Former Penn State University President Graham Spanier has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The longtime president was forced to resign a year ago and has been long identified as a target in an investigation of a possible coverup by university administrators.
The 2011 Sandusky grand jury presentment noted that Spanier “denied being aware of a 1998 University Police investigation of Sandusky for incidents with children in football building showers.” In August, Spanier criticized the report commissioned by Penn State and led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which said Spanier knew about allegations that Sandusky was seen abusing a boy in a football team locker room on Penn State’s campus in 2001 and failed to go to authorities. The Freeh report included an email sent to Spanier by former vice president Gary Schultz in 1998 referencing the earlier investigation.