About three weeks after retired Penn State defensive coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested and accused of making sexual advances or assaults on eight boys between 1994 and 2009, the New York Times editorialized that “what is clear . . . is that college administrators need to contact off-campus law enforcement authorities immediately when they receive allegations of criminal conduct. It should not take prolonged inquiries or complex new standards for universities to take this common-sense step.”

That advice was good then and remains so now, days after Sandusky was convicted of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years, and now faces the rest of his life behind bars.

As has been said in many venues, the healing process for Penn State will be a lengthy one and, as Tina Hay, editor of the Penn Stater magazine wrote in the publication’s January/February issue titled “Our Darkest Days,” “I expect we’ll continue to cover the issues raised by the scandal for a long time to come.”

Indeed, there will be trials, new suspicions, lawsuits, settlements, even perhaps additional charges. Time will tell.

But Kristen Eisenbraun Houser, a 1993 Penn State graduate and vice president of communications and development for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, offered some insight and advice in that Penn Stater issue that will never lose its relevance.

The information was listed under the title “How Adults Can Stop Child Sexual Abuse” — and it’s worth repeating:

1. “It’s not up to the kids. I tell parents to have age-appropriate conversations with their children about “good” and “bad” touch, but preventing abuse should never be a child’s responsibility. It’s our job, as adults, to keep all kids safe.”

2. “Start the conversation. Gather friends and family and talk about it. Find a local expert to explain the warning signs, and make reporting suspicious behavior the norm in your social sphere.”

3. “Perpetrators don’t groom victims — they groom families. Offenders are very skilled at earning parents’ trust so they can gain access to the child victim. Think outside the “stranger danger” mentality — 90 percent of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone the family knows and trusts.”

4. “There’s no black and white. People are multifaceted. Offenders can go to church, be good neighbors, pay their bills, and sexually abuse kids. We have to be willing to recognize that there may be people like this in our lives.”

5. “Trust your gut. Be aware of lingering hugs, back-patting, clingy behavior. If you sense something isn’t right, it probably isn’t.”

For years to come and long after the final court proceedings and lawsuit settlements, experts and the public, especially those close to Penn State, will continue to dissect the circumstances at the university that allowed Sandusky to carry out his terrible actions for so long.

Attention will shift away from the horrors that Sandusky’s victims experienced amid the confidence that the victims will be treated fairly in the months to come as part of the university’s healing process.

For the university, that healing presumably will come at a big financial cost.

“Until early November, Jerry Sandusky was one of the beloved figures in Penn State history,” it was written in that January/February Penn Stater. “The guy so smart that his signature defenses shut down Heisman Trophy winners in both of Penn State’s national title games. The guy so loyal that he spent 33 years on the Penn State coaching staff. The guy so devoted to helping underprivileged children that he turned down a head coaching job because he couldn’t have continued his charity work.”

But more than anything else, he was a terrible man who destroyed young boys’ innocence, leaving emotional scars that will remain for the rest of their lives.

As others have already said, Sandusky deserves to rot in prison.

That said, there are plenty of lessons to heed from this tragedy.