STATE COLLEGE — A new report commissioned by Joe Paterno’s family challenges the conclusion by former FBI director Louis Freeh that the late Penn State coach conspired to hide child sex abuse allegations against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

The Paterno family’s critique, released Sunday, argues that the findings of the Freeh report published last July were unsupported by the facts.

Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, one of the experts assembled by the family’s lawyer to review Freeh’s report last year to Penn State, said the document was fundamentally flawed and incomplete.

Freeh’s report reached “inaccurate and unfounded findings related to Mr. Paterno and its numerous process-oriented deficiencies was a rush to injustice and calls into question” the investigation’s credibility, Thornburgh was quoted as saying.

Freeh defended his work in a statement released Sunday.

“I stand by our conclusion that four of the most powerful people at Penn State failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade,” he said.

Paterno’s family released what it billed as an exhaustive response to Freeh’s work, based on independent analyses, on the website paterno.com.

“We conclude that the observations as to Joe Paterno in the Freeh report are unfounded, and have done a disservice not only to Joe Paterno and the university community,” the family’s report said, “but also to the victims of Jerry Sandusky and the critical mission of educating the public on the dangers of child sexual victimization.”

Freeh’s findings also implicated former administrators including university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and retired vice president Gary Schultz. Less than two weeks after the Freeh report was released in July, the NCAA acted with uncharacteristic speed in levying massive sanctions.

The former administrators have vehemently denied the allegations. So, too, has Paterno’s family, though it reserved more extensive comment until its own report was complete.