STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was scheduled to appear in court remotely Tuesday for a hearing on a claim that an accuser wants to recant allegations that Sandusky sexually abused him years ago.
The hearing is part of the latest bid by Sandusky’s lawyers to secure a new trial for him.
Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse
in 2012, after eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys. He has repeatedly lost efforts to get a new trial.
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General has said the supposed recantation is “highly suspect.”
The accuser, identified in court documents as R.R., said he was coached extensively by authorities, that he could “safely affirm details I did not fully recall,” he said in an affidavit filed by Sandusky’s attorneys.
R.R.’s allegations were “based on suggestive leading questioning, prosecutorial coercion and influence, confirmatory bias and memory manipulation,” defense attorneys said.
Sandusky was the defensive coordinator at one of the country’s top football programs under Hall of Fame head coach Joe Paterno. The scandal led to Paterno’s firing, and the university paid more than $100 million to people who said they were abused by Sandusky.
Authorities said he found and groomed boys at The Second Mile, a charity he founded for at-risk youth. Sandusky has repeatedly declared his innocence.
R.R., who was 25 years old at trial, testified that when he was 11, Sandusky sexually abused him in the coach’s basement in 1998, a transcript shows.
