Whistle-blower McQueary sues Penn State

• Tweet

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The prosecution's star witness in the sexual abuse trial of former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has sued the university.

Mike McQueary, a former Penn State assistant football coach, filed a whistle-blower lawsuit, alleging Penn State ruined his reputation and made it nearly impossible for him to earn a living coaching football, the State College Centre Daily Times reported Tuesday.

McQueary is seeking $4 million in damages, plus legal costs and other undetermined punitive damages, the Centre Daily Times said.

McQueary alleges former university President Graham Spanier fired him after he cooperated with investigators and prosecutors in the Sandusky case. McQueary testified he saw Sandusky in a shower with a young male in February 2001 engaged in a sexual act. Investigators approached him in December 2010 after the local prosecutor received an anonymous tip.

McQueary was a graduate student when he told head Coach Joe Paterno he saw Sandusky sodomizing a boy in the Lasch Football Building locker room shower.

Penn State spokesman David La Torre declined to comment on McQueary's suit.

McQueary's suit alleges Spanier's support for former university administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz -- awaiting a scheduled Jan. 7 trial for perjury -- "reinforces the perception that [McQueary] had lied and committed perjury."

In November, Spanier issued a release supporting Curley and Schultz after they were indicted. McQueary's suit alleges Spanier also reiterated that support in a meeting with university athletics staff, also in November, the Centre Daily Times said.

McQueary was placed on administrative leave Nov. 13 and told to stay away from university football facilities and university property.

Since then, McQueary suffered "much distress, anxiety and embarrassment" from the university, the suit claims.

Paterno, who was fired in the scandal's aftermath, died Jan. 22 at age 85.