Court orders PSU to release Freeh documents

A group of alumni-elected trustees at Pennsylvania State University will get to review documents used by an outside investigator that found university leaders culpable of a cover-up in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

The university must turn over to the seven trustees within 20 days all material not privileged or confidential and within 45 days all material that is privileged or confidential, according to a decision by Common Pleas Court in Centre County. The documents in question were prepared by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the university-commissioned investigation into the Sandusky scandal.

Alumni trustees have argued for years that Freeh unfairly blamed the university and accused former administrators of covering up abuse by Sandusky, a former assistant football coach now in prison. They want to see Freeh's interview documents and other material to understand how he reached his conclusions in July 2012.

Under the court order, trustees can discuss the "confidential" or "privileged" material only in a private executive session of the nearly 40-member board or with the university's legal counsel.

That led Penn State President Eric Barron to declare the court ruling a victory. University officials, concerned about confidentiality granted to faculty, staff and others before they were interviewed by Freeh, had offered to provide much of the material if trustees had signed a confidentiality agreement.

"The university offered repeatedly to provide essentially all of the approximately 3.5 million documents collected by the Freeh firm with no redactions whatsoever and all of the Freeh firm's work product and interview memoranda with redactions of personally identifiable information, all under the conditions of a confidentiality agreement," the university said in a statement. "This legal action was an unnecessary and wasteful expense.

"While we would have hoped that a confidentiality agreement would have been sufficient to protect the university's interests, the court's order provides additional protection from any breach of the court's confidentiality requirements."

Given the required confidentiality, it's unclear what impact the release of the documents will have on the narrative of the scandal that has gripped the university since Sandusky was arrested in November 2011.

Since the report's release in July 2012, a group of alumni-elected trustees has pushed for the board to repudiate the report,  which accused former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, late head football coach Joe Paterno, and two other Penn State administrators of failing to act on allegations of Sandusky's misconduct. Spanier and the other administrators, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, are awaiting trial on charges of perjury and conspiracy. No court date has been set.

Anthony Lubrano and Barbara Doran, two alumni trustees who had backed the suit, declined comment. Lubrano said he wanted to discuss the matter with his fellow trustees before making a statement.

The other five trustees who sought the documents are: Ted Brown, Robert Jubelirer, Ryan McCombie, Bill Oldsey and Alice Pope.

Under the court's order, the university must label all confidential information as such but not redact it. Therefore, the alumni trustees will be getting more information than the university initially had offered to provide.

If trustees disclose the material to people other than the university's counsel or fellow board members, they could face contempt of court. The order was penned by Daniel Lee Howsare, senior judge.

Freeh released his report in July 2012, less than a year after Sandusky was indicted for abusing boys on and off Penn State's campus. The report accused former Penn State president Graham B. Spanier, late head football coach Joe Paterno, and two other Penn State administrators of failing to act on allegations of Sandusky's misconduct.