I was talking to the head of the police, to be frank with you,’’ he said. ‘‘In my mind it was like speaking to a (district attorney). It was someone who police reported to and would know what to do with it.’’
Curley told the grand jury that he couldn’t recall his specific conversation with McQueary, but that McQueary never reported seeing anal intercourse or other sexual conduct. He said he recalled McQueary reporting wrestling or ‘‘horsing around.’’
Schultz said he remembered McQueary and Paterno describing what the younger coach saw only in a very general way.
‘‘I had the impression it was inappropriate,’’ Schultz told the grand jury. ‘‘I had the feeling it was some king of wrestling activity and maybe Jerry might have grabbed a young boys genitals.’’
Under cross-examination, McQueary said he considered what he saw a crime but didn’t call police because ‘‘it was delicate in nature.’’
‘‘I tried to use my best judgment,’’ he said. ‘‘I was sure the act was over.’’ He said he never tried to find the boy.
Paterno, Schultz and Curley didn’t testify, but Judge Wenner read their grand jury testimony from January in weighing the case.
Curley’s attorney, Caroline Roberto, said prosecutors ‘‘will never be able to reach their burden proof at a trial.’’
Schultz’s attorney, Tom Farrell, predicted his client would be acquitted.
He also took a shot at Paterno, saying, ‘‘I'm an Italian from Brooklyn, and he may not have called the police but he may have done what I would have done, which is get the boys in the car with a few baseball bats and crowbars and take it to the fellow.’’
Sandusky says he is innocent of more than 50 charges stemming from what authorities say were sexual assaults over 12 years on 10 boys in his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere. The scandal has provoked strong criticism that Penn State officials didn’t do enough to stop Sandusky, and prompted the departures of Paterno and the school’s longtime president, Graham Spanier.
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