BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) Lawyers for a former Penn State assistant football coach urged a judge and jurors Thursday to find the university liable for how it treated him after it became public that his testimony helped prosecutors charge Jerry Sandusky with child molestation.
Mike McQueary is seeking more than $4 million in lost wages and other damages, saying he was defamed by a statement the school president released the day Sandusky was charged, retaliated against for helping with the Sandusky investigation and misled by school administrators.
Sandusky, a former defensive coach at Penn State, was convicted in 2012 of sexual abuse of 10 boys and is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence. He maintains his innocence.
In closing arguments Thursday, Penn State attorney Nancy Conrad emphasized that McQueary had said he was damaged by public criticism that he did not to go to police or child-welfare authorities when he saw Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in a team shower in 2001. Instead he reported it the next day to then-head coach Joe Paterno.
”Mr. McQueary was not damaged by any action of the university,” Conrad argued. ”Mr. McQueary, as he testified and as he recognized, if he was harmed, was harmed by national media and public opinion.”
McQueary testified he has not been able to find work, either in coaching or elsewhere, but Conrad blamed that on an inadequate network of contacts and the lack of a national reputation.
The jury was handed the case Thursday afternoon and left the courtroom.
Judge Thomas Gavin will decide the whistleblower count, a claim that McQueary was treated unfairly as the school suspended him from coaching duties, placed him on paid administrative leave, barred him from team facilities and then did not renew his contract shortly after he testified at Sandusky’s 2012 trial.
McQueary was not allowed to coach in the school’s first game after Paterno was fired, a home loss to Nebraska.
”That sends a very clear signal to those in your network that the university doesn’t want you to be supported,” Strokoff said. ”`Stay away, you’re a nonperson.”’
Penn State has argued it put McQueary on leave out of safety concerns, as threats were fielded by the university.
Strokoff said there was no evidence of multiple death threats against his client, and called McQueary’s treatment outrageous.
”He should not have been the scapegoat,” Strokoff said.
Jurors will decide the defamation claim and a misrepresentation allegation that two administrators lied to him when they said they took his report of Sandusky seriously and would respond appropriately.
Conrad insisted they did take steps to inform McQueary about the actions they were taking, which included meeting with Sandusky and an official from the children’s welfare charity he founded, and telling Sandusky to stop bringing children into team facilities.
”No one told Mr. McQueary, `You cannot go to the police,”’ Conrad said.
The defamation claim involves a statement issued by Penn State then-president Graham Spanier expressing support for the two administrators, then-athletic director Tim Curley and then-vice president Gary Schultz, when they were charged with perjury in November 2011 for allegedly lying about what McQueary told them in the weeks after the 2001 incident.
The perjury charges against them were dismissed earlier this year by a state appeals court, but Curley, Schultz and Spanier still await trial in Harrisburg on charges of failure to properly report suspected child abuse and endangering the welfare of children.
McQueary lawyer Elliot Strokoff said Spanier’s statement could have led people to conclude McQueary was a liar.
”If the charges are groundless, then the grad assistant lied,” Strokoff said. ”And that’s defamation.”
Conrad said Spanier’s statement indicated the charges against his two top lieutenants would be proven groundless.
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