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.’ ” 
 
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 He said of his household: “Yeah, I mean it was turmoil. They wanted to get rid of things.” 
 
 It is unclear whether the supervisors or directors of the charity knew of Mr. Sandusky’s setting up bank accounts or giving away donated gifts. 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. 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 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.
– 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.