22 June 2012 Last updated at 18:05 ET

Towns at centre of Sandusky storm await verdict

By Kate Dailey BBC News, Bellefonte

Our correspondent says some Sandusky trial-watchers are expecting more victims could come forward after the court's verdict has been delivered

Just 259 days have passed from the moment Jerry Sandusky was first charged with 40 counts of sex crimes to the closing arguments in his trial.

In that time more victims have come forward, charges have been filed, and charges have been dropped.

Mr Sandusky's old boss, the legendary football coach Joe Paterno, was first sacked, then buried after succumbing to a swift attack of lung cancer.

Penn State University alumni voted in record numbers to bring new blood onto the board of trustees; the university began training employees throughout the state about rape awareness; an FBI director interviewed over 200 people to find out where the school went wrong.

A new football coach was recruited and hired; the old staff were asked to clean out their lockers.

Two other Penn State administrators are awaiting trial for attempting to cover up the scandal

Children who came forward to testify against Jerry Sandusky have switched schools to avoid being harassed by classmates.

"Everything has happened so quickly," says Kristen Houser, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Coalition to Stop Rape, which is working with the school to train the staff. It is not just the speed but the magnitude - things happen quickly, and happen one on top of the other.

The trial, for instance, was both fast and furious: wrapping up a few days ahead of schedule on the same day that two new accusers - including Mr Sandusky's own adopted son - came forward.

The pace has been so gruelling that many believed a verdict would be swift too - with some local attorneys predicting the jury would returned in under four hours.

But at this point - more than 24 hours after the jury were sent to deliberate - the odds of a speedy resolution seem less certain and the frenzy that surrounded the case on Thursday evening has died down.

The ornate Bellefonte courtroom, which looks like it was lifted from a 1930s movie about the justice system, was only half-filled today. The cafe favoured by reporters did not run out of food the way it did yesterday.

Now, for the first time since all this began, there is nothing to do but wait.

'Society is changing'

For many of the victims' advocates who have come to see the trial, it is a wait to see if justice will be served.

Timeline: Sandusky case

1969: Jerry Sandusky takes up role as defensive line coach at Penn State

1977: Founds charity Second Mile aimed at helping boys with troubled family lives

1994-7: Meets Victims 4, 5, 6, and 7 through Second Mile.

1999: Retires from Penn State

2002: Graduate assistant sees Jerry Sandusky naked in the Penn State showers with Victim 2. He reports the incident to Joe Paterno, who informs the university's athletic director

2005-6: Victim 1 says he meets Jerry Sandusky through Second Mile

2009: Pennsylvania's Attorney General starts an investigation into Jerry Sandusky

Nov 2011: Jerry Sandusky is arrested; Coach Joe Paterno and Penn State President Graham Spanier fired

Jan 2012: Joe Paterno dies after struggle with lung cancer

June 2012: Child sex abuse trial of Jerry Sandusky begins

"Some people never get to see this day," says Daleen Berry, a sexual abuse survivor and author of Sister of Silence, a memoir about her experience.

She travelled from West Virginia to attend the trial. She is hoping for a guilty verdict, but has been heartened by the process so far.

"It's a victory because this is the first time this magnitude of awareness has been brought forward as far as sexual abuse is concerned. That shows that society is changing."

For some Penn State loyalists, it is a wait to put a cap on an ugly blot on the school's record.

"A lot of people shove it in the back of their mind because they want to forget," says Ryan Beckler, a Penn State student who runs the blog Onward State.

On Monday summer classes begin at Penn State, but for now the campus is quiet and mellow.

Students who left in May will return to a new football coach and all the optimism that a new year brings. But no matter what the jury decides, it will be impossible to ignore the lingering reminders of the alleged ugly crimes that happened on campus.

The report by former FBI boss Louis Freeh, an investigation into the school's actions surrounding the Sandusky case, is scheduled to be released in the next few months.

Two top administrators accused of perjury may have to face trials as well. And victims' advocates say that there could be more alleged victims coming forward.

Change of pace

Penn State is located in State College, a small, central Pennsylvania town that becomes the third-largest city in the state on home football weekend, when the population grows by 100,000 or so.

Jerry Sandusky worked as an assistant coach on Penn State's storied college football team

But the trial is held nine miles away, in a another small, central Pennsylvania town. Bellefonte is smaller, slower and more stable. Its population is more likely to be retired than college-aged.

The shop-fronts on College Avenue in State College change every few years based on the whim of student trends (the boutique candy store recently closed, but an upscale decor shop - complete with a $2,000 chair in the window - is doing just fine).

In Bellefonte, the Rexall drug store still serves ice cream at the counter, where patrons can perch on chrome stools located behind the rack of compression stockings.

From her top-floor apartment in a turn-of-the-century townhouse across the street from the county courthouse, Bellefonte resident Judy Pugh can see the news trucks lined up around the block. A native of Long Island, New York, who moved to the area from the state of Oklahoma, she is not confident of a guilty verdict.

"The people here are naive. That is always the way with paedophila, but especially in rural areas," says Ms Pugh, who moved here from Tulsa, Oklahoma five years ago. She worries that the taboos about sexual abuse will cloud the jury's decision.

Ryan Beckler fears that a not-guilty verdict will trigger another riot, like the one students started when coach Joe Paterno was fired last autumn.

And Daleen Berry hopes that no matter what the verdict, survivors will feel encouraged to come forward.

But for now they - like the rest of the trial-watchers in these twin towns - can only wait.