VIDEO: In interview with Bob Costas; Sandusky admits ‘horseplay’ with kids

Here and Now

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In an exclusive and startling interview with Bob Costas, aired on NBC’s Rock Center Monday night, former Penn State Coach Jerry Sandusky admitted to showered with young boys, hugging them, touching their legs and engaging in “horseplay.”

And that was before he took 16 seconds to say that he was not, in fact, sexually attracted to young boys. He also denied the other allegations in the grand jury indictment against him, specifically that he raped and sexually assaulted eight young boys over a period of many years, while working for and after retiring from Joe Paterno’s staff at Penn State.

Defense attorney Tom Harvey told the New York Daily News that Sandusky’s admissions will be costly.

“He admitted he showered with little boys, he admitted he touched little boys’ legs, he hugged little boys, he’s saying people just made all this other stuff up,” he said. “He’s just given up his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself. All of that can and will be used against him.”

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Also Monday night, Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola, said he believes he’s found the boy that then graduate assistant Mike McQueary said he saw being raped by Sandusky and, according to Amendola, he now says a rape never took place. So far, there’s as yet been no corroboration of that claim.

Kevin Armstrong, a reporter for the New York Daily News, said “horsing around” is becoming a euphemism used by all kinds of men who’ve been indicted or cast under suspicion because of their role in failing to stop or report that sexual assault. Jack Raykovitz, who headed Sandusky’s The Second Mile Charity, stepped down Monday after allegations surgaced that he’d been told of the incident in 2002.

Raykovitz insists he was only told that someone had been made uncomfortable by “horsing around.” Penn State administrators have used the same phrase.

“You’re going to see a lot of word play here in terms of when people knew things and how much they knew,” Armstrong said. “It’s going to be tough to fight that if the victims offer as much detail as they did in the grand jury investigative report.”

Armstrong said if Raykovitz did know about the 2002 incident, and it was true, he had a legal obligation to report it.

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