Bellefonte, Pa.— One of Jerry Sandusky’s adopted sons is accusing his father of abuse, a news flash that raced through this rural village shortly after a jury began deliberations on 48 charges of child molestation leveled against the former Penn State assistant coach.
Matt Sandusky, 33, a foster child before he was adopted by the Sanduskys when he was about 16, attended the trial early on and sat with his mother and family friends. But in recent days, he contacted lawyers who are representing two other accusers.

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A lawyer for an adopted son of Jerry Sandusky says the man has told authorities the former Penn State assistant football coach abused him.

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Former Penn State linebacker LaVar Arrington laments that he did not pay closer attention to a young man he knew who testified he was abused by Jerry Sandusky.


“During the trial, Matt Sandusky contacted us and requested our advice and assistance in arranging a meeting with prosecutors to disclose for the first time in this case that he is a victim of Jerry Sandusky’s abuse,” attorneys Andrew Shubin and Justine Andronici said in a written statement that confirmed details of a report by NBC News. “At Matt’s request, we immediately arranged a meeting between him and the prosecutors and investigators. This has been an extremely painful experience for Matt.”
The jury, which deliberated in the courthouse Thursday evening and was sequestered in a hotel overnight, did not hear anything in court about the new accusation.
The Washington Post generally does not publish the names of victims of alleged sex crimes. The accusers in Jerry Sandusky’s trial sought to testify under pseudonyms but were required by the judge to use their real names. But reporters covering the trial generally didn’t use them.
The decision by Matt Sandusky to go public, however, was accompanied by an e-mail from his attorneys to dozens of journalists and news organizations, and his identity has now been widely reported.
The trial went to the jury Thursday after Sandusky’s attorney made a rousing closing argument that portrayed the former coach as a man pursued by overzealous investigators, prosecutors, news organizations and big-city plaintiff lawyers hoping to cash in on the case.
“The system decided Mr. Sandusky was guilty and the system set out to convict him,” Joseph Amendola, Sandusky’s lead defense attorney, said in a full-throated defense of his client. “They were going to get him hell or high water, even if they had to coach witnesses!”
The prosecution alleges that Sandusky turned the charity that he founded, the Second Mile, into a kind of engine for pedophilia. Sandusky is accused of finding boys who needed father figures, cultivating intense relationships, acclimating the boys to physical touching and then ratcheting that behavior into ever more overt acts of sexual abuse.
“You saw the full spectrum of predatory pedophile behavior,” lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan said in his closing argument.

McGettigan’s presentation was low-key, folksy and rambling, but he ended with a flourish, striding to a spot directly behind Sandusky’s chair, close enough to touch the defendant, and declaring, “He molested, abused and hurt these children..