Ex-Penn State president charged with perjury in Sandusky case

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Former Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier has been charged with perjury and obstruction as part of a "conspiracy of silence" in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, Pennsylvania's attorney general said on Thursday.

Spanier, 64, also is charged with endangering the welfare of children, conspiracy and failure to report child abuse in the Sandusky scandal, which rocked college sports and focused national attention on child sexual abuse. Sandusky was a Penn State assistant football coach.

"This is not a mistake, an oversight or a misjudgment. This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials at Penn State, working to actively conceal the truth, with total disregard to the suffering of children," Attorney General Linda Kelly told a news conference.

Two other former officials, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz, also face new charges of child endangerment, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. They had earlier been charged with failure to report abuse and perjury, and both have pleaded not guilty.

Trustees fired Spanier and revered head football coach Joe Paterno in November 2011 in the wake of the charges against Sandusky. The retired assistant coach was convicted in June of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years and is serving a sentence of 30 to 60 years in prison.

Spanier, Curley and Schultz, whose job included heading the university police, are accused of concealing information about suspected abuse involving Sandusky, Kelly said.

The abuse included on-campus incidents in 1998 and 2001 that the three men discussed in detail, Kelly said.

OFFICE FILE

Kelly said a grand jury issued a subpoena in December 2010 but relevant emails and other evidence were not turned over until April 2012, after the three men had left their jobs.

Schultz kept a file about 1998 and 2001 incidents involving Sandusky at his campus office and told staff members never to look in the file, Kelly said.

It was removed from the office on the day that Sandusky's charges were announced and delivered to Schultz's home.

The file's existence, along with other information relevant to the grand jury investigation, was not disclosed until after Spanier was fired and trustees ordered full cooperation with the probe, she said.

Although he was fired as president, Spanier, a family sociologist, has been on sabbatical as a tenured professor. He now has been placed on leave effective immediately, Penn State said in a statement.

Arraignment is scheduled for Friday in Harrisburg.

Timothy Lewis, an attorney for Spanier, rejected the charges as politically motivated. In an email, he said they were an attempt by Governor Tom Corbett to divert attention from his failure to warn the Penn State community about Sandusky.

Corbett, a Republican, was re-elected attorney general in 2008 but left the job when he was elected governor in 2010. He named Kelly to replace him, and a new attorney general will be elected on Tuesday. Kelly is not seeking office.

Daniel Filler, a law professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said the charges against Spanier were very different from violations of rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees college sports.

"The attorney general isn't saying Spanier is a lousy administrator; she's claiming he's a corrupt cover-up artist," Filler said in an email.

Lawyers for Curley and Schultz did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Mark Shade, Ian Simpson in Washington and Dave Warner in Philadelphia; Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jackie Frank and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-penn-state-president-charged-sandusky-scandal-nbc-145347847--spt.html

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