Jerry Sandusky case: Victim No. 1 to reveal identity in new book

One of the victims sexually abused as a child by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sanduskyhas a book deal and will publicly come forward, it was reported Thursday.

Sandusky is in a Pennsylvania jail awaiting sentencing on 45 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys who were clients of a charity, The Second Mile, that he started. Some of the assaults, which became a national scandal, took place at the football training facilities on campus. Sandusky, 68, faces hundreds of years in prison.

Known in court documents as Victim No. 1, the former child victim is now 18. He testified during the June trial that he spent nights at Sandusky’s home in State College, Pa., where he was assaulted. He said that the overnight visits began with back rubs and moved on to oral sex. He eventually told his mother, who went to authorities.

PHOTOS: Who’s who in the Sandusky case

The publisher, Ballantine Bantam Dell, announced the book Thursday and said it will be released Oct. 23. It will be titled “Silent No More: Victim #1’s Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky,” and is co-written by the victim’s mother and a psychologist, according to an Associated Press report.

The victim will also appear on television the day of the book’s release.

The question of identifying the victims, known by numbers in court documents, was litigated before the trial. Judge John M. Cleland eventually ruled against some of the victims who requested that they be allowed to testify using a pseudonym, but he also noted that the media usually does not identify sexual abuse victims. The media followed the hint and withheld the names.

The book is the latest development in the scandal that roiled the Penn State campus, cost the former iconic head football coach Joe Paterno his legacy and the university president his post. The NCAA, the governing body of college sports, eventually punished the school with fines and by stripping away its victories.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired by trustees to investigate how the university handled reports that Sandusky was abusing children. He ultimately found that Paterno, ousted President Graham Spanier and two others tried to protect the school’s reputation by failing to deal with a 2001 report about the abuse.

Those other two officials, former Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley, are scheduled to go on trial on felony perjury charges alleging that they lied to a grand jury investigating the case. Earlier this week, a judge refused a request from the defendants to quash the charges, but the jurist is still considering whether to drop another lesser charge of failing to report suspected child abuse.

Their trial is scheduled for Jan. 7. Sandusky is scheduled to be sentenced Oct.9.

Also pending is the expected civil litigation from Sandusky’s victims against the school. Penn State recently hired Kenneth Feinberg, who supervised the compensation claims from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to deal with the question of how to compensate the victims.

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