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Spanier Spills on Penn State Scandal

Former president says he ‘didn’t really know Sandusky.’

In a new interview with The New Yorker, Graham Spanier, Penn State’s former president, claims he had only one conversation with Jerry Sandusky in his entire tenure at the university. “I never, ever heard anything about child abuse or sexual abuse or my antennae raised up enough to even suspect that,” Spanier says. He says he believed Athletic Director Tim Curley had taken care of any problems in 2001 after a graduate assistant for the football team saw Sandusky messing around in the shower with a young boy and brought the incident to the administration’s attention. Spanier defends himself for not turning in Sandusky, saying he was unaware that the “horsing around” reported was serious sexual abuse. “Never in my sixteen years as president of Penn State did any individual ever suggest to me that there was child abuse, sexual abuse, anything criminal.”And he’s quick to express his regret. “I wish I would have known what I know now,” Spanier says. “The best thing of all would have been if, way back when, we knew the true Jerry Sandusky, and could have put a stop to it.”