Sandusky Regrets Showers With Boys

<p>Jerry Sandusky says he’s guilty of horsing around, but not the charges he’s accused of in the Penn State scandal. ‘I enjoy young people,’ he tells Bob Costas in his first interview since his arrest. Plus, <a target="_blank" href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2011/11/15/what-jerry-sandusky-will-face-if-he-goes-to-prison-on-child-sex-charges.html">read Mansfield Frazier on what Sandusky can expect to face if he goes to prison</a>.<br> </p>

He may be innocent until proven guilty, but three things stuck out about alleged pedophile Jerry Sandusky’s interview with Bob Costas on Monday night, the first he’s granted since his arrest nearly two weeks ago.

1. Sandusky said he often “horsed around.”

2. He regrets showering with those boys, though he continued to do so over and over again.

3. He took a very long pause when Costas asked him if he’s sexually attracted to young boys. (“Am I sexually attracted?” he finally said. “Mmmm. I enjoy young people, I like to be around them.”)

Costas scored the first interview with the former Penn State assistant football coach—a 16-minute segment in which Sandusky called in, and his lawyer sat down.

It was excruciating.

“Are you denying that you had any inappropriate sexual contact with any of these underage boys?” Costas asked.

“Yes I am, yes I am,” Sandusky said.

“Never touched their genitals, never engaged in oral sex?”

“Right.”

Costas asked about Mike McQueary, the grad assistant who told a grand jury that in 2002 he walked into the shower area of a Penn State locker room and witnessed Sandusky anally raping a boy who appeared to be 10 or 11 years old. “What would you say to that?” Costas said.

“I would say that that’s false,” Sandusky replied.

“What would be his motive to lie?”

”You’d have to ask him that,” Sandusky said.

Then came the most incredible part of the interview, in which Costas asked what actually happened and Sandusky gave a far-fetched explanation.

“We were showering and horsing around, and he actually turned all the showers on and was actually sliding across the floor and, um, we were as I recall possibly slapping the towel in horseplay.”

The questioning continued like this for another five minutes or so, with Costas asking about another incident involving a boy Sandusky showered with, whose mother later called Sandusky to confront him about it.

Again, Sandusky denied anything inappropriate had occurred.

Same thing for the time a janitor allegedly walked in on him performing oral sex on a different young boy.

“It seems that if all these accusations are false, you are the unluckiest and most persecuted man any of us has ever heard of,” Costas said.

To which Sandusky replied, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t think these have been the best days of my life.”

This last part, at least, was indisputable.

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