Additional sexual assault charges were added to the list of criminal offenses facing Gerald Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State, who was arrested again Dec. 7 after a grand jury identified two more sexual assault victims Dec. 7. This brings the total known victims, from over a 15-year period, to 10.
He was held in a single cell overnight at the Centre County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania but released Dec. 8 after a $250,000 bond was posted. He had been free on a $100,000 unsecured bail bond after his Nov. 5 arrest. His wife posted a $50,000 certified check and handed over the rights to $200,000 in real estate holdings to law enforcement officials.
The initial grand jury report, released in November, described the assault of eight victims, resulting in 40 charges including endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, indecent assault, aggravated indecent assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a person less than 16 years old. With the two additional victims, the number of charges is raised to 50 offenses.
In an additional grand jury report Dec. 7, the assaults of the two additional victims were described. The report of Victim 9, described a call out for help during an assaulted in the Sandusky basement. Dottie Sandusky, the ex-coach’s wife, was upstairs at time, but did not respond, according to the grand jury.
In a statement released by her husband’s attorney after his arrest, Mrs. Sandusky said she was “devastated,” according to the New York Times, by the charges. “I am so sad anyone would make such a terrible accusation, which is absolutely untrue,” she said. “We don’t know why these young men have made these false accusations, but we want everyone to know they are untrue.”
In a statement, she said she is dismayed at the allegations that a cry for help was unanswered. “I am also angry about these false accusations that such a terrible incident ever occurred in my home,” she said, according to a report in Herald-Mail.com.
According to the Washington Post, prosecutors in the case had asked for $1 million bail, but Senior Magisterial District Judge Robert E. Scott set it at $250,000 cash. As a condition of his bail, Sandusky will be required, , to wear an ankle monitor, according to the Post.
A continuing condition of his bail also includes having no contact with minors, witnesses in the case, and the alleged victims and their families.
Days before his second arrest, the New York Times published an extensive interview with Sandusky. In the interview, Sandusky did not admit to sexual abuse, but did “confirmed details of some of the events that prosecutors have cited in charging him with 40 counts of molesting young boys, all of whom came to know Mr. Sandusky through the charity he founded, known as the Second Mile.
“…Yet over the course of the interview, Mr. Sandusky described what he admitted was a family and work life that could often be chaotic, even odd, one that lacked some classic boundaries between adults and children, and thus one that was open to interpretation — by those who have defended him as a generous mentor and those who have condemned him as a serial predator,” said the Times account of the interview.
Sandusky’s next scheduled court appearance is Dec. 13, related to his first indictment.