Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh has been named to investigate the child sex-abuse scandal that has stunned the Penn State University community and cast a long shadow over its football program, it was announced on Monday in Philadelphia.
“The scope of our probe will be broad, covering a lengthy period of time,” said Freeh, promising to “leave no stone unturned,” according to an account by John Martin of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Freeh said he has assembled a team of investigators, including former FBI agents, that the inquiry will include scrutiny of the university’s policies and internal controls.
Ken Frazier, president and chief executive of Merck and Co. who heads a special investigative committee created by the university’s Board of Trustees, announced Freeh’s appointment. (Frazier is a graduate of Penn State and Harvard Law School.)
Freeh, who has six sons, said the allegations that have been raised and the charges that have been brought in the scandal are “extraordinarily serious,” and that the investigation would go all the way back to the mid-1970s, around the time that Jerry Sandusky founded his Second Mile charity for troubled youths.
Sandusky has, 67, the former defensive coordinator for the football team, been accused of numerous incidents of sexually abusing boys. The former Penn State Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and a former university Vice President, Gary Schultz, have been charged with failing to report knowledge of Sandusky’s deeds and lying to a grand jury about it. And former Penn State President Graham Spanier and legendary football coach Joe Paterno lost their jobs for not alerting police after a graduate student said he witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in 2002. (Sandusky has denied any wrongdoing.)
Frazier described Freeh, 61, who is a former federal prosecutor and former federal judge, as ideal to head the probe. Freeh has no connection to Penn State or the state of Pennsylvania, Frazier said.
