Attorney says sex-abuse accusers have 'financial stake' in case against Sandusky Updated at 1 p.m. ET: The attorney for former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky told jurors Monday that the young men who accused Sandusky of sexually abusing them did so for money. Michael Isikoff and Tom Winter of NBC News contributed to this report by Kim Kaplan of NBC News and M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com. A jury of seven women and five men heard opening statements in Centre County Court in Bellefonte, Pa., ending months of pretrial wrangling in the high-profile case that led to the firing of head coach Joe Paterno, who won more games than any other major college football coach in history, many of them with Sandusky at his side. Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial Accompanied by his wife, Dottie, and his son Matt, Sandusky arrived at the courthouse about 8 a.m. ET with his attorney, Joseph Amendola. "Jerry Sandusky has always said that he is innocent," Amendola said in his opening statement, noting that as long ago as 1998, local prosecutors had declined to bring charges against Sandusky. He suggested that the eight alleged victims who are expected to testify were already troubled as youths, saying they knew Sandusky in the first place only because teachers and government agencies had referred them to Second Mile because "they had issues." "You saw those eight photos," Amendola said, referring to photographs of the eight accusers as young boys that the prosecution had presented in its opening statement Cute kids - why would they lie? Amendola asked. Folks, I don't know, when it comes to money ... the evidence is going to show that six of these eight young men who are going to testify have sued. "The evidence will show these young men have a financial interest in this," he said. The testimony is going to be awful, but that doesn't make it true, and that's the bottom line. Although the men are being identified by name in court, NBC News and msnbc.com do not identify the victims of alleged sexual assaults. But in his opening statement earlier in the morning, Joseph McGettigan, the deputy state attorney general who is leading the prosecution, said the case is about "systematic behavior by a predator." Amendola said he didn't think McQueary had lied. Instead, he said, "what we think is that he saw something and made assumptions." Why do people lie? Maybe Mike McQueary got pushed into a corner or something, though we'll hear different versions from him," he said.