Sandusky jailed after he is unable to pay bail

[UPDATE] Jerry Sandusky has been taken to a Pennsylvania county jail after being unable to post $250,000 bail in cash.

The former Penn State assistant coach was jailed Wednesday after a brief court hearing.

Sandusky faces new charges based on the testimony of two new accusers, including one who claims Sandusky molested him numerous times in a basement bedroom at Sandusky’s home. He already faced 40 counts of child sex abuse involving eight young boys over a 15-year span.

Sandusky lawyer Joseph Amendola says his client maintains his innocence.

Senior Magisterial District Judge Robert E. Scott said if Sandusky does make bail, he will be under house arrest and subject to electronic monitoring.

Prosecutors had sought $1 million in bail.

3:00 p.m.

 

Ex-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested and arraigned Wednesday on new sex abuse charges brought by two new accusers, including one who claims Sandusky molested him numerous times in a basement bedroom, according to authorities.

The claims bring the number of Sandusky’s alleged victims to 10 and he now faces more than 50 charges stemming from accusations he molested boys for years on Penn State property, in his home and elsewhere. The scandal has raised questions about whether Penn State officials did all they should have to stop the alleged activity and ended the careers of the school’s president and football coach Joe Paterno.

 

Sandusky was first arrested last month and has said he is innocent. The new charges were brought after new accusers were questioned by a grand jury.

Like earlier accusers, both alleged victims say they met Sandusky through The Second Mile charity for at-risk children that the ex-coach founded in 1977.

“As in many of the other cases identified to date, the contact with Sandusky allegedly fit a pattern of ‘grooming’ victims,” Attorney General Linda Kelly said in a statement. “Beginning with outings to football games and gifts; they later included physical contact that escalated to sexual assaults.”

A call seeking comment from Sandusky’s lawyer, Joseph Amendola, was not immediately returned. Sandusky has denied being a pedophile and has vowed to fight the case. In interviews with NBC and The New York Times, he has said he showered and horsed around with boys but never sexually abused them.

One of the new alleged victims, dubbed Victim 9 by prosecutors, claims he was first assaulted in 2004, and the other, called Victim 10, told the grand jury he was assaulted after being referred to Second Mile in 1997.

The ninth accuser, currently 18, was 11 or 12 when he first met Sandusky in 2004. Sandusky took him to Penn State football games and gave him gifts and money, and later sexually assaulted him during overnight stays in a basement bedroom in Sandusky’s home, the grand jury said.

The accuser said that Sandusky forced the boy to perform oral sex and attempted on at least 16 occasions to anally penetrate him, sometimes successfully. “The victim testified that on at least one occasion he screamed for help, knowing that Sandusky’s wife was upstairs, but no one ever came to help him,” the grand jury report said.

The 10th accuser told the grand jury he was referred to The Second Mile in 1997, when he was 10 and experiencing problems at home. He also attended Penn State games, spent time at Sandusky’s house, and was subjected to “wrestling sessions” in the basement of the home that led to Sandusky performing oral sex on the boy, authorities said. The accuser also detailed incidents at a pool on the Penn State campus, and a time when Sandusky allegedly exposed himself in a car and requested oral sex from the boy.

The new charges include four counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and two counts of unlawful contact with a minor, all of them first-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines.

Sandusky also was charged with a count of indecent assault and two counts of endangering the welfare of children. Those are third-degree felonies punishable by up to seven years in prison and $15,000 in fines.

He was arrested by state police and agents of the Attorney General’s Office, and had a preliminary arraignment before Senior Magisterial District Judge Robert E. Scott of Westmoreland County. A preliminary hearing on the charges is set for Tuesday, the same day his previous case is set for a hearing.

Sandusky had been charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse involving eight young boys over a 15-year span.