Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky still maintains innocence, wife stands by side

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky still maintains his innocence more than a decade after his conviction for sexually abusing children — insisting his accusers were “coached and led” in their testimony and driven by money to lie.

Sandusky, now 80, spoke out from Laurel Highlands State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania, where he’s serving out his sentence on 45 counts of child sexual abuse, ranging from grooming to violent attacks.

“I never ever in my life ever thought about molesting anybody,” Sandusky told DailyMail.com.

“I was accused of heinous crimes, which I’ve never committed. My wife was my only partner in sex and that was after marriage,” he added.

Sandusky believes he was “wrongfully convicted by inconsistent, perjured testimony,” and claims his victims were “coached and led” by law enforcement and therapists to lie — suggesting that the victims were incentivized by money as “nobody came forward on their own.”

The former Penn State coach’s legal team has launched its latest bid to get a new trial, with his lawyers appealing specifically over the use of repressed memory therapy with his accusers.

Sandusky says he feels the technique, which uses hypnosis to recover repressed memories, would not stand up in a courtroom today and that the original jury should have heard more testimony about it.

“We now have evidence that there was repressed memory therapy, and we have an expert who’s willing to testify about how to analyze what happened,” he explained.

“Their stories changed. The point is that every last one changed,” he claimed.

During his trial in 2012, victims testified that Sandusky subjected them to a spectrum of abuse, from grooming to violent attacks.

The abuse, which took place from 1994 to 2009, involved young men he met at Second Mile Charity, an organization he founded for at-risk youth that he used to find and groom child victims.

Letters written by the victims described the effect of their abuse as boys and in the years since, detailing their anxiety, difficulty with family and social relationships and anger about what occurred.

One of them, described as Victim 4 in court records, said he does not forgive Sandusky and spoke of efforts to “attack us as if we had done something wrong.”

“We both know exactly what happened,” Victim 4 wrote. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Penn State University has paid more than $100 million to over 30 victims who said they were sexually abused by Sandusky,

Sandusky’s wife, Dottie, who has stood by him for the past 12 years, insisted she would have left him if she thought he had abused children.

“I know who Jerry is. I never saw anything, and I was here. If Jerry had done these things, I would have told somebody I wouldn’t have stayed with him,” she told the outlet.

“He’s that kind of a person. I mean, if he messes up or does something wrong, he’ll tell you he has and he’s sorry.”

A hearing on Sandusky’s case has been set for June 26, though it was not immediately clear how soon a ruling would come on if he could have a new trial.

Sandusky’s attorneys are also fighting for his court-ordered restitution, which was originally close to $98,000, and was then lowered a decade after his trial to about $44,000.

He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.