Jerry Sandusky will spend at least 30 years in prison — effectively a life sentence — in the child sexual abuse scandal that brought shame to Penn State and led to coach Joe Paterno's downfall, a judge ruled today.
A defiant Sandusky gave a rambling statement in which he denied the allegations and talked about his life in prison and the pain of being away from his family.
Even though Sandusky didn’t get sentenced to the 400-plus years of incarceration he could have received, ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossack said the disgraced coach won’t leave prison in anything but a wooden box.
“We should call it what it is: It’s a life sentence and the judge was very, very clear he was giving Sandusky a life sentence,” Cossack said.
“He’s 68. I suspect he’ll never walk out of prison after today.”
Three victims spoke, often fighting back tears. One looked Sandusky in the eyes at times.
The former Penn State assistant coach was found guilty in June of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, convicted of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year period. Witnesses said Sandusky used the charitable organization he founded for troubled children as his personal hunting ground to find and groom boys to become his victims.
His arrest 11 months ago, and the details that came out during his trial over the summer, transformed Sandusky's public image from a college coach who had been widely admired for his work with The Second Mile charity into that of a reviled pervert who preyed on the very youngsters who sought his help.
Eight of the boys he was found guilty of molesting testified at his trial, describing a range of abuse that included fondling, oral sex and anal intercourse.
One of the prosecution's star witnesses, former graduate assistant Mike McQueary, testified that he saw Sandusky raping a boy in a locker room shower.
Among the three who spoke this morning, a young man who said he was 11 when Sandusky groped him in a shower in 1998. He said Sandusky is in denial and should "stop coming up with excuses."
"I've been left with deep painful wounds that you caused and had been buried in the garden of my heart for many years," he said.
Another man said he was 13 when, in 2001, Sandusky lured him into a Penn State sauna and then a shower and then forced him to touch the ex-coach.
"I am troubled with flashbacks of his naked body, something that will never be erased from my memory," he said. "Jerry has harmed children, of which I am one of them."
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