Penn State Trustee Al Lord on Monday sought to clarify remarks he made following the trial of former university President Graham Spanier in which he said he was ‘Running out of sympathy for 35 yr old, so-called victims [of Jerry Sandusky] with 7 digit net worth.”
Lord made the initial remarks in an email to a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter following Spanier’s conviction on one count of child endangerment and acquittal on another child endangerment count and a charge of conspiracy related to a 2001 report of Sandusky with a boy in a locker room shower. He added at the time ‘Do not understand why they were so prominent in [Spanier’s] trial. As you learned, Graham Spanier never knew Sandusky abused anyone.”
In a statement to the Daily Collegian on Monday, he expanded on those comments and offered an apology.
‘I apologize for any pain the comment may have caused actual victims,’ he wrote.
Lord said the remark was ‘made in anger’ and that ‘It was certainly not intended to offend real victims.’ He added that ‘real victims and alleged victims,’ were among the 31 individuals who received a total of $93 million in settlements in the Sandusky scandal.
‘Though quoted accurately it was too flippant and caustic; the comment conflates many deeply held sentiments in a sentence too short to reflect accurately my views about victims in this case,’ Lord said in the statement to the Collegian. ‘The quote was directed specifically at ‘so-called victims.’ It was certainly not intended to offend real victims.’
Lord, an alumni-elected trustee, went on to explain that he felt the prosecutors at Spanier’s trial did not focus on whether Spanier and others knew in 2001 of the danger posed by Sandusky, who was convicted in 2012 on 45 counts of child sexual abuse and continues to appeal.
Spanier,though he did not testify, has maintained that he was never told of sexual abuse and that he was only told a witness had been uncomfortable upon seeing Sandusky engaged in ‘horseplay’ in the shower with a boy.
‘Instead the trial focused almost solely on the horrors undergone by those children,’ Lord said. ‘Jerry Sandusky has been behind bars for four years. The Commonwealth put zero facts in evidence that anyone told Spanier anything sinister about Jerry Sandusky. Absent facts, the prosecution resorted solely to victim-based emotionalism.’
Lord noted that after the Spanier trial, the jury foreman gave interviews saying the guilty verdict was ‘a mistake.’
A close ally of Spanier, Lord closed his apology with what appeared to be a shot at statements made by the university following Spanier’s conviction and guilty pleas to child endangerment charges by former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz.
After the Spanier trial, the university statement said his conviction and Curley and Schultz’s pleas and testimony that they should have done more with the 2001 report, ‘indicate a profound failure of leadership.’
Lord’s statement seemed to indicate his displeasure with the university’s treatment of the three former administrators and late football coach Joe Paterno.
‘I will note that from this verdict emerged a ‘new’ Penn State — a Penn State determined to consign four honest and honorable men to its politically correct trash heap,’ Lord wrote. ‘The new Penn State is not the Penn State of loyalty and courage where I received the degree which gave me my start in life 50 years ago.’
Lord was elected to his first term on Penn State’s Board of Trustees in 2014. He is seeking re-election this spring and is one of five candidates for three alumni-elected seats.
