Jury
awards $7.3 million to Penn State whistleblower in Sandusky scandal
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[October 28, 2016]
By David DeKok
BELLEFONTE, Pa. (Reuters) - A jury in
Pennsylvania on Thursday awarded more than $7 million in damages to
a former Penn State University assistant football coach who said the
school retaliated by firing him after he implicated Jerry Sandusky
as a molester of young boys.
The $7.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages Penn State was
ordered to pay Michael McQueary was confirmed to Reuters by Kendra
Miknis, chief administrator of the Centre County Court of Common
Pleas in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
McQueary, claiming a loss of reputation and a $140,000-a-year
coaching job in 2012 for his role as a whistleblower against
Sandusky, had sought more than $8 million in damages.
McQueary, who coached wide receivers for legendary Penn State head
coach Joe Paterno for eight seasons, told state investigators in
2011 that he had seen Sandusky, a retired but still-revered coach,
in the shower having sex with a young boy 10 years earlier while
McQueary was still a graduate student.
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He also implicated Timothy Curley, the university athletic director,
and Gary Schultz, a Penn State vice president who oversaw the campus
police department, in a cover-up. Sandusky, now 72, was not arrested
for 10 more years.
He was tried and convicted in 2012 of molesting 10 boys and was
sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.
Paterno was fired for his role in the Sandusky scandal and died
months later. McQueary never worked anywhere of note after his
dismissal, he said, because other schools viewed him as damaged
goods. He had ostensibly lost his job because the new head coach,
Bill O'Brien, did not want him.
McQueary also claimed in his lawsuit that former Penn State
president Graham Spanier defamed him in a public statement in 2011
that publicly defended Curley and Schultz.
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![](../images/102816pics/sports49.jpg)
Convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky (C), a former assistant
football coach at Penn State University, leaves after his appeal
hearing at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania,
U.S. on October 29, 2015. REUTERS/Pat Little/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Mar/14/images/ads/current/tires250x300.gif)
Elliot Strokoff, a lawyer for McQueary, told Reuters earlier
Thursday that he would not be able to comment on the verdict because
Judge Thomas Gavin has a gag order in place. Penn State attorney
Nancy Conrad told media much the same. A university spokesman also
declined to comment.
In an unusual arrangement, the jury ruled on defamation and
misrepresentation claims made by McQueary against Penn State, but
Gavin himself will rule within 30 days on the whistleblower part of
the lawsuit.
McQueary "should not have been a scapegoat,” Strokoff said during
closing arguments Thursday morning. “They said that he is the
villain and that he is only in court because of his own failures.”
Conrad told jurors in closing that McQueary was not defamed by
Spanier in 2011 and argued that his failure to find a job since 2012
was his own fault, not Penn State’s.
“He was not damaged by any actions of the university,” Conrad said.
“If he was harmed, it was by national media and public opinion. He
failed to find a position because of his own shortcomings.”
McQueary’s lawsuit took four years to come to trial.
(Editing by Frank McGurty and Mary Milliken)
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