Jerry Sandusky’s adopted son was arrested Monday on a slew of child sexual assault charges—five years after the disgraced former Penn State football coach himself was convicted of molesting 10 boys.
Pennsylvania State Police cuffed Jeffrey Sandusky on 14 counts, including solicitation (statutory sexual assault), solicitation (involuntary deviate sexual intercourse) and solicitation (photographing, videotaping, depicting on computer of filming sexual acts).
The 41-year-old also faces charges of unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors, and solicitation (sexual abuse of children).
The allegations involve two female accusers, whom police say were Sandusky’s stepdaughters and lived with him while he dated their mother.
Police launched an investigation in November 2016 after one child claimed to receive text messages from Sandusky, who was suspended without pay from his job as a corrections officer at Rockview State Prison.
In a news release, Pennsylvania State Police said Sandusky assaulted the two female accusers—who were 15 and 16 at the time—in spring 2013 and in March 2016. They were solicited by Sandusky for oral sex and nude cellphone pictures, police say.
Sandusky, one of Jerry Sandusky’s six adopted children, was arrested at his mother’s State College home on a felony warrant, authorities said. His attorney, Lance Marshall, did not return messages left by The Daily Beast.
According to a probable cause affidavit reviewed by The Daily Beast, Sandusky dated the mother of his alleged victims and lived with them for five years.
One girl’s father went to state police on Nov. 21, 2016, to report Sandusky’s lewd text messages, allegedly sent on March 1 and 2, 2016. The girl saved the messages and sent them to her father via screenshots. She also told her mother, who then ordered Sandusky “to leave the residence,” the affidavit states.In the messages, Sandusky asks the girl “to send some pictures of her ‘boobs’ and that it’s not too weird because he studied medicine.”
He then tells the now-17-year-old that the picture is “not for him and that he has already seen her nude.”
The next morning, Sandusky allegedly asked her to send a picture of herself getting dressed for school. He told her “to erase all the texts and that none of this ‘shit’ gets mentioned to anyone or seen by anyone,” the affidavit says.
Sandusky allegedly continued his disgusting messages, asking the accuser to “take a picture of herself while she is changing or taking a ‘piss,’” and for images of her topless or in her underwear, the affidavit states.
When she refused, Sandusky told her “they need to talk to get things straightened out.”
“No, we don’t need to talk and we aren’t going to,” the accuser replied, according to the affidavit. “You did what you did and I’m not going to give you a chance to try and justify it.
“You literally tried to guilt me into doing it and you even told me specifically what I ‘needed’ to do. You know who does that? Rapists and Abusers,” the victim continued, “not stepdads who care about their stepdaughters.
“I don’t know how many times I need to tell you no and to stop before you get it,” she added, according to court papers.
When police arrived at the accuser’s home, her mother said she had dated Sandusky for six years and he had lived with her and her children for five. The mother asked Sandusky to leave their residence after the girl reported the allegations to her, the affidavit says.
The accuser’s mother “became emotional” after reading through the text messages at the police station on Dec. 10, the document states.
Sandusky gave the mother a bizarre excuse for his alleged abuse.
He allegedly told the woman that “he was trying to help her daughter by getting naked pictures of her off the internet and needed naked pictures of her to do it and to ‘role play.’”
The mother called the texts “fucked up,” according to police. She said there were no nude photos of her 16-year-old daughter online.
“Jeffrey Sandusky advised [the mother] that he was sorry and didn’t remember what he had said and then opened up and advised he knows it was wrong and inappropriate,” the affidavit alleges.
The accuser told police that she felt Sandusky was looking at her inappropriately constantly—including one incident where she was showering and could hear him walking down the hallway. The footsteps stopped, as if he was peering through a crack in the bathroom door, she said.
She was so disturbed by Sandusky that she started taking showers while he was gone or at work, court papers allege.
The teenager told cops that she received the texts from Sandusky while she was in her bedroom and he was on the couch. Her mother was sleeping.
Sandusky warned the girl “he knew she was doing sexual stuff and that there were naked pictures of her on the internet,” the affidavit says.
The girl told Sandusky she knew his claims were “bullshit.”
She later told police that she didn’t tell her mother about Sandusky initially, because Sandusky made her mother happy. “He is always looking at me in weird ways, staring me up and down,” she added, according to the affidavit.
The girl did, however, tell her sister about the messages.
Her sibling, who is now 19 years old, revealed that Sandusky had allegedly done the same thing to her several years ago. She accused Sandusky of asking her for oral sex when she was only 15 years old and to “suck him off.”
The older sister asked Sandusky to go for a drive, then “tore into him” over the texts to her sibling. “I can’t even say anything except I’m sorry,” Sandusky allegedly told the teenager, according to the probable cause affidavit.
The sisters told police they “didn’t tell their mother because they didn’t want to put that on their mother’s plate and cause her additional stress.”
The older sister told cops Sandusky made inappropriate comments to her in spring 2013, when her mother and sister were gone for a softball tryout. But Sandusky was home, and allegedly sent her a text message while she was in the bathroom.
“I have a question, don’t tell mom,” Sandusky allegedly texted the victim. “Would you suck me off?”
The victim asked Sandusky why he would ask her that. Sandusky allegedly replied that he wanted to “know how it felt.”
She told him never to say anything like that to her or her sister again. Sandusky simply replied, “OK,” according to court papers.
The teenager told police she doesn’t have the phone any longer and didn’t save the texts “because she is trying to forget about it,” the affidavit says.
A preliminary hearing for Sandusky is scheduled for Feb. 22.
In a statement, Centre County district attorney Stacy Parks Miller said, “All children have a right to feel safe. We will prosecute this case as aggressively as we do all child abuse cases.”
Last August, Jerry Sandusky, 72, filed for an appeal, citing an ineffective defense team, and claimed he wasn’t the “monster” portrayed in news reports.
“I wasn’t a pedophile,” Jerry Sandusky testified. “I wasn’t a preferential sex predator. I wasn’t the monster I was made out to be.”
Jeffrey Sandusky, who was adopted as an infant, has defended his father even after his 30- to 60-year prison sentence.
In a 2015 interview with Bleacher Report, Jeffrey said his father is 100 percent innocent.
“Dad himself says he had boundary issues, meaning that he’d put a hand around your shoulder, he’d have his hand on my leg,” Jeffrey told sports news site. “Can that be taken the wrong way? Yes, and I get it. But he was not doing it to be a creeper, a perv. No, he was doing it to say I care about you.”
Another of Sandusky’s adopted children, Matt Sandusky, has claimed that his father sexually abused him for years.
After Jeffrey’s arrest on Monday, Matt Sandusky told NBC News that his brother “should not see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of his life if these allegations are true.”
“These people need to be stopped. Human beings need to rise up and say, Enough is enough,” Matt Sandusky said. “We want to pretend it’s not happening here because Jerry Sandusky was a one-off predator…That’s not the reality.”