Facing 52 counts of child abuse, Jerry Sandusky is now being accused of acting inappropriately with his own grandson. Though it's pretty hard to give Sandusky the benefit of the doubt, there's this to consider: the allegations have come in a custody battle between Matthew Sandusky and his ex-wife Jill Thomas over their three kids. Thomas says her son only revealed that the former Penn State football coach "inappropriately touched" him after the other sexual abuse allegations came to light, the Penn State Daily Collegian's Mindy Szkaradnik reports. Thomas added that police concluded that there was not enough evidence to file a charge, but she cited it as her reason for objecting to Sandusky's request, approved by a judge on Monday, to have supervised visits with his grandchildren despite a court order that he have no contact with children under the age of 18. In a statement, Szkaradnik said, “I was also advised at the same time that the psychologist who investigated the case had concerns about what had happened to my son and could not rule out that Jerry Sandusky was grooming my son for sexual abuse." Sandusky's lawyer "unequivocally denied these new allegations." And while it answers the question of why Thomas objected to the supervised visits, it does not answer why the parents of Sandusky's eight other grandchildren had no objections.
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Elspeth Reeve



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