US News

Joe Paterno’s widow opens up about ‘devastating’ report: ‘This wasn’t the man I knew’

The widow of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno opened up to Katie Couric about the report condemning her late-husband’s role in covering up Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse.

In an exclusive interview set to air today on ABC’s “Katie,” Sue Paterno talks about the couple’s relationship to the Sanduskys and says she was “totally devastated” by the Freeh Report, which implicated her late-husband in a Penn State cover-up which enabled Sandusky to continue preying on young boys.

“At least eight young men had come forward saying they had been victimized by Jerry Sandusky as boys, “ Couric said in a clip of the interview released today.

“Louis Freeh who is the former director of the FBI, as you well know, led an investigation into the university’s handling of all this, and he accused your husband, as well as the President of Penn State, the Vice President, and the Athletic Director of, ‘callous and shocking disregard for child victims.’ When you heard that, what was your reaction?”

“Well, I was looking forward to the Freeh report, to be honest with you,” Paterno said.

“I thought we’ll get the truth, he’ll get the right answers. Then we’ll know why everything occurred that occurred. Unfortunately, I watched it alone, and as he went through his report – he did not know Joe, this wasn’t the man I knew. This wasn’t the man anybody knew. I was totally devastated.”

Sandusky, 69, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison in October after being convicted last summer of 45 criminal counts of abuse. Prosecutors said assaults occurred off and on campus, including the football building.

A report commissioned by the Paterno family and released Sunday said the late coach did nothing wrong in his handling of the child sex abuse scandal and portrayed Paterno as the victim of a “rush to injustice” created by Freeh’s investigation.

Former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, one of the experts assembled by the family’s lawyer to review Freeh’s report last year to Penn State, called the document fundamentally flawed and incomplete.

Freeh’s report reached “inaccurate and unfounded findings related to Mr. Paterno and its numerous process-oriented deficiencies was a rush to injustice and calls into question” the investigation’s credibility, Thornburgh was quoted as saying.

With Post wire reports