The former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, in his first extended interview since his indictment on sexual abuse charges last month, said Coach Joe Paterno never spoke to him about any suspected misconduct with minors. Mr. Sandusky also said the charity he worked for never restricted his access to children until he became the subject of a criminal investigation in 2008. 
 
 The failure by Mr. Paterno to act more aggressively after being told in 2002 that Mr. Sandusky had molested a 10-year-old boy in the showers of the university’s football building played a role in Mr. Paterno’s firing last month after 62 years at Penn State. Mr. Sandusky, in the interview, said that Mr. Paterno did not speak to him or confront him over the accusation, despite the fact that Mr. Sandusky had been one of his assistant coaches for three decades and was a regular presence at the football team’s complex for years after the 2002 episode. 
 
 Mr. Sandusky, in a nearly four-hour interview over two days this week, insisted he had never sexually abused any child, but he confirmed details of some of the events that prosecutors have cited in charging him with 40 counts of molesting young boys, all of whom came to know Mr. Sandusky through the charity he founded, known as the Second Mile. 
 
 Mr. Sandusky said he regularly gave money to the disadvantaged boys at his charity, opened bank accounts for them, and gave them gifts that had been donated to the charity. 
 
 Prosecutors have said Mr. Sandusky used such gifts as a way to build a sense of trust and loyalty among boys he then repeatedly abused. 
 
 Mr. Sandusky, after repeated requests, agreed to the interview because he said his decades of work with children had been misunderstood and distorted by prosecutors. 
 
 “They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever,” Mr. Sandusky said. He added: “I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all.” 
 
 Yet over the course of the interview, Mr. Sandusky described what he admitted was a family and work life that could often be chaotic, even odd, one that lacked some classic boundaries between adults and children, and thus one that was open to interpretation — by those who have defended him as a generous mentor and those who have condemned him as a serial predator. 
 
 He said his household in State College, Pa., over the years came to be a kind of recreation center or second home for dozens of children from the charity, a place where games were played, wrestling matches staged, sleepovers arranged, and from where trips to out-of-town sporting events were launched. Asked directly why he appeared to interact with children who were not his own without many of the typical safeguards other adults might apply — showering with them, sleeping alone with them in hotel rooms, blowing on their stomachs — he essentially said that he saw those children as his own. 
 
 “It was, you know, almost an extended family,” Mr. Sandusky said of his household’s relationship with children from the charity. He then characterized his close experiences with children he took under his wing as “precious times,” and said that the physical aspect of the relationships “just happened that way.” 
 
 Wrestling, hugging — “I think a lot of the kids really reached out for that,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Sandusky said his wife, Dorothy, known as Dottie, ultimately had some concerns about the household dynamics. He said she had warned him not to neglect his own children — the Sanduskys had adopted six children, including one from the Second Mile — “for the sake of other kids.” Mr. Sandusky recalled one scene after a Penn State football game that underscored her concerns. 
 
 “I remember the kids were downstairs, and we always had dogs,” he said. “And Dottie said, ‘You better go down and check on those kids, you know those Second Mile kids after football games.’ I went down, and I look, and there goes a kid flying over a couch, there goes a dog flying over a couch. And I go, ‘I don’t think she wants to see this.’ ” 
 
 He said of his household: “Yeah, I mean it was turmoil. It was turmoil.” ||||| Back in 1987, Jerry Sandusky was a talented defensive coordinator for Penn State. NBC news conducted an interview with him and a key focus was his charitable endeavors on behalf of underprivileged children. In the wake of the horrifying charges of sexual abuse against Sandusky, the comments he made about his passion for working with kids take on an entirely different significance. Looking back on the '87 interview, NBC investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff called it "a disturbing look into the man at the center of the Penn State scandal." 
 
 Sandusky was arrested last weekend and charged with sexually assaulting eight boys over a span of 15 years. The 67-year-old, who was arraigned on 40 criminal counts, started The Second Mile in 1977, a foundation established to help at-risk kids. Sandusky met all of the boys who testified that they were sexually abused by him through The Second Mile. 
 
 Back in 1987, he spoke about turning down other coaching jobs to continue his work with his foundation. 
 
 "I enjoy being around children. I enjoy their enthusiasm I just have a good time with them," he said. "Everybody needs people to care for them. Sometimes they don't want it. Sometimes they don't understand what you're trying to do, but they want to be disciplined. Kids are growing up awfully fast today." 
 
 More than a decade after the interview in 1998, Sandusky was first investigated for allegedly showering with a boy and police listened in as the mother of the child confronted him. Sandusky told her he was wrong and wished that she forgave him. No charges were filed. 
 
 Sara Ganim of The Patriots-News wrote on Friday that the 1998 incident was the first of many missed opportunities to investigate the former coach. 
 
 During the week following the release of the grand jury report, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz stepped down after they were charged with perjury in a possible cover-up of Sandusky's alleged actions. Longtime head coach Joe Paterno along with University President Graham Spanier were relieved of their duties effective immediately by the Board of Trustees and the number of Sundusky's victims reportedly doubled. 
 
 WATCH:
– Jerry Sandusky says he was never confronted by Joe Paterno about his suspected sexual misconduct, denies having his access to children restricted at his charity before becoming the subject of a criminal investigation, and completely denies ever sexually abusing children in an extensive and exclusive interview with the New York Times. Sandusky claims that his interaction with children over the years came from his charity work and there was nothing sinister about it. “It was, you know, almost an extended family,” he says. Sandusky gave the interview primarily to defend his decades of charity work. “They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever,” he says. “I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all.” Sandusky also said he was upset about the damage the scandal had caused to Penn State and Paterno. "I don't think it was fair," he said, adding that he didn't know for sure whether Paterno ever got wind of the allegations because they never spoke of them. Read the full interview, or click here for more on Paterno's role.