Mike McQueary
AP photo by Gene J. Puskar
It's an image even those remotely familiar with the Penn State sex-abuse scandal know about: the Lasch building locker room.
That picture took fuller form Tuesday, with former graduate assistant Mike McQueary on the stand. Prosecutors displayed several pictures of the Lasch building's "staff and support staff locker room" for McQueary, the jury, the defense and more than 100 onlookers in a Bellefonte, Pa., courtroom during the second day of the sex-abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
The locker room has just two rows of wooden lockers, about a dozen on each side, with a narrow walkway separating them. An adjoining bathroom, with white tiles and blue and red trim, is set off to the left of the lockers. A sink sits beneath a midsize mirror facing a small shower with an open entryway at a 45-degree angle.
It was in this mirror, peering into the shower, McQueary told the jury, that he witnessed an incident that has received close scrutiny leading into Sandusky's trial. But, echoing his previous testimony, McQueary said seeing the alleged sexual assault in the mirror wasn't enough. He needed to see it with his own eyes.
McQueary testified that he then slammed his locker door to disrupt the coach and his alleged victim, portrayed in the photos as two crash-test-dummy-like models. He said he took one last glance before leaving after no more than one minute total. He said he was sure of what he saw and that, to borrow his most frequently utilized descriptive phrase, what he saw was "extremely sexual."
Wearing a dark suit and tie, McQueary spoke slowly, confidently and thoroughly, gesticulating through long overtures under questioning from lead prosecutor Joseph E. McGettigan.
Under cross-examination from one of Sandusky's lawyers, McQueary remained confident, complete and generally polite. But McQueary, an assistant football coach at Penn State now on administrative leave, occasionally spoke sarcastically and defiantly when attorney Karl Rominger appeared to be taking jabs at his credibility.
Rominger, making his first cross-examination in the trial, asked McQueary about the timing of the alleged shower incident after prosecutors recently amended their allegations to indicate it occurred in 2001, rather than the year after.
McQueary said he had told investigators that he was 90 percent sure it was in 2002, but eventually told them to look into 2001.
He recalled that when he first called former head coach Joe Paterno to report the incident, Paterno, thinking McQueary was seeking a job, replied: "I don't have a job for you."
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