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Copper pipes reported stolen from residence in Wilkes-Barre

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Psst! Want a different SPP? State revamps school performance scores

<p>BELLEFONTE &#8212; A Centre County jury awarded Mike McQueary $7.3 million Thursday, finding that Pennsylvania State University defamed him for the central role he played in the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and three school administrators accused of covering up Sandusky&#8217;s sexual abuse of children.</p><p>It took barely four hours for the jury of eight women and four men &#8212; including two Penn State employees &#8212; to reach its decision on the former assistant football coach&#8217;s claims of defamation and misrepresentation.</p><p>But McQueary will continue to wait for a judge to rule on whether Penn State&#8217;s 2012 decision to oust him from his $104,000-a-year coaching job could be considered retaliation. Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who is required under state law to decide McQueary&#8217;s whistleblower claims, said he plans to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.</p><p>&#8220;What Penn State has done to Mike McQueary is outrageous,&#8221; his lawyer Elliot Strokoff told the panel during closing argument. &#8220;He should not have been a scapegoat in this matter, and certainly not for five years.&#8221;</p><p>Throughout the two-week trial, university lawyers maintained that Penn State&#8217;s decision had nothing to do with McQueary&#8217;s cooperation with Sandusky investigators. Instead, said university lawyer Nancy Conrad, the school simply chose not to renew his contract &#8212; along with those of other assistant coaches &#8212; in a routine staffing shakeup after the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno.</p><p>&#8220;This is not a case about Jerry Sandusky,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Any harm that Mike McQueary has suffered &#8230; is the result of his own failures.&#8221;</p><p>Whatever the reason for McQueary&#8217;s dismissal, it became clear through testimony of dozens of witnesses that the impact of the investigation that put Penn State&#8217;s football culture under a national microscope continues to ripple five years later. And few, McQueary testified last week, had felt those effects more than he had.</p><p>He quickly found himself a pariah and a target for death threats from some portions of Penn State&#8217;s avid fan base, which blame him for tarnishing the reputation of the school&#8217;s storied football program and Paterno, its iconic coach fired days after Sandusky&#8217;s arrest.</p><p>Others questioned why he did not do more to intervene in February 2001, after witnessing Sandusky&#8217;s sexual assault of a young boy in a campus locker-room shower.</p><p>McQueary has said that he reported what he saw to Paterno and two administrators in the days after the attack. None of them informed police or child welfare authorities.</p><p>Now divorced at 42, jobless and living with his parents at their State College home, the 6-foot-5 former quarterback testified Friday that he has been unable to find work since Penn State placed him on paid leave, citing safety concerns in the days after Sandusky&#8217;s arrest, and later decided not to renew his contract.</p><p>&#8220;He happens to be a very good football coach,&#8221; Strokoff told jurors Thursday. &#8220;But much more important than that is that he is an incredibly decent and good person &#8230; Mr. McQueary has endured an awful lot in silence and with dignity.&#8221;</p><p>But throughout the trial, Penn State lawyers pushed back at any suggestion that the university is to blame.</p><p>In videotaped testimony shown to the jury, Bill O&#8217;Brien &#8212; who immediately succeeded Paterno in the head coaching job and has since gone on to lead the Houston Texans &#8212; said he came to Penn State in 2012 with a list of his own staff he wanted to bring with him. He never considered McQueary for a job and his decision had nothing to do with Sandusky.</p><p>Matt Rhule, Temple University&#8217;s head coach and one of McQueary&#8217;s longtime friends and former teammates, told jurors he deemed McQueary too unseasoned to offer him a job when he took over the Owls&#8217; program in 2013.</p><p>&#8220;There was nothing remarkable about Mr. McQueary&#8217;s resume,&#8221; said Conrad, the lawyer for the university. &#8220;He stayed at one school, under one head coach. He had not developed the contacts or the resume to land a job in this competitive field of professional college football.&#8221;</p><p>Since 2012, the school has paid more than $93 million to settle claims from 32 Sandusky accusers and university officials have acknowledged the school bears some responsibility to the victims of its former assistant football coach, who is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of 10 boys.</p><p>McQueary is still expected to return to a courtroom as a star witness if the still-pending child endangerment case against former Penn State President Graham B. Spanier, ex-Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Vice President Gary Schultz goes to trial.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Former Penn State University assistant football coach Mike McQueary leaves the Centre County Courthouse Annex for lunch in Bellefonte, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/web1_113038447-d58f47c70ae647519e1b41f7329cd456-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Former Penn State University assistant football coach Mike McQueary leaves the Centre County Courthouse Annex for lunch in Bellefonte, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jeremy Roebuck</p><p>The Philadelphia Inquirer</p></bylineMeta></div>

McQueary wins $7.3 million in Penn State whistleblower claim