Spanier became the third former university official to plead or be found guilty this month of child endangerment, following ex-athletic director Tim Curley and ex-vice president Gary Schultz, in the wake of the Sandusky case. Prosecutors contended that the three men did not do enough with information they had been presented about Sandusky’s inappropriate behavior with boys on campus, and that their relative inaction allowed Sandusky to victimize more children for years to come.

Many in the Penn State community feel that former head coach Joe Paterno, who was fired in the wake of Sandusky’s arrest and died a few months later of lung cancer, was unfairly maligned as having enabled of his longtime assistant’s abuse of children. Lord was also a staunch supporter of Spanier during his trial, insisting that the former president had no way of knowing Sandusky was a pedophile.

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“Running out of sympathy for 35 yr old, so-called victims with 7 digit net worth,” Lord said to The Chronicle of Higher Education in emailed comments published Thursday. “Do not understand why they were so prominent in trial. As you learned, Graham Spanier never knew Sandusky abused anyone.”

Lord may have been referring to Mike McQueary, a former graduate assistant and Nittany Lions quarterback, who testified about witnessing Sandusky molest a boy in 2001 and telling Paterno, and later Curley and Schultz, what he’d seen. Penn State has been ordered to pay the 42-year-old McQueary over $12 million in court rulings related to defamation charges and a whistleblower claim.

A 28-year-old man identified as “John Doe” testified during Spanier’s trial about being molested by Sandusky in 2002. Prosecutors argued that Doe would not have become a victim had the PSU administrators done more with McQueary’s account, as well as allegations from a 1998 incident.

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“I am tired of victims’ getting in the way of clearer thinking and a reasoned approach to who knew what and who did what,” Lord said to the Chronicle in an interview. He added, “The notion that there can be only one point of view with respect to all this stuff, and trustees at Penn State should toe a line that reflects the politically correct point of view, is symptomatic of what ails us.”

“Al Lord’s comments are personal and do not represent the opinions of the board or the university,” Ira M. Lubert, the chairman of Penn State’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement to the Chronicle. “The sentiments of the board and university leadership were expressed in the very first line of the statement released by Penn State: First and foremost, our thoughts remain with the victims of Jerry Sandusky.”

Lord was at the courthouse the day Spanier was convicted, and he said (via Penn Live), “I’m blown away. Just blown away. … You can’t endanger children if you set Jerry loose because you don’t know Jerry’s a pedophile, and frankly, that’s what this case is about.”

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Noting that, while the jury found Spanier guilty of child endangerment, it also found him not guilty of a separate count of child endangerment and of conspiracy, Lord claimed that the jury simply “flipped a coin.” He added, “You know, it was Friday afternoon and getting toward the weekend, and people wanted to get going.”

After the 2001 incident of which McQueary spoke, Sandusky was told not to bring boys onto Penn State’s campus, but prosecutors said that Curley, Schultz and Spanier did nothing to enforce the ban. In addition, the three officials were portrayed in court as understanding the gravity of McQueary’s allegations but choosing to keep Sandusky’s punishment in-house. From a report by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette earlier in March:

A series of 2001 emails — now key to the government’s case — show that the men at least considered the situation serious enough to warrant contacting police. They ultimately rejected the idea, opting instead to bar Sandusky from bringing children on campus, to urge the former coach to submit to counseling and to inform his children’s charity, the Second Mile, of the allegations. “The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon,” Mr. Spanier wrote, signing off on the decision. “We then become vulnerable for not having reported it.” All three men had been informed in 1998 about another investigation led by Penn State’s campus police into a report that Sandusky had showered with and potentially abused a different boy. That case never led to charges, but Mr. Curley and Mr. Schultz corresponded frequently with then-police Chief Thomas Harmon about the progress of his investigation. Mr. Spanier was copied on at least two of those exchanges. Mr. Schultz kept his handwritten notes on the 1998 investigation in a locked file that investigators found years later. “Other children? Is this opening of Pandora’s box?” he had written.

In the wake of a 2012 report written by former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was commissioned by the Penn State board of trustees to provide an independent analysis of the Sandusky scandal, Spanier contacted Lord for advice on suing Freeh, and Lord is reportedly providing financial help with that effort. “Graham knew that I’d had a bumpy but successful career” while “engaged in corporate rough and tumble,” Lord told the Chronicle.

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Lord is running for reelection to the board in balloting open to PSU alumni. He was first elected in 2014, reportedly as part of a movement by alumni angry over the fallout of the Sandusky case and eager to restore Paterno’s name, as well as a statue of the coach that had been removed from outside the university’s football stadium.

Following Spanier’s conviction last Friday, Freeh issued a two-page statement in which he said that for over 12 years, the former school president, along with Curley and Schultz, “actively protected a notorious pedophile who inflicted irreparable harm on countless child victims on the campuses and locker rooms at PSU. Although these men had multiple opportunities to stop this vicious, serial predator from continuing to sexually assault children who trusted the PSU campuses and programs as safe havens, they decided together to protect this monster rather than report him to the police.”

The former FBI director went on to state that Penn State’s current president, Eric J. Barron, and “a coterie of ‘Paterno denier’ board members, alumni, cult-like groups such as Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship … have been nothing but apologists for Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley, more concerned about bringing back a bronze statue than worrying about the multiple child victims who have forever been so grievously harmed on the PSU campus.”