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Adopted Son’s Mom Raised Questions About Jerry Sandusky

Nearly two decades before Matt Sandusky’s blockbuster allegation that he was sexually abused by his adoptive father, his biological mother raised questions about their relationship.

Debra Long fought the court system over her son’s placement in the home of the famed Penn State assistant football coach, who was convicted Friday of sexually abusing 10 boys.

Her objections, which she discussed in a December interview with The Associated Press, add a new dimension to the grim trial testimony that illustrated how Sandusky wooed the victims he culled from his charity for at-risk youth.

Prosecutors said Sandusky used gifts, trips and access to Penn State’s vaunted football program to attract and abuse vulnerable boys he met through the charity, The Second Mile.

”If they’d have listened, these boys didn’t have to be abused,” Long said. ”They would have found the problem back then, and a whole lot of kids wouldn’t be victims now.”

Instead, she said, ”we couldn’t get anything done. It was Jerry Sandusky. He started The Second Mile home. He could’ve done nothing wrong.”

Matt Sandusky said that Jerry Sandusky, once Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno’s heir apparent, began sexually abusing him in the late 1980s, when he was 8 years old, and continued until he was 15, according to a police interview recording that NBC aired Tuesday.

He was placed in foster care with the Sandusky family in January 1995, about a month after he set fire to a barn and several months after Long tried to cut him off from Sandusky and The Second Mile.

Matt Sandusky, who was adopted after he turned 18, described for investigators showering with the ex-coach and trying to avoid being groped in bed, according to the police recording. He said he was undergoing therapy, that his memories of abuse were only now surfacing and that he was coming forward so his family would know what happened.

His attorneys confirmed the recording’s authenticity to the AP, but declined to comment beyond a statement.

”Although the tape was released without Matt’s knowledge or permission, it illustrates that he made the difficult decision to come forward and tell the painful truth to investigators despite extraordinary pressure to support his father,” the lawyers, Justine Andronici and Andrew Shubin, wrote in the statement.

Jerry Sandusky hasn’t been charged with abusing his son. Unless Matt Sandusky alleges rape, which he didn’t do in the police recording, the ex-coach cannot be charged criminally based on his son’s accusations, because of the statute of limitations.

In the December interview with the AP, Long said that Sandusky was pushy, was controlling and estranged Matt from his birth family – but that Centre County’s court system ignored her concerns because of Sandusky’s stature.

Records provided to AP by Long in December show that after Matt Sandusky attempted suicide in 1996, his probation officer wrote, ”The probation department has some serious concerns about the juvenile’s safety and his current progress in placement with the Sandusky family.”

Despite those concerns, probation and child welfare officials recommended continued placement with the Sandusky family, and the judge overseeing his case agreed.

Centre County President Judge Thomas Kistler, who joined the bench in 1997 and was not involved in Matt Sandusky’s juvenile case, said he saw ”legitimate questions” about the decision to keep Long’s son in the Sandusky home, but ”I can’t shed any light on them.”

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