Philadelphia: A US jury convicted former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 of 48 counts in a child sex abuse case that shocked the nation, US media reported.
Police led the 68-year-old Sandusky — who had a dazed look on his face — away from the courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in handcuffs, television footage showed on Friday.
Sandusky, who stood accused of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year period, allegedly recruited his young victims under the guise of a program he ran for abused and neglected youth.
The once popular coach was acquitted of three individual counts relative to three separate victims, the Harrisburg-based Patriot-News reported. Sentencing was expected in the next 90 days, according to media reports.
The case has shocked the United States, where many are obsessed by college sports and hold up the coaches of their American football teams as demi-gods.
The headline-grabbing scandal also has tarnished the legacy of Pennsylvania State University, one of the country’s most illustrious college football programmes.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly thanked the victims for testifying, saying they had “shown great strength… to not only tell their stories to a packed courtroom, but the entire world.” Sandusky, who did not testify in his own defense, had faced 48 counts of sexually abusing at least 10 boys between 1994 and 2008.
Four counts were dismissed during the trial. Prosecutors said he recruited his victims through his Second Mile charity, which went bankrupt last month after donations dried up in the wake of the scandal.
Some of the alleged incidents took place on the Penn State campus. Sandusky’s lawyer Joseph Amendola told reporters after the verdict was read that he had battled a “tidal wave of public opinion against Jerry Sandusky” and that the verdict was not a surprise.
“I used the analogy that we were trying to climb Mount Everest from the bottom of the mountain. Well obviously, we didn’t make it,” Amendola said.
Amendola said there were “decent appeal issues” that his team would pursue, but acknowledged: “Essentially, the sentence that Jerry will receive is a life sentence.”
That statement elicited cheers from the crowd gathered outside the courthouse in bucolic Bellefonte, which has been invaded by the media since the trial began on June 11. (AFP)