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Penn State Scandal: Sandusky Likely To Be Remanded To Jail, Lawyer Says

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, during the Dec. 28, 1999, Alamo Bowl game.
Harry Cabluck
/
AP
Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, during the Dec. 28, 1999, Alamo Bowl game.

The news that Jerry Sandusky is being investigated in two more cases of alleged child sex abuse will likely mean that the former Penn State assistant football coach will be remanded to jail before a Dec. 13 preliminary hearing about the case, his lawyer says.

As PennLive.com reports, attorney Joe Amedola told ABC News on Tuesday that "my concern is if they bring new charges based upon new people coming forth, that bail's going to be set, and he's going to wind up in jail."

According to Harrisburg's The Patriot-News (via PennLive):

"Two cases of child sex abuse alleged against Jerry Sandusky have been opened by Children and Youth Services in Pennsylvania. The cases were reported less than 60 days ago, and so they are still in the initial stages of the investigation. If they are found to be credible, these would be the first known cases to be reported since Sandusky's arrest that involve current children. All of the other publicly known cases of alleged victims coming forward have been adults."

Sandusky already faces 40 counts stemming from the alleged abuse of eight young boys over more than a decade. Some of the incidents allegedly happened on campus. Sandusky says he's innocent, though he has admitted showering with some of the boys. Head football coach Joe Paterno and Penn State President Graham Spanier lost their jobs for allegedly not doing enough to either stop what was allegedly happening or alert authorities after they had been warned.

Paterno apparently kept a firm grip on any disciplinary actions involving his team. As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, he "clashed repeatedly with the university's former chief disciplinarian over how harshly to punish players who got into trouble, internal emails suggest."

Meanwhile, Reuters says that all four "of the judges in Penn State's home county have now recused themselves from the case against Sandusky, the state courts system said." The first judge on the case, who allowed Sandusky to go free on $100,000 unsecured bail, had ties to the charity for at-risk kids that Sandusky founded. A judge from another county has since been brought in to handle the case and other judges have recused themselves as well "to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest," the court system says.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.