Former Penn State defensive coordinator Gerald Sandusky is escorted in handcuffs to be taken to the Centre County Magisterial District judge on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011. (AP Photo/Pa. Office of Attorney General, Commonwealth Media Services)
The June child sex-abuse trial of former Penn State assistant …
Jerry Sandusky's lawyer on Wednesday asked for a delay in the …
Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's …
Updated: Sunday, 27 Nov 2011, 1:43 PM EST
Published : Sunday, 27 Nov 2011, 1:29 PM EST
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Plainly stated, the most serious of the 40 criminal charges against Jerry Sandusky are that he sexually attacked young boys, subjecting them to anal and oral sex.
That may sound to many people like a case of rape, but police and prosecutors instead charged him with seven felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
The question of whether to use the word rape comes down to the finer points of Pennsylvania state law, discretionary decisions by police and prosecutors and the necessarily politically charged language of sex in general and violent sexual offenses in particular.
Experts say the Pennsylvania definition of the two crimes overlap considerably, but the legal definition of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse covers behavior different from a rape involving vaginal sex between an adult man and woman.
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