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Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky still claims in a new interview, 12 years after entering prison, that he is innocent of the child sex abuse charges for which he was convicted.
In his first interview in over a decade, Jerry Sandusky tells DailyMail.com, “I was accused of heinous crimes, which I’ve never committed. My wife was my only partner in sex and that was after marriage.”
The 80-year-old Sandusky is currently serving a prison sentence of 30 to 60 years after being found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse of boys between 1994 and 2009 that he met through his Second Mile charity.
“I never ever in my life ever thought about molesting anybody,” Sandusky maintains.
Despite his claims, a 2019 audit revealed Penn State paid out tens of millions of dollars in hush money to Jerry Sandusky’s young victims.
“I was in disbelief in terms of how this happened. Why were they saying things that were so inconsistent with what they had said before?” he said to DailyMail.com
“I believe I was wrongfully convicted by inconsistent, perjured testimony.
Jerry Sandusky also claimed in the interview that his “vulnerable and susceptible” accusers (one of which was his adopted son who was later arrested on his own child sex abuse charges) were “coached and led” by law enforcement and two therapists to alter or fabricate their testimonies.
He also claims his victims were incentivized by money and that “nobody came forward on their own.”
Rather than “making an effort in school, studying, working,” Sandusky said his victims “turned that down for an easy road with allegations and to make millions of dollars – that’s not going to bring them happiness.”
Sandusky has broken his silence after his legal team launched his latest bid to get a fresh trial, with the lawyers calling for a new hearing on the validity of repressed memory therapy.
Therapists who use the technique often administer sodium pentothal or hypnotize their clients to try to generate images of alleged abuse which could have happened. They spend months homing in on whether the memory is real or fabricated.
The appeal argues that the original trial jury should have heard more testimony about the technique, which Sandusky believes would not stand up in a courtroom today.
“We now have evidence that there was repressed memory therapy, and we have an expert who’s willing to testify about how to analyze what happened,” Sandusky claimed.
“Their stories changed. The point is that every last one changed.”