PHILADELPHIA – Penn State leaders including former President Graham Spanier and late football coach Joe Paterno covered up Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse for years to save the reputation of the school and its multimillon-dollar football program, former FBI director Louis Freeh said Thursday. Their failure to stop Sandusky allowed the former assistant coach to continue luring victims for more than a decade, Freeh said after an eight-month investigation of the handling of the case commissioned by Pennsylvania State University trustees. Sandusky, 68, was convicted last month of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years. “Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh said in a statement on his team's findings. “In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University ... repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse.” Freeh also criticized the board that hired him, saying it failed to hold senior leaders accountable and declined to act after seeing a March 2011 media report about allegations against Sandusky. — Reuters
