Penn State University said on Friday it had put assistant coach Mike McQueary on administrative leave amid a child sex abuse scandal and alleged cover-up at the institution. McQueary testified before a grand jury that he saw former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly rape a child in a campus locker room in 2002 and said he reported the incident to then head coach Joe Paterno. Sandusky was charged on Saturday. The university had said “multiple threats” had been made against McQueary. Many Penn State fans have said it is unfair that Paterno was dismissed and that McQueary was not. Paterno said he was told in 2002 that Sandusky engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with a young boy. He told his boss, but did not call the police. The university may even see its borrowing costs rise in the coming months after a credit agency said it may consider downgrading Penn's debt rating. The scandal has exploded over the normally peaceful university town in central Pennsylvania. The mother of one boy involved said on Friday she feared Sandusky could have had many more victims than the eight included in the charges against him so far. “The people that hid this need to pay for their actions. They allowed this to happen to a lot of kids,” the woman told ABC's “Good Morning America”. The mother, whose son is identified as Victim 1 in court papers, said there had been “so many years that he had access to these children, and I don't believe that it stops at eight.” Penn State students pledged to show support for the child victims of the alleged abuse at the last home football game of the season Saturday. The mood on the campus was calm, but authorities planned to boost security after what police described as a “riotous mob” of students two days ago protested Paterno's firing. University board of trustees member Linda Strumpf said the board had considered canceling the game. “We felt very strongly that to penalize the players and the fans and the band ... was just the wrong thing to do,” she said. Penn State's board of trustees on Friday appointed Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of drugmaker Merck & Co. and a Penn State alum, to head a special committee to investigate the events that lead up to the charges against Sandusky. “We are going to do everything we can to restore the public's faith,” Frazier told reporters.
