Despite his repeated attempts to postpone, Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse trial is set to begin with the start of a jury selection, as prosecutors and his defense lawyers choose 12 people from the area surrounding Penn State University to decide his guilt or innocence. Sandusky is charged with 52 criminal counts for alleged sexual abuse of 10 boys over the length of 15 years, which he has continuously denied. Sandusky, a 68-year-old who gained fame as defensive coordinator for the university’s highly praised football team, where he won two national championships, will be in the courtroom on Tuesday for the beginning of the trial, which is expected to last several weeks, according to Sandusky’s lawyer.
Among witnesses for the trial are several young men who assert they were abused by Sandusky. Prosecutors have argued that Sandusky groomed boys he met through a charity he founded in 1977, The Second Mile, for under-privileged youth, then abused them, in some cases in his home or inside the university’s athletic facilities.
