Two new investigations into child abuse by Jerry Sandusky have been launched by Pennsylvania's Children and Youth Services agency, according to the Patriot-News, which broke the news of the initial Sandusky investigation. It's unclear where or when the new alleged abuse took place. No real details given. What's important to note from the story is the following:
If they are found to be credible, these would be the first known cases to be reported since Sandusky's arrest that involve current children. All of the other publicly known cases of alleged victims coming forward have been adults.
When an adult alleges abuse, the police handle it. If the victim is under 18, Children and Youth Services jumps in. And what's important about the new cases, according to the Patriot-News, is that they could make people wonder—more than they already do, of course—why it took so long to arrest Sandusky. More:
When a 15-year-old Clinton County boy first alleged crimes against the former football legend and charity founder, police opted to open a grand jury investigation instead of making an immediate arrest.
It was a surprise move to the family of the boy, now known as Victim One.
And, it became a point of wonder for others in law enforcement when The Patriot-News first reported earlier this month that, for the first 15 months of the investigation against Sandusky, there was only one state trooper assigned to the case.
It wasn't until the fall of 2010 that agents from the state Attorney General's office got involved, and then when then-Attorney General Tom Corbett was elected Governor and took office in January 2011, he appointed state police commissioner Frank Noonan, who increased the number of investigators to eight.
That was when things really started to take off. It wasn't until January 2011 that Joe Paterno, fomer athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz testified. It wasn't until April that officials from The Second Mile testified.
None of the other seven cases of alleged abuse, outlined in the grand jury presentment, were known until more investigators joined the team.
We're faced with a chicken-and-egg dilemma here. The numerous anonymous sources who appear to have been pimped out by Corbett to Jo Becker and The New York Times contend that Corbett's investigation took so long because it took investigators so many months to crack the case. The breaks came from message board chatter and the discovery of a voluminous Penn State University Police report on Sandusky from 1998, the year a county district attorney investigated Sandusky for alleged sexual misconduct.
That's the chicken. The egg: You won't find much evidence until you have people looking for it. And one state trooper for 15 months does seem insufficient, especially when you're talking about child abuse involving the founder of what could be Pennsylvania's largest youth charity. Only after Corbett was elected governor and took office did state police commissioner Frank Noonan really beef up the number of investigators. And Frank Noonan, it should be noted, was the chief criminal investigator in Corbett's attorney general's office, at least until the governor tapped him to run the state police.