PSU: Sandusky key witness sought 'financial gain'

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Pennsylvania State University lawyers accused Mike McQueary of "exploiting the tragedy caused by Jerry Sandusky for financial gain," as the former assistant football coach asked a Centre County jury Monday to award him more than $4 million in a whistle-blower case against the school.

McQueary, who saw Sandusky's 2001 sexual abuse of a boy in a campus shower, claims the university defamed him and took away his job after he emerged as the central witness in the case against three school administrators accused of covering up the crime.

But in her opening remarks to the jury Monday, university lawyer Nancy Conrad blamed McQueary's inability to find new work on his own shortcomings, and questioned his failure to do more to stop the abuse he says he saw that night 15 years ago.

"McQueary is under fire for not doing anything to stop the alleged rape," she said. "He was a 28-year-old of good health and strong build, and he simply walked away? McQueary failed to act like a responsible human being."

Those attacks opened what is expected to be a two-week civil trial before Senior Judge Thomas Gavin on a note of hostility - remarkable for its contrast to the conciliatory posture the university has adopted in nearly all other Sandusky-related legal claims.

Since 2012, the school has paid more than $93 million to 32 Sandusky accusers, acknowledging that the school bears some responsibility to the victims of its former assistant football coach, who is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of 10 adolescent boys.

McQueary's suit is the first the university has chosen to fight at trial.

In his opening remarks to the panel of nine women and three men hearing the case, McQueary lawyer Elliot Strokoff said university leaders sought to undermine his client's credibility as a witness in the days that followed Sandusky's November 2011 arrest.

"Their intention was to sweep this under the rug," he said. "If Mike McQueary folds or collapses, the case against the [administrators] goes away."

But underneath the barbs traded across the courtroom Monday were undeniable signs that five years later, the scandal that shook Penn State to its core still ripples through the lives of its central figures.

As people including Sandusky's wife, Dottie, filed into the courthouse, they did so under the gaze of a cardboard cutout of former football coach Joe Paterno propped up outside a storefront across the street.

Several of those called as early witnesses - including Jonelle Eshbach, the first prosecutor assigned to the Sandusky case, and Wendell V. Courtney, Penn State's former general counsel - played prominent roles in the initial investigation.

As for McQueary, Strokoff told jurors that his client has been unable to escape the ire of Penn State loyalists who blame him for Paterno's firing in the midst of the scandal.

He has been unable to find work in college athletics and has earned less than $10,000 total in the years since Penn State chose not to renew his employment contract, the attorney said - a sharp drop from the $104,000 a year McQueary made in his coaching job.

The broad strokes of McQueary's story have become a well-worn part of the Sandusky scandal.

While working as a graduate assistant under Paterno in 2001, McQueary returned to a campus athletics building after hours, only to walk in on a sexual encounter between Sandusky and a 10- to 12-year-old.

McQueary did not physically intervene to stop the attack. He has said he tried to make enough noise to scare off Sandusky.

The next morning, he reported what he saw to Paterno, who in turn informed two administrators - then-athletics director Tim Curley and then-university vice president Gary Schultz. Neither passed McQueary's report to police or child welfare investigators.

State prosecutors approached McQueary about the accusations nearly a decade later, after receiving a tip that he had information pertinent to their investigation of Sandusky's abuse of other young boys.

His cooperation led to Sandusky's arrest in 2011, Paterno's ouster, and the prosecution of Curley, Schultz, and former university president Graham B. Spanier, who are awaiting trial on child endangerment charges.

But it also prompted the decision by university officials to place him on paid leave during the tumult that gripped the campus after Sandusky's arrest. They later chose not to renew his contract when it expired in June 2012.

In his lawsuit, McQueary claims that decision was retaliation for his cooperation with the investigation.

His lawyers have also alleged that Spanier defamed him in a statement he released expressing support for his colleagues and calling the allegations against them groundless.

Penn State notes that the statement did not mention McQueary by name and contends that it contained only Spanier's opinions on the case.

As for McQueary's job, Conrad, the university lawyer, argued Monday that his dismissal had nothing to do with his cooperation with investigators. Instead, she said, it came as part of a housecleaning in the coaching staff undertaken by Bill O'Brien, the head coach hired after Paterno's ouster.

Testimony in the trial is expected to resume Tuesday.

jroebuck@phillynews.com

215-854-2608@jeremyrroebuck