2 former Penn State officials plead to charges in Sandusky case

HARRISBURG, Pa. - After five years of maintaining their innocence, two former Pennsylvania State University administrators on Monday pleaded guilty to child endangerment for not reporting Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of children.

The pleas in Dauphin County Court by ex-athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz reflected an unexpected turn in the case, one of the largest scandals in the history of college athletics. They also narrowed the spotlight to the lone remaining defendant, former university president Graham Spanier, the once highly regarded administrator who led Penn State for 16 years.

Jury selection in the three men's trial was slated to begin March 20. In return for their pleas, prosecutors dismissed felony conspiracy charges against Curley and Schultz. Each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

It wasn't immediately clear if the two men will be required to cooperate with prosecutors or testify against Spanier, or if doing so could win them a lighter sentence. It also wasn't clear if the pleas would prompt Spanier or his lawyers to ask Judge John Boccabella to postpone next week's trial.

Spanier was not present at the proceeding. His lawyer, Samuel Silver, did attend - and ducked afterward into the judge's chambers.

Spanier still faces the felony conspiracy and misdemeanor child endangerment charges stemming from his alleged failure to inform police or child welfare investigators of a 2001 report by Mike McQueary, then a football program graduate assistant, that he saw Sandusky, the former assistant coach, sexually assault a boy in a locker room shower.

The longtime university president resigned under pressure days after Sandusky's 2011 arrest, but he was not criminally charged until a year later. The former university president has since steadfastly maintained his innocence.

Monday's proceeding, in a room packed with reporters and lawyers, lasted less than an hour.

Curley and Schultz each answered boilerplate questions from the judge and two deputy Attorney Generals, Laura Ditka and Patrick Schulte, laid out the crimes they said they were prepared to prove at trial.

The prosecutors said the evidence would show that the defendants became aware of two incidents - one in 1998 and the other in 2001 - in which Sandusky was caught with boys in showers. In both cases, the men allegedly shared the information with Spanier. After the second, they met with Sandusky and ordered him not to bring boys onto campus.

But, the prosecutors said, they made no effort to investigate or find the boy from the 2001 incident, and no effort to enforce the campus ban against Sandusky - and in the process endangered other children.

After hearing the details, the judge addressed each defendant.

'You understand the possible consequences of what you are doing today?” Boccabella asked Curley.

'Yes,” came the one-word response.

Minutes later, he repeated the exercise with Schultz. The judge ordered them each to be sentenced within 90 days.

Curley and Schultz initially were charged on the same November 2011 day a grand jury indicted Sandusky on allegations he sexually abused boys on and off campus. At the time, Spanier quickly issued a statement in strong support of Curley and Schultz.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno lost their jobs, Paterno died, Sandusky was convicted, and former FBI director Louis Freeh issued his damning university-commissioned report faulting the head coach and three administrators for covering up Sandusky's crimes. In November 2012, prosecutors charged Spanier.

The case has hinged on what exactly McQueary, a former Penn State quarterback hoping to join the coaching ranks, told first Paterno - and later Curley and Schultz - about what he saw in the shower in 2001. He described that scene in 2012 to jurors who ultimately convicted Sandusky of sexually assaulting multiple boys.

In multiple trips to the witness stand in related proceedings, McQueary has asserted unequivocally that he made clear to the head coach and administrators that Sandusky's conduct with the young boy was 'way over the line and extremely sexual.”

In their own grand jury testimony, Curley and Schultz maintained McQueary had failed to convey the seriousness of the incident, leaving them both under the impression that he witnessed merely questionable 'horseplay.” They also testified that's how they described the incident to Spanier.

But a series of 2001 emails - now key to the government's case - show that the men at least considered the situation serious enough to possibly warrant police intervention. They ultimately rejected the idea of calling authorities, opting instead to bar Sandusky from bringing children on campus, to urge the former coach to submit to counseling and to inform his children's charity, the Second Mile, of the allegations.

'The only downside for us is if the message isn't ‘heard' and acted upon,” Spanier wrote, signing off on the decision. 'We then become vulnerable for not having reported it. ... The approach you outline is humane and a reasonable way to proceed.”

All three men had been informed in 1998 about another investigation led by Penn State's campus police into a report that Sandusky had showered with and potentially abused a different boy. That case never led to charges, but Curley and Schultz corresponded frequently with then-police Chief Thomas Harmon about the progress of his investigation. Spanier was copied on at least two of those exchanges.

Schultz kept his hand-written notes on the 1998 investigation in a locked file that investigators found years later. They read: 'Other children? Is this opening of Pandora's box?”

The current prosecution has dragged on for 5 1/2 years, largely due to a dispute about the representation the men received from Penn State's then-chief counsel, Cynthia Baldwin, during their 2011 grand jury appearances.

Since then, the original judge overseeing the case died after an illness and five state attorneys general have cycled through the office. Several original charges against the defendants, including perjury and obstruction of justice, were tossed out by a state Superior Court panel.

Sandusky is serving a term of up to 60 years, but continues to appeal his conviction.

Penn State in many ways has moved beyond the scandal, hiring an officer to insure compliance with the federal crime-reporting law, training thousands of employees on the law, instituting programs to fight sexual assault and misconduct, creating new positions focused on the issue, overhauling its board governance, and establishing a hotline.

But the case continues to divide many in the community, especially over what role if any their iconic football coach had in even indirectly allowing Sandusky to target or victimize children. Paterno was never charged with a crime.

Now, the focus will be squarely on Spanier, a marriage and family therapist by training and a family sociologist who himself said he suffered physical abuse at the hands of his father, which left some of his supporters incredulous that he would conceal or ignore Sandusky's attacks.

'As I have stated in the clearest possible terms, at no time during my presidency did anyone ever report to me that Jerry Sandusky was observed abusing a child or youth or engaged in a sexual act with a child or a youth,” he wrote in a 2012 letter to the trustees.

Born in South Africa - where his father fled from Nazi Germany - Spanier joined Penn State's faculty in 1973. After a dozen years climbing the administrative ladder at other schools, he returned to Penn State as president in 1995.

He has continued to live in the State College area and frequently is spotted at Penn State events and community gatherings. As part of his employment agreement, he continues to hold the position of professor at Penn State. He does not teach, but still draws a $600,000 salary.

Several alumni-elected trustees, who have been critical of the university's handling of the scandal and supportive of Curley, Schultz and Spanier, said last week that they planned on attending the trial. For Penn State loyalists - who believe prosecutors and the public unfairly maligned the university, its past leadership and Paterno's legacy - acquittal would offer long overdue vindication.

'The Office of the Attorney General has wasted millions of dollars in state resources slow-playing a bogus case that relies on a falsely exaggerated grand jury presentment,” Maribeth Roman Schmidt, a spokeswoman for Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship, which has been highly critical of the university's response to the crisis, said last week.