STATE COLLEGE — Penn State’s president Wednesday dismissed the university-commissioned review of how top administrators handled child molestation complaints about former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky as “not useful to make decisions.”

Eric Barron told The Associated Press that the 2012 report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh took a prosecutorial approach and created an “absurd” and “unwarranted” picture of students, faculty and others associated with the university.

“I have to say, I’m not a fan of the report,” Barron said during a half-hour interview in his office in Old Main, the school’s administrative headquarters. “There’s no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case.”

The Freeh report concluded that former administrators Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, and former football coach Joe Paterno intentionally concealed key facts about Sandusky’s child sex abuse to avoid bad publicity after receiving complaints in 1998 and 2001. It also recommended more than 100 changes to school policies and procedures and said Penn State was permeated by a culture of reverence for the football program.

The Freeh team’s report, he said, “very clearly paints a picture about every student, every faculty member, every staff member and every alum. And it’s absurd. It’s unwarranted. So from my viewpoint, the Freeh report is not useful to make decisions.”

Penn State and the NCAA entered into a consent decree that imposed a four-year ban on postseason play, temporarily cut scholarships, required a $60 million fine and invalidated 112 football team wins from Paterno’s later years. Although the legality of that deal has been questioned, Barron said he has no doubt that his predecessor, Rodney Erickson, had the authority to do it.