When Jerry Sandusky’s attorney stepped into the bright sunlight outside the Centre County Courthouse on Friday, he was ebullient because, he said, testimony during a 90-minute hearing finally established that a Lock Haven-area man was the previously unidentified child known only as Victim 2.

Victim 2 was the young child that former PSU assistant football coach Mike McQueary testified he saw being abused on Feb. 1, 2001, in a shower at Lasch Hall, the football facility on the Penn State campus.

McQueary’s report of possible sexual abuse by Sandusky to Penn State authorities was a lynchpin in the 2012 trial that led to Sandusky’s conviction on 45 counts of child sexual abuse and his 30-60 year prison term.

Attorney Alexander H. Lindsay Jr. of Butler, representing Sandusky in his quest for a new trial, said he took a chance by calling the 29-year-old, identified throughout the Sandusky case only as Victim 2, because he didn’t know what the man would say when he took the witness stand for the defense.

The man, according to Lindsay, is an important witness in the defense effort to overturn Sandusky’s convictions for sexually assaulting 10 children who he befriended during his days as a Penn State assistant football coach, his retirement, and as the primary force behind the Second Mile nonprofit organization that focused on helping at-risk children.

During Victim 2’s initial statement to two state police investigators in the Sandusky case, which occurred Sept. 20, 2011, days after Sandusky’s arrest, he said he was part of the Second Mile program for several years beginning when he was 11 or 12 years old.

He told police Sandusky took him to Penn State football games and added that Sandusky took him to the Lasch building, where the two often showered after working out.

He told investigators nothing inappropriate occurred while showering with Sandusky.

In a subsequent statement to an investigator hired by Sandusky’s trial attorney Joe Amendola, the man related that he believed he was Victim 2, the boy seen by McQueary, but he still contended that he had not been sexually abused.

On the witness stand, the man was confronted with the statement taken by the defense investigator.

In the statement, he remembered the incident at Lasch Hall in which he and Sandusky were snapping towels at each other in the shower and he was sliding on the shower floor, he said in the statement.

He remembered, the statement said, hearing a wooden door close sharply (McQueary testified he slammed a locker door to interrupt the sexual abuse he was witnessing).

However, he denied there was sexual abuse that night and in the statement said that “McQueary is not telling the truth.”

The man was not called as a witness during the trial because the chief prosecutor for the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, Joseph McGettigan, did not believe he was Victim 2, and as McGettigan later told a jury, he did not know the identity of Victim 2.

McGettigan followed that up by telling jurors there were “others (victims) … presently known to God but not to us.”

The defense is contending McGettigan lied to the jury, and therefore was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct.

As time went on, the man changed his story about Sandusky, eventually telling prosecution investigator Mike Corricelli that San­dusky abused him.

In a final interview with Corricelli and Agent Anthony Sassano of the Attorney General’s Office, the man related that Sandusky had sexual contact with him in the Lasch building “around 10 times.”

Despite these recorded statements and the fact that the man refused to talk to Lindsay in preparation for Friday’s hearing, Sandusky, under questioning by Senior Judge John Cleland, said he wanted the man to testify as a defense witness.

On the stand, he acknowledged the transcripts of the various statements but repeatedly answered that he couldn’t remember what he had said word-for-word.

During his testimony, he said he met Sandusky through the Second Mile after being referred to the organization by a school counselor.

He said he lived with the Sandusky family after graduating from high school. He left the Sandusky residence because Sandusky was “controlling.”

His statements indicated that he and Sandusky were close at times, traveling to many football games and other events.

“Did you think of him as a father figure?” asked the defense attorney.

“Yes, I did,” he replied.

The man then spent five years in the Marines and returned to Pennsylvania in 2011.

When Lindsay’s tone during questioning became com­bative, the retired Marine shot back sternly, “Please don’t raise your voice to me.”

In answer to Lindsay’s continued questioning, the man said that he was Victim 2 and received a settlement for the abuse he suffered from Penn State. He would not relate an amount.

Deputy Attorney General Jen Petersen, on cross-examination, asked the witness one question — Was he sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky?

“Yes,” he replied.

Lindsay told people outside the courthouse, “I think it went good. … We established he was Victim 2.”

Pennsylvania’s victim advocate Jennifer Storm said after the hearing she was proud of the man for being willing to take the witness stand. She said that the witness “suffered every form of abuse at the hand of that man (Sandusky),” but others addressed the crowd outside the courthouse, including Sandusky supporter John Ziegler, who operates a website purporting Sandusky’s innocence. He tried to confront Storm, who walked away from him.

Cleland gave the defense and prosecution attorneys until next week to submit legal briefs on the post-trial issues raised by the defense.

Those issues also focus on Amendola’s failure to challenge aspects of the prosecution’s case, including the use of therapists by attorneys to help many of the victims remember the details of the abuse, and a defense theory that the prosecution leaked information about the grand jury investigation into the abuse to bring forth additional victims.

The hearing Friday occurred just a day prior to the fifth anniversary of the charges being filed against Sandusky and two days prior to his arrest.