Penn State Settlement: Deal Reached With 'Victim 5' in Sandusky Case

A settlement reached with Penn State for one of the victims connected in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal could begin a string of resolutions in the case.

Attorney Tom Kline said Saturday that a 25-year-old suburban Philadelphia man known as "Victim 5" in court filings had reach an agreement with Penn State, The Associated Press reported.

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Michael K. Rozen, a lawyer hired by the university to help settle the cases, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that 26 of 31 claims by Sandusky victims are close to being settled.

Mike Boni, one of four lawyers representing 10 claimants — including the victim whose complaint triggered the investigation — told the AP on Sunday that those claims were also close to resolution.

"I'd be troubled if it didn't happen this week," Boni told The Associated Press. "We're not signed off, but we're close."

There are still a handful of cases, though, that have not made the same progress, attorney Jeff Anderson said.

"It's still a work in progress," Anderson said, according the AP. "If somebody's talking about they have deals done, it's not us."

The university previously approved spending some $60 million to settle the cases, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Victim 5 was assaulted by Sandusky in August 2001, six months after then-graduate assistant Michael McQueary reported to university officials that he saw Sandusky rape a boy in a campus shower.

Because that assault occurred so soon after the McQueary report and took place on campus, it was considered pivotal in reaching a settlement agreement with other victims, Rozen told the Inquirer.

"The pivotal issue from the university's perspective in dealing with the victims is where the incident occurred and when it occurred proximate to the 2001 shower incident," Rozen told the Inquirer. "'Number 5' is probably the singular one of the claims that has come to the university's attention where it absolutely, positively could have been stopped."

The Philadelphia Inquirer said Rozen and Kline both declined to identify the amount of the settlement. Rozen told the newspaper that it was one of the highest negotiated because of its circumstances.

Sandusky, 69, a former Penn State assistant football coach, is serving a 30- to 60-year state prison sentence for child molestation and related offenses. He is currently appealing those convictions.

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