JUDGE

Jeffrey Sandusky, Son of Jerry Sandusky Awaits Hearing on Child Sex Abuse Allegations

Jerry Sandusky's adult son is in a Pennsylvania jail, awaiting a hearing next week on charges he pressured one teenage girl to send him naked photos and asked another to give him oral sex. 

Jeffrey Sandusky, 41, faces 14 counts, including solicitation of statutory sexual assault and solicitation of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. His lawyer isn't commenting on the allegations. 

A child abuse expert says the allegations raise the possibility that he may not have been raised in a healthy sexual environment, whether or not he was himself victimized. 

University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Gelles said adult men who seek sexual contact with adolescent girls are seeking power over them and can't have a mature relationship with another adult. 

"The sexual development in that household must depart significantly from normal. Mom is denying (her husband's serial abuse) or didn't know. Jerry was accused of having some sexual contact with one of his adopted children. It's hard to imagine that this young man (Jeffrey) is going to develop normally," said Gelles, chair of child welfare and family violence at Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice. 

Jeffrey Sandusky is one of six people adopted by Jerry Sandusky. He's been a stalwart supporter of his father, regularly attending his court proceedings alongside his mother, Dottie Sandusky, who also has consistently supported her husband and fought to clear his name. [[413714863, C]]

Jeffrey Sandusky has not made any public allegations of abuse by Jerry Sandusky, but one of his siblings, Matt Sandusky, alleged at the time of their adoptive father's 2012 criminal trial that he had been abused by him. Matt Sandusky was not called as a witness, and Jerry Sandusky has never been charged with those allegations. 

After his brother's arrest, Matt Sandusky told NBC News that if the allegations are true "he deserves the maximum of whatever sentence the judge will give him." 

"He should not see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of his life if these allegations are true," Matt Sandusky said.

Abbie Newman, chief executive of the Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center of Montgomery County, a private agency that helps coordinate child abuse investigations, said it's not unusual for patterns of abusive behavior to exist among different generations of the same family. 

"We certainly see cases at Mission Kids of allegations of intergenerational child abuse," she said. 

Sandusky also was charged with six counts of unlawful contact with a minor and two counts each of solicitation to photograph or depict sexual acts, sexual abuse of children and corruption of minors. 

The two victims, according to court documents, were minors with whom Jeffrey Sandusky had daily contact.

A state trooper said in the arrest affidavit that on Nov. 21, alleged text messages from Sandusky were turned over to police in which he asked one of the girls for nude photographs. 

The affidavit said Sandusky told the teen in texts in March that "it's not weird because he studied medicine" and instructed her "to not show these texts to anyone." 

The girl told police the texts made her uncomfortable and that "he kept pressuring me and asked me multiple times not to show the texts to anyone," police said. 

Gelles gave the teen accuser credit for reporting the alleged contact. 

"This girl was mature beyond her years, and smart beyond her years, and certainly not vulnerable to the kind of grooming that predators tend to use," he said. 

Prosecutors allege Jeffrey Sandusky sought oral sex from a second girl in 2013. She was 15 years old at the time. 

That teen told investigators that Jeffrey Sandusky told her in March: "I can't even say anything except I'm sorry." [[413714893, C]]

Jerry Sandusky is serving a lengthy prison sentence for sexual abuse of 10 boys, maintains he was wrongly convicted and is appealing. 

The state Corrections Department said that because of the charges, Jeffrey Sandusky was suspended without pay Monday from employment as a corrections officer at Rockview State Prison, near State College. He was hired in August 2015.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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