A court document filed last week by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office lists 18 statements given by Graham B. Spanier in grand-jury testimony that prosecutors say support the perjury charges against the former Pennsylvania State University president.
Mr. Spanier testified in April 2011 before a grand jury investigating the Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal at Penn State. He and two other former Penn State officials—Timothy M. Curley, who was the athletics director, and Gary C. Schultz, who was senior vice president for finance and business—have been ordered to stand trial on charges stemming from that investigation. They are charged with perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to report suspected abuse, and conspiracy. They have denied the charges against them.
According to reports by two Pennsylvania newspapers, the Centre Daily Times and The Patriot-News, the allegations in last week’s court filing are not new. The filing came in response to a request from Mr. Spanier’s lawyers for a “bill of particulars” stating the specific facts alleged against him. The prosecutors asked the court to deny the request, but appended an exhibit that lists statements in Mr. Spanier’s grand-jury testimony that they contend are false.
Among those statements is a response regarding what Penn State officials did with information from Mike McQueary, a former assistant football coach, who told Joe Paterno and other university officials in 2001 that he had seen Mr. Sandusky sexually abusing a young boy in the football team’s showers. When Mr. Spanier was asked if there had been any discussion about reporting that information to the police, he said “No.”
In other statements alleged to be false, Mr. Spanier said that he had never been informed of an earlier, 1998 university police investigation of another shower-room incident involving Mr. Sandusky and that he had not known the allegations against Mr. Sandusky were of a sexual nature.
The prosecutors say those statements are contradicted by emails discovered later in the investigation.
