Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who stands accused of more than 50 counts of child sexual abuse, has filed a motion with a Pennsylvania court that would grant him the right to be visited by his grandchildren at his home, so long as they are accompanied by at least one parent. Filed on Friday at the court of common pleas in Centre County, the LA Times reports, the motion sought also to modify his bail agreement to include language that would allow him to contact the grandchildren "by mail or electronically, such as by phone or email." The children in turn would have permission to reply so long as one parent allowed it. Sandusky, 67, was arrested on Dec. 7 and released the following day on $250,000. The terms of his release stipulated he was not to have contact with anyone younger than 18 years old. 

One day prior to Sandusky's request, the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State held an emotional memorial tribute to former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, who succumbed last Sunday to lung cancer at age 85. It fell to Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight, The Washington Post reports, to address Paterno's firing. Pointing out that Paterno alerted his Penn State superiors to eyewitness reports of Sandusky's abuses, Knight instead shifted the blame towards the school's top officials:

“It turns out [Paterno] gave full disclosure to his superiors, information that went up the chains to the head of the campus police and the president of the school. The matter was in the hands of a world-class university and a president with an outstanding national reputation. Whatever the details of the investigation are, this much is clear to me: There is a villain in this tragedy that lies in that investigation, not in Joe Paterno’s response to it.

The remarks earned a standing ovation from the crowd of 12,000.

Watch Knight's speech here:

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Seth Abramovitch