Mike McQueary Mike McQueary ( born October 10 , 1974 ) was an assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University ( Penn State ) under head coach Joe Paterno until late in the 2011 football season . McQueary was identified as a key witness in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal . Playing career . After a high school career at State College Area High School , McQueary was a quarterback for Penn State from 1994 through 1997 . He backed up Kerry Collins in 1994 , and backed up Wally Richardson in 1995 and 1996 . He started all 12 games as a senior in 1997 , leading Penn State to a 9 - 3 record and a Citrus Bowl bid . In his first college start against Pittsburgh ( on September 6 ) , McQueary passed for a then - Penn State record 366 yards in a 34 - 17 victory over the Panthers . For the season , he completed 146 of 255 passes for 2211 yards and 17 touchdowns ( both yards and touchdowns second in the Big Ten to Purdue ' s Billy Dicken ) , while tossing 9 interceptions . Coaching career . Mike McQueary returned to Penn State in 2000 following attempts to catch on in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders and in NFL Europe with the Scottish Claymores . As recruiting coordinator , McQueary oversaw the recruitment of several high profile recruits including Justin King , Derrick Williams and Andrew Quarless . On November 11 , 2011 , Penn State announced McQueary would not be serving as receivers coach in the final home game of the season due to threats against him , and put him on indefinite paid administrative leave . Later that day , " The Patriot - News " reported that McQueary told his receivers in a conference call that he would no longer be their coach . Role in sex abuse scandal . McQueary was identified as a key witness in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal . Grand jury testimony alleged McQueary reported to Paterno of witnessing Jerry Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy in a campus locker room ; McQueary first told his father about the incident , then the next day informed Paterno , and then ten days later informed other university officials . According to investigators and legal experts , McQueary was initially not implicated in any wrongdoing because he fulfilled his legal obligation to report the incident to his immediate supervisor , Paterno . However , he was criticized for not intervening to protect the boy from Sandusky , as well as for not reporting the incident to police himself . McQueary later said he made sure the observed assault stopped before he left , and that he discussed the incident with police . The university senior vice president and others have been charged with perjury for saying that McQueary had reported only horseplay at the time . A prominent Pennsylvania nephrologist ( kidney doctor ) says that he was present when McQueary described the incident to his father and the description mentioned hearing but not seeing a slapping sound in the other room , seeing Sandusky put his hand around the child ' s waist and later emerging wearing a towel . Mike McQueary ' s testimony for the preliminary perjury trial says that he heard ' two or three ' slapping sounds before entering the locker room , and later saw Sandusky with his arms around the child ' s waist while hearing ' more than one ' of the showerheads running and saw that the child ' s hair ' was wet ' ; although he did not see any sexual contact of hands or genitals or any evidence of arousal , just from the positions of the bodies he knew it was ' over the line ' and ' extremely sexual ' and ' some sort of intercourse ' was taking place , and that he tried to explain what he had seen to Coach Paterno by using the word ' fondling . ' Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett , who as state attorney general opened the grand jury investigation , has said that McQueary " met the minimum obligation in reporting it up , but did not in my opinion meet a moral obligation that all of us would have . " It has been speculated that he was still employed because he was protected by Pennsylvania ' s whistleblower law .