Former Penn State quarterback and later assistant coach Mike McQueary was the key whistleblower in the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal that brought down Joe Paterno and several school leaders.

McQueary will once again be an important figure in the criminal trials of Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz and in his own lawsuit against Penn State. ESPN The Magazine takes a closer look at McQueary in this gripping story.

One of the bombshells from the story is that McQueary told Penn State players in 2011 that he could relate to Sandusky's victim in the shower incident he witnessed because he, too, had been sexually abused as a child.

Don Van Natta Jr. writes that McQueary's life has been difficult since his allegations came to light. He still lives in State College at his parents' house but is unemployed and broke:

Approaching 40, McQueary fills his days hunting for distractions, scouring the web for employment -- he's failed to land several sales jobs -- and visiting his lawyer's office at a strip shopping center. On some days, he pays his respects at Joe Paterno's final resting place.

Van Natta also reports that McQueary developed a compulsive gambling problem while he was a player at Penn State and that he even bet on Nittany Lions games:

One former teammate specifically recalls that Big Red bet and lost on his own team in a November 1996 game against Michigan State at Beaver Stadium. With McQueary serving as a backup on the sideline, favorite PSU won on a late field goal 32-29 but didn't cover the eight-point spread.

As his losses mounted, McQueary owed thousands of dollars to a bookie, a debt that was eventually erased by his father, several people say. A college friend recalls urging McQueary to slow down. "It got pretty bad," the friend says, "and it just kept snowballing and snowballing. He was very impulsive."

Whether Paterno or his assistants were aware of McQueary's gambling isn't known, but several teammates and former coaches say they doubt it. By all accounts, McQueary was fooling fans across Happy Valley -- and pulling the wool over on Paterno. "I love Joe to death," says a woman who worked for years in the football office. "But in a lot of ways, he was clueless."

There have been inconsistencies in McQueary's account of what he saw in the Lasch Building showers on Feb. 9, 2001, and those statements and his memory will thoroughly be dissected in the forthcoming trials.