Testimony unsealed Tuesday in a court case involving convicted child sex abuser and former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky includes an assertion that former NFL head coach and current Ohio State co-defensive coordinator Greg Schiano reported seeing Sandusky possibly abusing a minor in the “early ‘90s.”
The assertion was made in testimony by former Penn State player and staff member Mike McQueary, who in 2001 reported to both Paterno and university officials that he had seen Sandusky behaving inappropriately with a minor in a locker room shower. (McQueary says he made clear that the inappropriate behavior was sexual in nature; the three university officials who chose not to report the incident to law enforcement and/or child welfare authorities are currently facing child endangerment charges. Those officials have denied being told that Sandusky’s misbehavior was sexual and said it was described to them as “horseplay.”)
The McQueary testimony in question was given in a case involving a Penn State insurance provider, which claims that the university and its employees failed on several occasions to meet liability obligations by investigating reports that Sandusky had committed abuse. McQueary says that when he discussed what he had seen with a longtime Penn State assistant coach named Tom Bradley in roughly 2005 or 2006, Bradley told him that he was aware of other troubling reports involving Sandusky and young boys. (Bradley is currently UCLA’s defensive coordinator.) From the testimony:
Q: Did [Bradley] tell you that he had had information concerning Gerald Sandusky and children?
A: He said he knew of some things.
Q: And did he tell you what he knew of?
A: Yeah.
Q: What did he tell you?
A: He said another assistant coach had come to him in the early ‘90s about a very similar situation to mine, and he said that he had—someone had come to him as far back as early as the ‘80s about seeing Jerry Sandusky doing something with a boy.
Q: Did he identify who the other coaches were that had given him this information?
A: The one in the early ‘90s, yes.
Q: And who was that?
A: Greg Schiano.
Q: Greg Schiano?
A: Yes.
Q: And did he give you any details about what Coach Schiano had reported to him?
A: No, only that he had—I can’t remember if it was one night or one morning, but that Greg had come into his office white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower. And that’s it. That’s all he ever told me.
Schiano, who was a Penn State football staffer from 1990 until 1995, later became head coach at Rutgers. He was hired by the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012 but fired after two seasons with the team; multiple reporters wrote that Schiano’s abrasive, confrontational personality had alienated players and other coaches around the league. He was hired by Ohio State in December 2015.
In a statement, Schiano said he “never saw any abuse, nor had reason to suspect any abuse” during his time at Penn State. Bradley does not appear to have commented on the matter. (Update, 4:25 p.m.: A representative for Bradley says in a statement that Bradley did not “witness any inappropriate behavior” and does not have “any knowledge of alleged incidents in the 80’s and 90’s.”)
