Lawyers for former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky asked Thursday to cancel a court date for a hearing over a claim that an accuser wants to recant allegations that Sandusky sexually abused him years ago.
The hearing was scheduled for Sept. 8 in the latest bid by Sandusky’s lawyers to secure a new trial for him. The judge in the case scheduled a status conference Friday to discuss it with defense lawyers, who suggested in a court filing that they want first to appeal the judge’s refusal to hear other claims besides the accuser’s recantation.
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 that the supposed recantation is “highly suspect.”
The accuser, identified in court documents as R.R., said he was coached extensively by authorities.
“I was told — both directly and indirectly — that trauma may have fragmented my memory, and that I could safely affirm details I did not fully recall. I was assured this was common and even expected,” R.R. 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, which permeated throughout each of the accusers as well,” the defense 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.
“He told me that if I told anybody that I would never see my family again,” said R.R., who was in foster care at the time.
Sandusky later apologized and said “he loved me,” R.R. testified.
