Sandusky victim: You can't tell Jerry 'no'

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- The mother of "Victim 1" in the Penn State sexual abuse scandal says her son was powerless against former football coach Jerry Sandusky.

"I had said, 'You know, maybe we should have come to this conclusion earlier -- you should have told me,'" the mother, whose name was withheld, said on "Good Morning America." "He was like, 'Well, I didn't know what to do. You just can't tell Jerry no.'"

The victim's mother said she became more aware of the abuse as her son began to act out violently to purposefully get grounded to avoid seeing Sandusky, the New York Daily News reported.

"[I] proceeded to ask him if there was something he needed to tell me, if there was something going on. It wasn't 'til a month later when he indicated he was uncomfortable with leaving the school with him, and [Sandusky] pulling him out of classes at school," she said.

Sandusky was arrested Saturday, charged with 40 counts of sexually abusing eight boys in 15 years. He pleaded not guilty.

The boy testified to a grand jury he would hide in the basement of Sandusky's home to avoid contact with him.

Penn State trustee Kenneth Frazier, chief executive officer of Merck and Co. Inc., will lead the investigation into the university's handling of the allegations against Sandusky, the (State College) Centre Daily Times reported.

Frazier said Friday the investigation is in its early stages and it's hard to estimate how long it will take.

"What I can promise you is what I said before -- that we will do everything in our power to provide the university community, the public, the parents, students, the alumns with the clearest, clearest understanding of what we're able to find out, and we'll do it with independent counsel who will have unfettered access to whatever those facts are," Frazier said.

University Student Government President T.J. Bard said students will be refocusing their efforts on the victims and their families.

"I think that's what it's all about right now," Bard said.

Meanwhile, Joe Paterno's son denied the fired head coach hired a top Washington criminal defense lawyer to represent him in the child sex-abuse case.

"To be clear, no lawyer has been retained. Not sure where that report originated," Scott Paterno wrote on Twitter Thursday.

NBC News reported Paterno advisers had contacted J. Sedgwick Sollers of the Washington office of Atlanta's King & Spalding law firm Thursday, a day after the university's board fired the longtime coach and forced university President Graham Spanier to resign.