Sandusky: "I didn't do those things"

(CBS/AP)�

Last Updated 7:47 a.m. ET

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky said Joe Paterno never spoke to him about any suspected misconduct with minors, the New York Times reported Saturday.

Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts of molesting eight boys over 15 years and is free on bail while awaiting a preliminary hearing on Dec. 13 .

In today's Times, the former Penn State assistant football coach denies sexually abusing children. He insists he was a father figure to kids involved in his charity, and he accuses prosecutors of twisting that around, CBS News correspondent Dave Brody reports.

In interviews totaling four hours over two days, the former Penn State football coach sat down with Times reporter Jo Becker and discussed the charges that he sexually abused children.

"The allegations are false. I didn't do those things," he said.

Penn State's board of trustees fired Paterno on Nov. 9 because it felt the football coach didn't go far enough in alerting authorities after an assistant coach said he told Paterno he saw Sandusky assaulting a young boy in the football building showers in March 2002.

During a lengthy interview at his lawyer's home, Sandusky told the newspaper he and Paterno never spoke about the alleged 2002 incident, or a 1998 child molestation complaint investigated by the Penn State campus police.

"I never talked to him about either one," Sandusky said. "That's all I can say. I mean, I don't know." He worked for Paterno for nearly 30 years.

Sandusky said there was chaos in the house where he often hosted children from his charity called The Second Mile.

In the interview he discusses a 1989 allegation of an incident in which Sandusky was said to have hugged a young man in a shower. The investigation, Sandusky says, only took a couple of days, and university officials - including head coach Joe Paterno - never confronted him.

"I don't know that he didn't know" about the allegations, Sandusky told the Times. "I know that he didn't never said anything to me."

In 2002, an assistant coach reported seeing Sandusky sodomizing a youngster in a shower. Sandusky says he spoke to Penn State athletic director Tim Curley.

"I told him it didn't happen," Sandusky said. "In my mind, there wasn't inappropriate behavior."

Sandusky said he never sexually abused any child and that prosecutors have misunderstood his work with children.

Center of Penn State scandal, Sandusky tells his own story (NYT)
An interview with Jerry Sandusky (New York Times Video)

"They've taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever," Sandusky told the Times. "I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all."

He is accused of mining the ranks of his Second Mile charity to find underprivileged boys to abuse. Sandusky also said that the charity never restricted his access to children until he became the subject of a criminal investigation in 2008.

He said he regularly gave money to the disadvantaged boys at his charity, opened bank accounts for them and gave them gifts that had been donated to the charity.

Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~3/6mkCcNRieIc/

fitness pedometer 360 manual health care reform health insurance yahoo health