Michael McQueary, a former assistant football coach at Penn State University, testified Tuesday that he had "no doubt" that he saw Jerry Sandusky having sex with a young boy in the team’s showers.
McQueary, 37 — a key witness in Sandusky’s child sexual abuse trial but one whose testimony has been characterized as varying and hard to reconcile — was on the prosecution’s witness list but hadn’t been expected to testify until Wednesday at the earliest.
Sandusky, 68, the former longtime defensive coordinator at Penn State, denies all 52 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years. Two grand jury reports accused him of having used his connection to one of the nation’s premier college football programs to "groom" the boys, whom he met through his Second Mile charity for troubled children, for sexual relationships.
McQueary — a graduate assistant coach at the time who later became a full-time staff member — testified that he had returned to the football team’s facilities late on a Friday night to retrieve some tapes when he heard "showers running and smacking sounds — very much skin-on-skin smacking sounds."
McQueary said he could see the shower area through a mirror. As he opened his locker, he said, he saw "Coach Sandusky standing behind a boy who is propped up behind the shower. The shower is running, and he is right up against" the back of the boy, who was propped up against the wall leaning on his hands.
Sandusky’s arms were "wrapped around the boy’s midsection in the very, very closest proximity that I thought you could be in," McQueary said.
During the first day of his sexual-abuse trial, an alleged victim of Jerry Sandusky testified Monday about "horsing around" that he said eventually turned into five years of sexual abuse. NBC’s Michael Isikoff reports from Bellefonte, Pa.
McQueary slammed his locker shut "as loud as I could to make a loud sound," he said. "I made it in an attempt, I think, to say, ‘OK, someone’s here, break it up please.’"
When he went back to take a second look, "both individuals were separated," he said.
NBC: Former Penn State president could face charges in Sandusky case
Asked by Joseph McGettigan, the deputy state attorney general who is prosecuting the case, whether he believed Sandusky was engaging in anal sex with the boy, McQueary said: "I thought i saw that, yes. No doubt about that."
McQueary’s account has been contested because he initially testified at a hearing last year that he believed the incident occurred in March 2002, while prosecutors say it actually occurred on Feb. 9, 2001 — more than a year earlier.
McQueary said Tuesday he may have been mistaken and that "I really do believe it was 2001," as the prosecution contends. Questioned intensely about the discrepancy under cross-examination, he said, "I have no problem saying that I’m not a perfect individual."
McQueary has also been criticized for not having done more to put a stop to Sandusky’s alleged abuse. He defended himself on that count Tuesday, saying was shocked and "wasn’t thinking 100 percent right."
"I’m used to pressure situations, and I can say that was more than my brain could handle at that time," he said.
McQueary said he told his father that night. The next day, he went to head coach Joe Paterno’s home and "made sure Coach Joe knew it was sexual and it was wrong, and there was no doubt about that."
McQueary was blocked from telling the jury what Paterno — who died earlier this year — told him, because it would be hearsay.
Wesley Oliver, a Widener University law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and msnbc.com, said the defense tried to demonstrate in the first two days of testimony that the alleged victims have been coached to implicate Sandusky and have financial motives to make up their accounts.
But "if Mike McQueary saw Sandusky in the shower with a young boy in a compromising position — and the jury will not doubt that he did after Tuesday’s testimony — then it seems much less likely that these young men are motivated by greed or prosecutorial influence," Oliver said.
Alleged victim tells of continued abuse
Sandusky’s trial entered its second day Tuesday in Bellefonte, Pa., with testimony from the 18-year-old man identified in court papers as "Victim 1." The Central Mountain High School student said Sandusky began repeatedly sexually abusing him when he was in middle school..
Although Sandusky’s accusers are being identified by name in court, NBC News and msnbc.com do not identify the victims of sexual assaults.
The young man testified that he stayed overnight at Sandusky’s house more than 100 times in 2005 and 2006.
"At first, it was — he would kiss me on the forehead good night, and then it — then it came to him kissing me on the cheek, then rubbing my back, then pulling me on top of him and rubbing my back," the young man said, pausing a couple times to collect himself.
Eventually, the behavior progressed to "back massages, hand down the back of my shorts — the same thing, except this time he, he sat there and looked at me and said something along the lines of ‘it’s your turn,’ and he, he made me, he made me put my mouth on his privates," the man continued, by now crying openly and wiping his face.
That started when he was "close to going onto 13," he said.
Once the young man entered high school, Sandusky — who volunteered as a football coach there — would sometimes have him pulled out class for visits in a school conference room, he said. On one occasion, he alleged, Sandusky even followed his school bus so he could intercept him on the way home to demand an explanation for why the young man was avoiding him.
The experience was so traumatic, he said, that "I acted out. I started wetting the bed. I got into fights with people and stuff I would never normally do."
Jessica Dersham, a case worker with Clinton County Children and Youth Services, testified that in a meeting with Sandusky, who was accompanied by an attorney, the coach "admitted to blowing raspberries on his stomach, laying on him to crack his back" — which the young man said was a wrestler’s way to loosen the back muscles — and "rubbing his back."
She said Sandusky couldn’t recall whether his hand went under the boy’s pants but insisted that he never had any sexual contact or "intent."
The trial, which opened Monday in Centre County Court, is the result of months of breathless coverage that led to the firing of Paterno, a college football legend who won more games than any other major college coach in history. Sandusky, who was at his side for many of those victories, was for many years presumed to be Paterno’s heir apparent.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12183531-ex-coach-mcqueary-testifies-no-doubt-he-saw-sandusky-having-sex-with-young-boy?lite
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