HARRISBURG, Pa (Reuters) ? A key witness in the sex abuse case of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky testified on Friday he had no doubt he saw Sandusky in a sexual act with a 10-year-old boy in 2002.
"I believe he was sexually molesting the boy," Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant in the university's football program in 2002, said at a court hearing, adding at a later point that he "has no doubt" he saw Sandusky in a sexual act.
But McQueary also said: "I did not see insertion nor was there any protest, screaming or yelling."
"I heard rhythmic slapping sounds, two or three slaps that sounded like skin on skin."
He said he was "shocked, horrified, not thinking straight. I was distraught."
McQueary testified for two hours at the hearing on charges against former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and finance official Gary Schultz. McQueary took questions from Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer as well as lawyers for Curley and Schultz.
About 100 reporters and 50 to 60 members of the public jammed the courtroom, with some journalists having to monitor the hearing from a different part of the building.
Curley and Schultz, the latter in charge of the university's police at the time of the incident, were charged last month with perjury before a grand jury for testimony they gave about their knowledge of the alleged abuse.
McQueary had testified to a grand jury that he witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a boy in the showers of the football building, and reported it to then head coach Joe Paterno.
McQueary, who was 28 at the time, said at the hearing that after the incident he told his father: "I just saw coach Sandusky. What I saw was wrong and sexual."
Asked if he used the phrase "anal intercourse" when he talked to Paterno about the incident, McQueary said, "No, out of respect, I would not have done it."
Paterno told him, "I'm sorry you had to see that" and that he had "done the absolute right thing," McQueary said.
Paterno appeared "shocked and saddened" at what McQueary saw, and "slumped back in his chair," said McQueary, who was dressed in a dark suit and wore a white shirt and blue tie.
DID NOT CONFRONT SANDUSKY
He said he had never confronted Sandusky himself about the incident, and that while he had "absolutely without a doubt" considered calling police, he did not.
However, McQueary testified he did tell Schultz about the incident and in doing so, "I thought I was talking to the head of police." He said he considered Schultz a sort of district attorney who "would know what to do" with the information.
Asked by Schultz's attorney Tom Farrell if Sandusky had an erection, McQueary said: "I don't know. I didn't look and stare down there." Asked if he saw pain on the boy's face, McQueary said "no."
The hearing was being held in a courtroom at the Dauphin County Courthouse with District Judge William Wenner presiding, and was set to resume Friday afternoon after a lunch break that followed some three hours of testimony.
The preliminary hearing is to determine if there is enough evidence for Curley and Schultz, both of whom were present, to go to trial.
Paterno said he told his boss, Curley, of the incident but no one told police, and Sandusky's alleged behavior continued, according to a grand jury report.
McQueary, now an assistant coach himself, has not been charged in the case but was put on administrative leave from the university, as was Curley. Schultz retired shortly after he was arraigned November 7 in suburban Harrisburg.
Paterno and Penn State President Graham Spanier were fired for not telling police what they knew.
Sandusky waived his preliminary hearing on Tuesday and will go straight to trial on 52 counts of alleged sex abuse of boys over a 15 year period.
McQueary's father, John McQueary, also testified on Friday. He said that in a meeting with Schultz after the event his son saw Schultz said there had been a "noise level" about other incidents involving Sandusky, but the university "was never able to unearth anything or sink our teeth into anything substantial."
Referring to his son's description of the sounds of the incident, the elder McQueary said while neither he nor Mike used the word thrusting, "you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out a sound like that would be thrusting."
In other testimony, Thomas Harmon, retired PSU director of police, told the court about a 1998 incident involving a boy reported to police by the boy's mother.
Harmon said the mother reported Sandusky hugged her son from behind "but did not report any touching of genitals or anything overtly sexual."
Penn State faces a raft of investigations into the Sandusky case and how the school handled it. The university said on Thursday it had asked for more time to respond to questions
from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
The university has told the NCAA that it is clear that the questions "might be answered in the course of the investigations currently in progress," it said in a statement.
(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Greg McCune and Jerry Norton)
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