HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A small group of Penn State board members that includes longtime defenders of famed football coach Joe Paterno is challenging as unreliable a 2012 university-commissioned investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
In a 109-page report, five current and two former alumni-elected trustees say their review of a trove of documents found that the school-funded private investigation was tainted by improper contacts with the university, the NCAA and state and federal law enforcement.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh's probe concluded high-ranking administrators and Paterno hushed up the Sandusky scandal to avoid bad publicity.
Freeh calls the group of trustees' report "misguided, tilted, dishonest and biased."
The trustees say it's implausible that Paterno, former university president Graham Spanier and other officials would have knowingly exposed children to harm by a pedophile.
Spanier and two other former administrators were convicted of child endangerment. Sandusky is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for sexual abuse of 10 boys.
