Former Penn State assistant coaches Greg Schiano and Tom Bradley knew that Jerry Sandusky, their colleague on Joe Paterno’s football staff, was acting improperly with young boys years before law-enforcement authorities were first notified, according to testimony from former Penn State assistant Mike McQueary that was unsealed Tuesday by a Philadelphia court.
McQueary, who testified in Sandusky’s 2012 criminal case that he had told Paterno of seeing Sandusky rape a boy in 2001, said in the 2015 deposition that he had “briefly” discussed with Bradley what he had seen.
“He said another assistant coach had come to him in the early ’90s about a very similar situation to mine, and he said that he had — someone had come to him as far back as early as the ’80s about seeing Jerry Sandusky doing something with a boy,” McQueary said.
According to McQueary, Bradley identified Schiano, now the Ohio State defensive coordinator, as the other assistant. In response to a question about whether Bradley had shared details of what Schiano had said, McQueary related a conversation with Bradley.
“No,” McQueary replied, according to the documents, “only that he had — I can’t remember if it was one night or one morning — but that Greg had come into his office white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower. And that’s it. That’s all he ever told me.”
McQueary added that he didn’t know whether Bradley, now UCLA’s defensive coordinator, had reported the incident, which he said happened in “like 2005, ’06; it could have been anywhere in there.”
According to McQueary, he and Bradley discussed their frustration with the level of access Sandusky had to Penn State facilities. “Tom was kind of a — yeah, he would be upset and frustrated about that, like I was,” McQueary said.
Schiano denied the allegation, telling ESPN’s Adam Schefter: “I never saw any abuse nor had reason to suspect any abuse during my time at Penn State.”
Bradley followed suit through his representative, Brett Senior.
“At no time did Tom Bradley ever witness any inappropriate behavior,” Senior said. “Nor did he have any knowledge of alleged incidents in the ’80s and ’90s. He has consistently testified as such. Any assertions to the contrary are false. When he became aware of the 2001 incident it had already been reported to the University administration years earlier.”
The documents containing McQueary’s testimony were ordered to be unsealed by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Glazer. Bradley was a player, graduate assistant and assistant coach over 37 years at Penn State who went 1-3 as the interim head coach in 2011, when Paterno was removed as the Sandusky scandal erupted. Schiano was a Penn State assistant from 1990 to 1995 and later was head coach at Rutgers and with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Sandusky is serving a minimum 30-year sentence after his 2012 conviction on 45 charges of sexually abusing 10 boys.
The unsealed court documents also revealed that a man testified in court in 2014 that Paterno had ignored his complaints of a sexual assault committed by Sandusky in 1976 when the man was a 14-year-old boy.
The family of Joe Paterno issued a statement Tuesday denying any cover-up attempt by the former coach, particularly focusing on the alleged 1976 complaint.
“The materials released today relating to Joe Paterno allege a conversation that occurred decades ago where all parties except the accuser are now dead,” family attorney Wick Sollers wrote. “In addition, there are numerous specific elements of the accusations that defy all logic and have never been subjected to even the most basic objective examination. Most significantly, there is extensive evidence that stands in stark contrast to this claim.”
The testimony of McQueary suggests multiple Penn State assistants may have been aware of Sandusky’s behavior, but is unclear whether or not it was before the matter was brought to the attention of authorities in 1998.