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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Jerry Sandusky Convicted of Sexual Abuse

Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football assistant coach, was convicted on Friday of 45 counts related to his sexual abuse of 10 underage boys. Sandusky, 68, is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.
 

Penn State's football team | Ben Stanfield

Penn State's football team | Ben Stanfield


 
When Sandusky’s actions came to light last fall after an exhaustive grand jury investigation, they rocked Penn State, the college football world, and the country. Officials at the highest levels of the school were implicated either in a cover-up or, at the very least, extraordinary negligence when it was revealed that, in 2002, graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in the Penn State locker room shower and reported the events to legendary football coach Joe Paterno. Paterno in turn reported the events to his supervisors and, apparently, considered his hands washed of the matter. The police were never contacted.
 
Sandusky, at the time retired for several years but still retaining access to Penn State facilities, was told after the incident not to bring young boys onto campus. When the grand jury report was released, Paterno was fired. He died soon after. Other officials fired in the wake of the scandal included the school’s athletic director and its president.
 
Sandusky ran a multimillion dollar charity, Second Mile, aimed at helping underprivileged youth. According to the prosecution, it was the boys he encountered there that he groomed to be his victims.
 
The trial featured the testimony of ten of his victims, all of them now adults grappling with the scars from what happened to them. The testimony of the victims and their families was disturbing and harrowing. Sandusky’s lawyer Joseph Amendola attacked the credibility of the victims, claiming a conspiracy meant to extort his client, but failed to sway the jury.
 
Sandusky ultimately did not speak in his own defense. The prosecution was prepared to call his adopted son, who recently revealed he, too, had been abused, to testify if Sandusky had taken the stand. The prosecution also suggested that, should Sandusky be acquitted, it had more victims, including the adopted son, ready to come forward and press charges.
 
The verdict marks a milestone in a tragic and at times bizarre story. Sandusky’s sentence has not yet been handed down. But it’s likely he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Triple Crown Hopeful I’ll Have Another Scratched from Belmont Stakes

I’ll Have Another, the horse who raced to victories at the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, was scratched from the upcoming Belmont Stakes, making it the latest Triple Crown hopeful to come up short.
 
The horse suffered from a relatively minor injury, a sore tendon in his left foreleg—an ailment described by the New York Times as roughly equivalent to a sprained ankle—but it was enough of a handicap to ruin his chances to sweep the Triple Crown. Rather than risk further injury, his owner decided to retire the horse.
 
Only twelve horses have succeeded in winning the Triple Crown, though more have won the Derby and the Preakness before falling short at Belmont. Because the Belmont is the longest of the three American Triple Crown races by a significant margin, it is extraordinarily difficult to win all three. The last horse to perform the feat was Affirmed in 1978. The ’70s saw three triple crown winners; before that, there was another long drought between Citation in 1948 and Secretariat in 1973. Before I’ll Have Another, the last horse to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but not the Belmont, was Big Brown in 2008.
 
The scratch is another surprising turn of events in an unusually eventful racing season. In May, a horse groom was found murdered in a barn at Churchill Downs on the morning after I’ll Have Another won the Kentucky Derby. The investigation is still ongoing, but at the time police believed that 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez was killed in an “altercation,” and his body hidden in the barn after the fact.
 
More recently, Doug O’Neill, I’ll Have Another’s trainer, received a 45-day suspension for elevated race day blood carbon dioxide levels found in another horse he was training in 2010. The CO2 levels are commonly tied to a practice called “milkshaking,” where a horse is fed a solution of baking soda and electrolytes to enhance performance. The suspension came despite the review board concluding that there was no evidence of milkshaking.
 
With his retirement, I’ll Have Another will be a stallion highly sought-after for breeding. In the meantime, though, it robs this year’s Belmont Stakes of some of its drama.