Fox News
November 19, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/19/penn-state-paid-by-sanduskys-charity-for-use-facilities-as-recently-as-2009/
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| November 2, 2011: A sign for The Second Mile charity is seen outside the organization's headquarters in State College, Pa. |
Penn State University received almost $250,000 for a series of sleepover camps in 2008 and 2009 run by the charity group founded by Jerry Sandusky - years after ex-athletic director Tim Curley imposed an “unenforceable” ban on the accused child molester from bringing children onto the school’s sports facilities and main campus.
Financial records obtained by FoxNews.com show $124,587 was given to Penn State by The Second Mile in 2009. The year before, in 2008, the university received $119,592 from The Second Mile. The money is listed under “food and lodging” in charity records, and officials said the payments were made on a series of week-long sleepover camps.
Penn State apparently took money for the camps months after the mother of a high school freshman contacted authorities in the spring of 2008 saying her son had been abused by Sandusky. That allegation kick-started the grand jury investigation that earlier this month indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of child sex abuse charges.
It’s not clear if Sandusky, who was still director of The Second Mile in 2008 before the group cut ties with him, participated in the camps. University officials said their records do not show the names of those who participated, and The Second Mile officials declined requests to answer questions about Sandusky’s involvement.
But Sandusky was still an “active” director of The Second Mile and earned $57,000 in The Second Mile’s 2008 fiscal year, which ended August 31, 2008. Three months later, in November, Sandusky told The Second Mile he was under investigation, and the charity banned him from activities with children, according to a recent statement by the former The Second Mile CEO Jack Raykovitz, who resigned on Sunday.
Sandusky also held sleepover football camps for boys, run through his own corporation, Sandusky Associates Inc., at satellite Penn State campuses all over the state, even after he was turned out from The Second Mile.
When asked for details about money paid to Penn State in 2008, the university’s associate vice president for finance and business, Daniel Sieminski, told FoxNews.com via email that The Second Mile ran five weeks of camps. "These funds paid for all the food, lodging and miscellaneous expenses incurred by the University for these camps.”
In response to a series of follow-up questions, Sieminski said the activities related to the camps were held at various locations on the main Penn State University Park Campus. “Camps were conducted in classrooms, the outdoor pool, outdoor fields, and Creamery,” he said, adding that campers had access to those locations and the university dorms where they stayed.
The 2008 camp dates were:
July 5-10 boys - 64 participants, 21 staff
July 12-17 girls - 100 participants, 24 staff
July 19-24 girls - 90 participants, 23 staff
July 26-31 boys - 75 participants, 22 staff
August 2-7 boys - 65 participants, 21 staff
Sieminski said he did not know the specific name(s) of the The Second Mile camp program. The university’s records do not precisely correspond to the information in The Second Mile’s online reports for the summer of 2008, which classified the camps as a 10-week “Challenge Program.”
FoxNews.com on Friday visited the The Second Mile office in State College, and a receptionist said the charity’s new CEO, David Woodle, was in meetings but would reply to email questions. Woodle did not reply to two emails sent afterward.
When asked about the camps and the money, the receptionist referred to reports on the website. When told the report for that year mentions only one sleepover camp, the Challenge Program, she said the charity also hosted other camps, but would not offer details. The Second Mile and Penn State officials have both denied they were associated with the Sandusky Association football sleepover camps for boys grades 4 to 9 — though they were held on Penn State campuses in 2008, according to a flyer still posted on the website of the university’s Erie campus. Advertisements for the camp have listed the registration contact information as the Penn State (psu.edu) address of Sandusky’s son, Jon.
Sandusky ran the same football sleepover camps on Penn State campuses the following year, in 2009, nearly a year after the charity banned him from activities with children and nearly a decade after the first reports of his alleged sex abuse surfaced.
The 2008 payment was not the only one found in The Second Mile’s tax returns, in which Penn State is listed among the highest paid consultants. In 2009, after the charity says it banned Sandusky from activities with children, The Second Mile paid Penn State more than $100,000 to hold another series of camps on the university's campus. The Second Mile 2008 fiscal year payment is reflected in Penn State’s 2008/09 fiscal year, the school official noted.
The charity’s director/treasurer, Ralph Licastro, an accountant and professor at Penn State’s business school, was not home or unavailable when FoxNews.com stopped by on Friday to ask about the payments. His wife asked for a reporter’s business card, and said he would call back if he chose to do so.
No one answered the door at the home of Raykovitz, who stepped down on Sunday in the wake of the ongoing scandal. But Raykovitz’s wife, Katherine Genovese, is still with the group, and remains its second-highest earner on the charity board, according to records.
Allegations Sandusky sexually abused children go back to at least the late 1990s, according to a grand jury report released two weeks ago. And in March 2002, a then-graduate student Mike McQueary told university officials, including Curley and Penn State’s legendary head football coach, Joe Paterno, that he saw Sandusky sodomizing a young boy in the campus showers.
Later that month, McQueary told a grand jury, Curley told him that he’d informed Second Mile of the allegations and that he’d taken away Sandusky’s key to the locker room. McQueary said Curley told him that Sandusky had been banned from campus — with then-president Graham Spanier’s knowledge.
The sex-abuse scandal has so far has claimed the jobs of Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Finance Director Gary Schulz.
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