Mike McQueary always dreamed of becoming a football coach at Penn State. For two years he had served as a graduate assistant on Joe Paterno’s staff. After one more year in that position he hoped to get a less menial, full-time job as a coach at his alma mater. At twenty-seven, he was smart and athletic; he had been a quarterback for Paterno during his undergraduate years. With bright red hair and a hulking six-foot-three frame, he had come to Penn State after a notable high school career with the Little Lions at State College High School. He was a good enough player to have been recruited by a number of schools, but he decided to stay home and play for the coaches he had known since he was a kid. McQueary waited his turn to start behind players destined for professional stardom. He didn’t earn the full-time starting quarterback job until 1997, when he was a senior. Once given the opportunity, he led Penn State to a 9–3 record and a place in the Citrus Bowl in Florida. His name still remains in the university’s record book for most passing yards and total offense in a single game in his first start, against the University of Pittsburgh. He also was a finalist for the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, presented annually to the nation’s most deserving senior quarterback.
After graduating he tried to earn positions on professional teams, the Oakland Raiders in California for one, and NFL Europe’s team in Scotland. When he was unsuccessful, he worked as an assistant payroll clerk at Penn State for a year while he tried to wrangle a job on Paterno’s coaching staff. He eagerly accepted a graduate assistantship when it was offered to him three years after he graduated.
In March 2002 almost everyone at Penn State had left campus for spring break. But Mike was staying put, enjoying the quiet. Watching a football movie on television, he was inspired to drive to Penn State football headquarters, where he wanted to pick up some tapes of prospective recruits to review. When he arrived just after 9 p.m., the complex was dark.
After he entered the dark halls of the Lasch Building, McQueary went first to the support staff locker room to drop off a new pair of sneakers. He walked past coaches’ offices, an academic research center, workout facilities, rooms with whirlpools and saunas, and other fitness rooms in the state-of-the-art facility. As he was walking through the swinging wooden doors of the locker room, he heard a clap-clap-clapping sound that made him somewhat embarrassed; the sound seemed to be from wet skin-on-skin sex. His first thought was that one of the players had snuck into the complex with a paramour for some kinky action. Or maybe a custodian had brought someone in. McQueary moved gingerly toward the shower room and through the first set of double doors. As he opened the second set of doors, he looked over his shoulder at a mirror set at an angle that reflected directly into the shower room. There was the retired Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, naked with a prepubescent Caucasian boy who appeared to be no more than ten years old. The child was so small that Sandusky’s body nearly enveloped him, the coach’s hands wrapped around the naked child’s waist. The embrace appeared to be sexual in nature.
“Jerry was directly behind him in a very, very, very close position, with Jerry’s hands wrapped around his waist or midsection,” McQueary recalled later in sworn testimony. He said his position just outside the shower room prevented Sandusky and the child from knowing he was there. He moved closer for a better look. Walking through the second set of doors, he saw that the child was facing the wall with his hands up against it. Although exactly what was going on was hidden, McQueary said it was clear to him that they were in a sexual position. “I believed Jerry was sexually molesting him and having some type of intercourse with him,” he said. He testified that he did not see Sandusky’s genitalia or penetration, but “that’s what I believe was happening.” Shocked and disturbed, McQueary retreated to the locker room and slammed his locker door shut to try to get Sandusky’s attention. He then walked back into the shower room and saw that the man and the child had separated. Less than a minute had passed since he had first stumbled on the scene.
The three of them exchanged uncomfortable eye contact, but no words. “To be frank, I can’t describe what I was feeling or thinking,” McQueary said under oath. “Shocked and horrified, quite frankly, not thinking straight. I was distraught.” He was stunned to see a man who was not only his former coach at Penn State, but also the father of two high school friends and college teammates, sexually abusing a child.
McQueary had always revered Sandusky, whom he had known since he was a young child, through sports and other activities. He considered the coach a down-to-earth, self-effacing gentleman always quick with a quip and a smile. McQueary had never given Sandusky’s touchy-feely interactions with kids a second thought, because he knew of his work helping troubled children through The Second Mile, founded when McQueary was just two years old. Now, for a few seconds, he stared down the two as they stood wet and naked in the shower. McQueary wasn’t able to say if the naked coach was sexually aroused because he didn’t look at his private parts, only stared into his eyes. He said he was in such a state of shock that instead of saying anything or immediately taking the child away, he quickly exited the shower room.
Later he’d say he thought the child was safe because whatever had been happening had ended. Though the campus police headquarters was only a short distance from the Lasch Building, he didn’t go there either. Instead he went directly to his second-floor office and called his father, John McQueary, manager of medical offices in the region, and a person he trusted to guide him. The elder McQueary asked his son to come home immediately. There he and his father had an hour-long discussion, joined halfway through by his father’s friend and colleague, Dr. Jonathan Dranov. The three decided the younger McQueary should report the incident to Joe Paterno as soon as possible. McQueary went home to bed, then called the legendary football coach at about 8 o’clock the next morning, a Saturday.
“Coach, I need to come to your house and talk to you about something,” McQueary said he told Paterno. “He said, ‘I don’t have a [full time coaching] job for you, so if that’s what it’s about, don’t bother coming over.’ ” When McQueary told him it was much more serious than that, the coach told him to come over right away. There he and Paterno sat at the kitchen table, and he explained the reason for his visit.
“I saw Jerry with a young boy in the shower and it was way over the lines, extremely sexual in nature and I thought I needed to tell him about it,” McQueary remembered years later. Out of respect for Paterno, he did not reveal the details of what he saw, but said he was sure the legendary coach got the picture. McQueary said Paterno, then seventy-eight years old, slumped back in his chair. The coach told him he was sorry he had to witness such a thing and pledged to take action. “He said, ‘You’ve done the right thing. I know it is probably tough for you to come here and tell me this, but you’ve done the absolutely right thing,’ ” McQueary testified. Paterno told him others at the university would be in contact with him soon.
Despite the urgency projected by Paterno during that early morning meeting, nine days passed before McQueary was contacted by Athletic Director Tim Curley, a 1976 graduate of the university. Curley, a charismatic and influential man who put Penn State on the map in many sports beyond football, summoned him to a meeting with himself and Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz. Schultz had been in charge of the Penn State Campus Police back in 1998, when Sandusky’s behavior with an eleven-year-old boy was called into question, so this would be the second time he was hearing about allegations of Sandusky’s improper conduct with a minor.
Curley, Shultz, and McQueary met in a conference room at the Bryce Jordan Center, the school’s basketball arena and home to the athletic director’s office. “I told them I saw Jerry Sandusky in the showers with a young boy in what seemed was extremely sexual, over the lines and it was wrong,” McQueary said later to a grand jury and in criminal court. He said he told the officials more than he told Paterno, but he again refrained from describing all of the lurid details. He later insisted, “I would have described them as extremely sexual and that some sort of intercourse was going on.” He said he believed Curley and Schultz “thought it was serious what I was saying, that they would investigate it or look into it closely and they would follow up.” Asked specifically if he told the officials that Sandusky was committing a sexual act against the child, he answered, “There is no doubt at all.”
Sometime over the next two weeks Curley and Schultz paid an impromptu visit to President Graham Spanier. Without naming McQueary, they let him know about a football staff member’s concern that Sandusky was behaving inappropriately with a child in the locker room showers. The meeting was very brief, and the two administrators provided a sanitized version of what McQueary says he had told them. Instead of an accusation of rape, they told Spanier the incident had involved “horsing around” or “horseplay” between Sandusky and the child. From their description, Spanier didn’t think the incident was very serious.
Although they didn’t provide the details that McQueary said he had given them, they did tell the university president they were not comfortable with Sandusky and The Second Mile kids using Penn State facilities anymore. Spanier approved their plan to instruct Sandusky to stop bringing children to the football facilities or programs. The former coach was also going to be told to surrender his keys to the football complex facilities, and Curley was going to let Sandusky know of his decision to report the incident to top officials of The Second Mile.
After their meeting Curley relayed the plans that would resolve the Sandusky issue to McQueary, who accepted what he was told with an “okay.” McQueary never had another discussion with Schultz.
To fulfill his obligations to the president, Curley summoned Sandusky to a meeting. Initially the former coach did not admit he had even been at the Lasch Building on the night in question. At another meeting almost two weeks later he acknowledged being there for a workout without mentioning being caught naked by McQueary with a young child in the shower. Later Curley, who has no law enforcement experience, acknowledged the sanctions he issued against Sandusky were virtually unenforceable because the retired coach enjoyed emeritus status as a university retiree, on which he had negotiated lifetime use of the football facilities.
Curley later testified that he had met with John Raykovitz, the long-time head of The Second Mile and a child psychologist. Even though Curley did not believe Sandusky’s actions in the shower rose to criminal conduct, he said he reported Sandusky to the charity because of McQueary’s report. He described Sandusky’s behavior as “inappropriate” and added, “I figured [the child] was probably a Second Mile person.”
It remains unclear whether Raykovitz ever discussed the matter with Sandusky, but some Second Mile board members would later complain that they were never notified about Mike McQueary’s allegations, or that Sandusky had been barred from bringing Second Mile children to the Penn State football facilities. The former coach was Raykovitz’s close friend.
Gary Schultz also minimized McQueary’s allegations. “I had the feeling there was some kind of wrestling around activity and maybe Jerry might have grabbed the young boy’s genitals,” he told a grand jury. Schultz admitted that any such conduct was clearly inappropriate but said, “The allegations came across as not that serious.” As for criminality, Schultz said there was no indication of a crime. He didn’t make any other reports. Yet he later said that he was under the impression that other Penn State officials—he did not say who—contacted a social service agency about the allegations. When Schultz learned that no one from Penn State had reported McQueary’s allegations about the incident to an outside police or child welfare agency, the man charged with oversight of Penn State’s police department said only, “Wow, I thought it was turned over.”
He later admitted to the grand jury that when he heard McQueary’s report, he knew about the 1998 allegation from the young mother who had wanted Sandusky arrested for his behavior with her son. Schultz would say much later that he didn’t make a big deal out of the earlier report because he did not think it was right to impugn the reputation of a guy like Sandusky over child molestation accusations that did not merit prosecution.
In the 1998 case Schultz was aware that the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare was involved in the investigation. He also knew his own police department had collected almost a hundred pages of evidence and admissions from Sandusky in the earlier probe. He never read the reports, but figured if a prosecutor didn’t believe they merited prosecution, the case was closed.
Schultz rationalized his not reporting Sandusky to authorities in 2002 or requesting an investigation into McQueary’s report because he knew Sandusky personally. He believed the former coach may have been misunderstood. He said the man had always been a physical person. He always touched folks, young and old, during conversations. He frequently put friends in headlocks, slapped them on the back, grabbed arms and other body parts in physical displays of affection.
At the time, that was it. There was not even a cursory investigation by any police agency into McQueary’s eyewitness account. The Penn State officials did not make any reports because they did not believe Sandusky’s conduct was criminal. They made no effort to learn the identity of the ten-year-old child or get his version of what happened.
While the noninvestigation into Sandusky’s actions in 2002 ended without internal or external reports being written, McQueary said neither Schultz nor Curley ever told him to keep the situation quiet. McQueary, as well as members of the football team and staff, said the only time they saw Sandusky with children on Penn State premises after that was during group activities at The Second Mile summer camps. However, they said the retired coach continued to use Penn State’s weight room and other facilities. Sandusky did not surrender his keys to the facilities either.
McQueary himself never pushed the investigation further. In his mind, by talking to Schultz he had gone to the police. Within a year of his report McQueary was hired as a full-time assistant football coach. The rumors of Sandusky’s interest in young boys was locker room fodder among football players who jokingly warned teammates to be careful not to “drop the soap in the shower” when Sandusky was around.
Despite his claims, McQueary continued to participate in Second Mile charity events. He played in a flag football game coached by Sandusky, as well as a golf outing and other events for The Second Mile. He also saw Sandusky in the football facilities on a weekly basis, albeit without children.
McQueary’s father said he too talked with Schultz about the situation during an unrelated business meeting shortly after his son’s report. He told Schultz, “There should be something done about it.” The elder McQueary said Schultz told him it was not the first time he’d heard allegations of abuse at the hands of Sandusky, so John McQueary was under the impression that something substantial was going to be done.
Meanwhile Mike McQueary never made public his opinions about the way university officials handled his report. He told a grand jury that his last contact with Penn State officials about the incident occurred three months after the shower scene. That’s when Paterno asked him if he was satisfied with the outcome. McQueary said he told the coach that he was fine with it.
Eight years would pass before a state trooper trolling the Internet for background information about Sandusky would run across a blog suggesting a former Penn State football graduate assistant now employed as a coach saw Sandusky molesting a young boy in a shower. The investigator quickly determined it was McQueary. At that point, investigators started focusing on the incident in the shower. They sought to find out who on the Penn State staff knew about it, what they knew and when they knew it. One of the first people they went to for answers was Joe Paterno.