Pennsylvania's solicitor general said allegations recently uncovered against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky were not verifiable.
The allegations became public last week as part of a court order involving Penn State and an insurance company regarding the university's payments to Sandusky's victims. The document cited allegations from 1976, 1987 and 1988.
The reference to a 1976 incident said a child "allegedly reported" abuse by Sandusky to former coach Joe Paterno and the 1980s allegations were "reportedly" witnessed by unnamed Penn State assistants. According to Bruce Castor, the allegations citing assistants in the document were "of no value."
"The reports turned out to be double and triple hearsay and of no value, with the coaches in question each denying they saw anything," the solicitor general told the AP. "So dead ends there all around."
The references in the document raised more questions regarding the depth of the scandal involving Sandusky and how much Joe Paterno and other Penn State coaches knew about Sandusky's crimes.
The former defensive coordinator is currently serving a prison sentence between 30 and 60 years after he was found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012. The Paterno family responded to last week's report by saying it "does not change the facts" and that Paterno didn't participate in any cover up of Sandusky's crimes.
A CNN report emerged Friday citing a man who alleged he was sexually assaulted by Sandusky in 1971. The man initially spoke with CNN in 2015 and the report said he had received money from Penn State settlement payments.
Castor said prosecutors knew about his allegations but that he didn't want to be formally interviewed.
"The victim in that case had a civil lawyer who asked us in 2014 not to interview him formally because of a pending lawsuit," he told the AP. "We abided by his wishes after determining that this victim's information was too remote in time to be useful in our cases against the PSU administrators."
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