Ghosts of Sandusky's dreams haunt charity home

Hannah Rappleye/NBC News

The vacant big white house on Bernel Road in State College, Pa., shown here in November 2011, was the first home of The Second Mile charity founded by Jerry Sandusky to help disadvantaged kids.

By Lisa Riordan-Seville and Hannah Rappleye NBC News

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Those who know the house on Bernel Road will tell you its behind Beaver Stadium, near the airport on the outskirts of town -- a town still trying to piece itself together in the wake of one of the biggest scandals in college football history.

The two-story white colonial home represents the past, and future, of The Second Mile, a charity founded by Jerry Sandusky. It was on this land that Sandusky first realized his dream to create an organization for disadvantaged children.Until last November, it was also to be the home of The Second Miles most ambitious project to date a multimillion-dollar Center for Excellence intended to help those kids pursue big dreams.

Instead, it now sits quiet and empty on the edge of about 60 acres of overturned earth, a reminder of the crushed aspirations attributable to a criminal case unfolding less than a dozen miles to the north.

And the existence of the well-respected charity cuts to the heart of the central question in the criminal case: Was it the lifes work of a man who genuinely cared about the well-being of disadvantaged kids, or merely a cover for his illicit appetites?

As Jerry Sandusky's lawyers plan to argue that alleged victims are motivated by money from civil lawsuits, they are also weighing the possibility of taking the biggest risk of all putting their client on the witness stand. NBC's Michael Isikoff reports from Bellefonte, Pa.

Last week, eight of the alleged victims -- two remain unknown to prosecutors -- offered tearful testimony in a small-town courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa., about the sexual abuse they say they endured at the hands of Sandusky.

Sanduskys defense began presenting its case on Monday, calling several former coaching colleagues and others as character witnesses.

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Ghosts of Sandusky's dreams haunt charity home