you provided nothing. you are a hypocrite by selectively complaining about.a man who did what he should and could while defending a man who actively participated (Bear). Congrats on that. Keep it going, it has been quite entertaining to watch.
FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again
- Thread starter GulfCoastLion
- Start date
Joe was never on trial for anything so you will never see any definitive proof out in the main stream press other than what has been written already. But they knew about 98, Joe included, and they deliberately slow played 2002 with MM. so yes they covered it up.I don't have to...you championed that. You don't have any proof that Joe covered up for a pedo. But look at you!!!
You know what this makes you? A hypocrite. You defend a racist with ample evidence/proof he wouldn't recruit black players (he actually said that himself) then hammer Joe when he did exactly what the NCAA said to do!
Hypocrite. I set up the trap and you two fell right in. Congrats
.
My source was in the investigation and he has no doubt about it. Moving forward there might be a book or two, my friend has talked about writing one, but the issue with that is the potential authors doubt anyone really cares anymore enough to make it worth their time. The public opinion won't change anymore, PSU fans that defend Joe won't change their minds, and we will still argue about this for years to come.
whatever, you can make up anything you want.
in 1998, you state "they knew". They also knew it was thoroughly investigated including two psych evals, to sting operations and substantial resources put into entrapping JS even though the kid claimed nothing ever happened. Then they knew the DA decided that there was no evidence to support a charge. In 2002(1), it was reported to Joe and he did what the book then and now said to do...report it up and over.
You conflate Joe, Curley, Spanier, Shultz and TSM. Joe did what he should have done 100%. Short of putting on a trench coat, getting a magnifying glass and going Columbo, there wasn't anything else he could have or should have done. If he did, you'd be complaining he over stepped his bounds. Sometimes there just is no winning.
Thanks for your post. It is mature. Nice of you to admit you have, not does anyone else have, any proof Joe Paterno covered up for a pedo.
This is an absurd assertion.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Nothing but the truth, Boots.
It is speeding. Would you call speeding a traffic ticket?
You moved the goalposts; the said "do traffic tickets put you in jail?" and I showed you that they do and they you go "Oh, that's not what I meant" You are ridiculous.
he's pretty funny...he asks for proof that Bear was a racist (which Bear admits he wouldn't recruit black players) yet has no proof of any wrongdoing on Joe's part. Its crazy logic, if any logic at all.
It's a circular argument. You cannot say "the statement is false because it is false" -- you have to show why it is false. You referring only to the jury verdict does not make your argument.
As always you are very confused. And without any proof to back up what you say.
While you are spinning please point out where I said Joe covered up for a pedo. All I've said is that his reputation is a crap heap.
You just can't keep your stories straight, but that is understandable. You think you've won the Internet. But we both know you are all talk and no walk.
Again, please detail which NCAA bylaws were broken and please show me in the major infractions database where PSU is listed.
If what you say is true, doing both of these should be easy. Hell, do either one of these.
You cannot because it is untrue.
Yes, that's my point. Your lie is relevant to the case. That's why you lie about it.
Incorrect. A jury offers their opinion on the guilt or innocence of the accused based on the case presented by prosecutors vs the defense given by the accused attorneys. That decision is an opinion that is entered into the public record for the basis of sentencing (or not, in the case of the lack of a guilty verdict).
It is NOT a fact, other than in the sense that it is fact that a jury enters a verdict one way or another.
What do you mean nothing has come out? Lots of interviews and documents have come out. You are delusional.
LOL. Even if you know a detective (highly doubtful) he certainly isn't an objective person to talk to about this. Investigators are notorious for never admitting they are wrong.
This is incorrect. The "conspiracy theorists" (your words, I disagree) have done first person interviews with many of the people that Freeh (or even the courts) did not.
There were no charges filed but here you go:
Jerry Sandusky's defense bolstered by tape establishing police led an accuser's statement
Two state police officers seemed to push Victim 4 into saying in 2011 that he and Sandusky engaged in oral sex.
sports.yahoo.com
It's on tape. It 100% happened. The police were corrupt as hell in this case.
If you were to actually critique what they said, I might take you serious. But you cannot do that, so you just insult them. SMFH.
For someone who portrays themselves as an LE expert, you are really ignorant.
They are not factual proof; they are evidence. Factual proof cannot be refuted. Testimony can.
Curley redux.Agreed but here is the bottom line on Paterno. He was reported a potential assault by a former employee and head of one of the largest charities in the region the day after it occurred. He did exactly as the book stated at that time, as it still says today after the NCAA completed a multi-year study: Report it to your boss and someone outside of the sports reporting verticle and let the experts handle it.
Curley and Schultz underperformed. It can also be said that Spanier did as well. But that has nothing
Lawrence J. Fox, a longtime Philadelphia lawyer who's a visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, is an expert on teaching legal ethics and professional responsibility.
And Fox has harsh words for the conduct of former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Jerry Sandusky case, as well as for Cynthia Baldwin, the former Penn State counsel who represented three top Penn State officials before the grand jury investigating Sandusky. That was before Baldwin flipped, at the behest of Fina, to become a prosecution witness, and testify against her former clients, an act of betrayal that horrified Fox.
"When lawyers feign representation, but in fact abandon their clients, and worse yet, become instrumentalities of the state, aiding the prosecution of their clients, the entire system of justice is systematically destroyed," Fox wrote in a 2013 filing recently unsealed in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court.
Tomorrow at 10 a.m. in Philadelphia, Fox will testify as an expert witness on behalf of the state Supreme Court's Disciplinary Board, to make the case that former prosecutor Fina is guilty of professional misconduct. But for those who can't wait for the hearing, Fox's scathing opinions of the alleged legal sins of Fina and Baldwin are laid out in the recently unsealed filing that has been completely ignored by reporters from the mainstream media; the same reporters who sought to have these documents unsealed. So it goes in the Penn State case, where media malpractice has been the norm.
"It is the Commonwealth whose lawyers were fully aware of the conflicts under which Ms. Baldwin was laboring at the time of the grand jury proceeding," Fox wrote, clearly referring to Fina, who questioned Baldwin in the grand jury after she flipped.
Fina was aware that Baldwin had a conflict of interest, Fox wrote, namely her decision to betray her former clients. Yet, Fina and his fellow prosecutors "stood silent," Fox wrote, and "took full advantage of the conflicts" to gather information to make a conspiracy and obstruction of justice case against those clients. But as part of his mission to seek the scalps of the three Penn State administrators, Fina had to mislead the grand jury judge, Fox wrote.
The prosecutors "never informed the court of the nature and extent of the conflicts" of interest posed by Baldwin's dual role in the case, Fox wrote. So that the court could fulfill its duty of assuring that the "rights of Messrs. [former Penn State vice president Gary] Schultz and [former Penn State athletic director Tim] Curley to effective representation were not systematically violated in the extreme."
In the unsealed filing, Fox ripped the Commonwealth's defense of Fina's actions.
"The Commonwealth actually asserts that because Messrs. Schultz and Curley were aware that Ms. Baldwin was general counsel for Penn State, they should have understood that they were merely second-class clients, and, as a result, are entitled to no attorney-client privilege whatsoever," Fox wrote.
But the Rules of Professional Conduct do not mention "a watered-down second-class version of clienthood," Fox wrote; the rules of Professional Conduct only define "one form of clienthood" that's subject to the attorney-client privilege.
Before she flipped, Fox wrote, Baldwin announced to "Schultz and Curley, the court, the grand jury, as well as the Commonwealth's lawyers" that she represented Schultz and Curley. But as their lawyer, Fox wrote, Baldwin was "required, in fact, to represent both of them to the full extent required by her fiduciary duties . . . the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct, the Pennsylvania statutory provisions covering the right to counsel before a grand jury" as well as the U.S. Constitution.
But in reality, Fox wrote, while Baldwin was representing her clients, "her fingers were crossed behind her back, and she never fully intended to fulfill that obligation, let alone warn them they would not receive the benefit of attorney-client privilege because of their second-class status."
"The law governing the attorney-client privilege in a joint representation is clear," Fox wrote. "There can be no waiver of the privilege unless each client has given his or her informed consent . . . to waive the privilege."
But the record of the case "demonstrates that there never was so much as a telephone call" to let Schultz and Curley know that the Commonwealth was seeking a waiver of the attorney-client privilege, and that Baldwin was planning to testify against her clients, Fox wrote.
By not telling her former clients she was about to stab them in the back, Fox wrote, Baldwin "turns the law of privilege literally upside-down, rendering it a false protection and leaving the clients helpless before the power of the Commonwealth."
That certainly was OK with Frank Fina. As for Baldwin, Fox wrote, her "sins here are both manifold and manifest. Turning against one's client is the greatest betrayal a lawyer can commit."
"But that is what Ms. Baldwin did here, stripping the clients of any opportunity to object to her misdeeds," Fox wrote. "Either she was subpoenaed to the grand jury or she voluntarily agreed to appear. Either way, she ran right through the red light by, in fact, testifying before the grand jury without notice to her former clients."
"No lawyer is permitted to disclose confidential information without the informed consent of the client," Fox wrote. "As a result of Ms. Baldwin's misconduct, Messrs. Schultz and Curley went six months without being aware of Ms. Baldwin's betrayal, and only learned of her shocking abandonment of her former clients when the new indictment was issued. Ms. Baldwin's conduct in this regard cries out for relief."
Fox labeled Baldwin's conduct as a "blatant betrayal . . . unprecedented in the annals of lawyer representation of clients."
And according to the disciplinary board's petition against Fina, it was Fina who set up that blatant betrayal by hoodwinking Judge Barry Feudale, then presiding over the grand jury investigating Sandusky.
On Oct. 22, 2012, Fina and Baldwin appeared before the judge in a conference to discuss Schultz and Curley's claim of attorney-client privilege in light of Baldwin's imminent appearance before the grand jury where the Commonwealth planned to have Baldwin testify against her former clients.
The petition notes that lawyers for Schultz, Curley, as well as former Penn State President Graham Spanier, who was also formerly represented by Baldwin, were not invited to the conference. At the conference, the petition says, Fina told the judge regarding the attorney-client privilege that he intended to "put those matters on hold" until the judge made a decision regarding the privilege, and "we can address that later on."
Penn State's counsel then argued that the judge should make a ruling on the attorney-client privilege first, before Baldwin testified. But Fina told the judge, "We need not address the privilege issue," because "we are not going to ask questions about" the grand jury testimony of Schultz and Curley, "and any preparation for, or follow-up they had" with Baldwin, Fox wrote.
Fina asked the judge to keep Baldwin's testimony secret so "We can address this privilege matter at a later date." That prompted the judge to tell Fina to proceed under the assumption that "you're not going to get into any inquiry as to [Baldwin's] representation" of her former clients.
But Fina double-crossed the judge, as well as broke the rules of professional conduct. And that's not only Fox's opinion, but it was also the ruling of the state's Superior Court, when they threw out eight charges Fina filed against Spanier, Schultz and Curley.
On Oct. 26, 2012, Fina questioned Baldwin in front of the grand jury, and "did elicit" what the disciplinary board described as "extensive . . . attorney-client privileged communications between Baldwin and Curley, Schultz, and Spanier" as well as "confidential information" pertaining to the three former clients.
Fina's questioning of Baldwin was "calculated," the disciplinary board wrote, to solicit damaging information that would attack the credibility of Baldwin's three former clients. In the petition, the disciplinary board proceeded to list 73 examples from the grand jury transcript where Fina elicited confidential testimony from Baldwin that violated the attorney-client privilege, according to the petition filed by Paul J. Killion, chief disciplinary counsel, and Amelia C. Kittredge, disciplinary counsel.
That's 73 examples folks, of Fina bending the rules, and the judge going along with it. Without a defense lawyer in the secret chambers of the grand jury to say a word of protest on behalf of Baldwin's three former clients.
The actions of Fina and Baldwin in the grand jury were so egregious it prompted the state Superior Court to throw out a total of eight charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy against Schultz, Curley and Spanier.
Baldwin has already been called to task for her alleged ethical lapses. At a two-hour disciplinary hearing on May 23 in Pittsburgh, Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice, contended she wasn't guilty of any misconduct. She testified that after she received grand jury subpoenas for Curley and Schultz, she allegedly told them, as well as Spanier, that she couldn't be their personal lawyer because she was representing Penn State. Baldwin also asserted that she told the Penn State officials their communication with her wouldn't remain confidential, and that they were free to get outside lawyers to represent them.
"Don't be nervous. Just tell the truth," Baldwin testified that she advised Curley.
Baldwin testified that both Curley and Schultz described a shower incident allegedly witnessed by whistleblower Mike McQueary back in 2001 involving Sandusky and a naked boy as "horseplay." Baldwin also contended that she asked the Penn State officials if they knew of any documents describing that incident that had been requested by a subpoena from the attorney general's office, and that her clients replied that they didn't know about any such documents.
Baldwin testified she felt "duped" when months later, a file kept by Schultz documenting the shower incident involving Sandusky was turned over to investigators.
In court records, Baldwin's former clients, however, tell a different story. They contend that Baldwin did not inform them of the risks of appearing before the grand jury, and misled them about the grand jury's mission. Schultz also stated that he told Baldwin about the file he kept on Sandusky.
Baldwin's former clients contend in affidavits that because of her inept representation, and outright deception about the grand jury's true mission, Baldwin transformed her clients into sitting ducks for Frank Fina.
"Ms. Baldwin informed me that the grand jury investigation focused on Jerry Sandusky, not on me or PSU, and that I was being called purely as a witness," Schultz wrote in an affidavit recently unsealed in Dauphin County. "Ms. Baldwin told me that neither I nor PSU were under investigation," Schultz wrote. "She told me that I could have outside counsel, if I wished, but at that point, seeing all the stories [of the Penn State officials] are consistent, she could represent me, Tim Curley and Joe Paterno as well."
Schultz said he told Baldwin he might have a file on Sandusky still in his office, and that it "might help refresh my memory" to review its contents. But Schultz said that Baldwin told him not to "look for or review any materials."
"Ms. Baldwin also told me that PSU and I were not targets of the investigation and that I would be treated as a witness," Schultz wrote. "There never was any discussion of the Fifth Amendment privilege or the risk of self-incrimination."
"I believed that Ms. Baldwin was representing me in connection with the grand jury proceedings and that she was looking out for my interests," Schulz wrote. "Based on her representations, I did not believe I needed a separate lawyer."
In his affidavit of Oct. 25, 2012, Schultz wrote that Baldwin only told him he needed a separate lawyer "approximately one week before the charges were filed against me."
Former Penn State University President Graham Spanier made similar, disturbing claims about the actions of Baldwin.
In a Jan. 16, 2013 affidavit, Spanier wrote that prior to his grand jury appearance, Baldwin "did not reveal that I had been subpoenaed, and I believed that I was going voluntarily. She did not inform me that Penn State and I were targets of the investigation. As far as I knew, the investigation focused solely on Sandusky."
When Spanier appeared before the grand jury in 2011, "I believed that Ms. Baldwin was representing me during and in connection with the grand jury proceedings and that she was acting in my best interests," Spanier wrote. " Although Ms. Baldwin mentioned that I was entitled to a separate attorney, she did not encourage me to retain one, or explain why I might want one. Based on her representations, I did not believe I needed a separate lawyer."
"On the day of my grand jury testimony, Ms. Baldwin accompanied my swearing in" before the judge, and "stated that she was representing me in connection with my testimony," Spanier wrote. "And I had no reason to think otherwise."
"Ms. Baldwin sat with me in the grand jury room," Spanier wrote. "I was asked by the OAG attorney whether I was represented by counsel. I responded that I was, and identified Ms. Baldwin. She did not say anything."
"Ms. Baldwin first told me that I should retain a separate attorney on Nov. 8, 2011, after Sandusky, Schultz and Curley had been indicted," Spanier wrote. "At no point did I waive my right to confidentiality in my communications with Mrs. Baldwin or otherwise waive attorney-client privilege."
Tomorrow, it will be Fina's turn to answer those charges of misconduct.
In a response to the disciplinary board's accusations, Fina's lawyers, Dennis C. McAndrews and Joseph E. McGettigan 3d, contend that Fina "has not violated any rule of conduct" and they request that the board dismiss the charges against him.
In attempting to extricate Fina from his ethical dilemma and blatant misconduct in flipping the pliable Baldwin, Fina's lawyers resorted to wrapping themselves up in the flag of righteousness in the Sandusky case. They did that by pointing out the jury verdict, the pretrial demonization of Sandusky by a hysterical media, and the actions of pliable judges in the case who kept giving the prosecutors nothing but green lights.
It's like the scene in Animal House, where Otter is confronted before a kangaroo student court with charges that he and his fellow frat brothers at Delta house "broke a few rules or took a few liberties with our female party guests."
"We did," Otter says, winking at Dean Wormer, an admission that Fina's lawyers won't be making tomorrow. Otter then asks the dean and the court if it's fair for them to hold "the whole fraternity system" accountable for the actions of "a few, sick, twisted individuals?"
And if they're going to indict the whole fraternity system, Otter asks, "isn't this an indictment of our educational systems in general," as well as "an indictment of our entire American society?"
"Well," an indignant Otter sniffs, "You can do whatever you want to us, but I for one am not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!" Then he and the Deltas march out of the courtroom humming the Star-Spangled Banner.
In their filing, Fina's lawyers describe their client as "instrumental in convicting the most notorious serial child molester in American history." Fina, according to his lawyers, was also "developing evidence that administrators at [Penn State] . . . failed to act in accordance with their legal, professional and/or ethical responsibilities in taking steps to prevent future harm to the children of this Commonwealth by that predator."
The lawyers assert that Fina did nothing improper before the grand jury. To do that, they quote the Louis Freeh report, which has some serious credibility problems, and Judge Feudale, the grand jury judge subsequently removed by the state Supreme Court amid allegations of misconduct and an alleged loss of objectivity.
In remarks quoted by Fina's lawyers, the discredited judge concluded that nothing went wrong in his courtroom after Fina plainly lied to him about what he was planning to do with Baldwin. And that after "a careful review of the testimony of attorney Baldwin before the grand jury," Judge Feudale concluded that "Baldwin's testimony did not [in this court's review] violate any attorney-client or work product privilege."
Never mind those 73 damaging quotes contained in the court transcript.
Fina's defense, as laid out by his lawyers, seems pretty lame. According to our system of justice, every accused defendant, even a serial killer, deserves a lawyer in their corner who would at least tell them if they're the target of a grand jury investigation. Cynthia Baldwin flunked that basic test. And then she went out and sold her clients down the river, behind closed doors in the grand jury, and neglected to tell them about it.
And speaking of Frank Fina, why did he have to lie and cheat and break the rules during that secret grand jury proceeding, where he already had the judge on his side, and he held all the cards?
to do with Paterno. Anything other than that is complete speculation
This kind of statement makes it super easy for you to move the goalposts.
Please show me an example of another coverup where no one was told not to talk about it. I'll wait.
Not being adversarial here, but can you expand on your claim that C/S/S underperformed?
What fantasy?
Ten years after an illegal grand jury leak set off the media firestorm known as the Penn State sex abuse scandal, the evidence of official misconduct in this case is so pervasive and egregious that Jerry Sandusky deserves to walk out of prison today as a free man.
Since 2017, Big Trial has reviewed thousands of pages of court transcripts and legal proceedings in the case, along with hundreds of pages of confidential documents that are still under a judge's seal.
Taken together, those records tell a clear story -- the case against Sandusky is fatally flawed from top to bottom. A decade later, records show, the actions of many of the principal actors in this case, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the civil investigation at Penn State, are irredeemably tainted by misconduct, incompetence, unethical behavior, conflict of interest, collusion and/or corruption.
In addition, psychologists in the case used scientifically discredited recovered memory therapy to elicit suspect testimony from many of the alleged victims, whose improbable and constantly evolving stories to this day have never been vetted by anyone. Finally, the defendants' own medical records cast doubt on whether Sandusky was physically capable of performing the acts he was accused of.
Based on the evidence that I will present here, there's no longer any reason for any sane person to believe in the findings of both the civil and the criminal investigations conducted at Penn State. A decade later, the prevailing story line in the Penn State sex scandal about the man who's supposed to be the most notorious pedophile in America amounts to an X-rated fractured fairy tale that, when viewed from multiple angles, makes no freaking sense.
There's a looming shadow that's cast over the entire Penn State scandal, and that's the egregious conduct of an overzealous prosecutor on a rampage, former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, who was the lead prosecutor at Penn State.
Amelia Kittredge, the counsel for the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board who ran the investigation that resulted in Fina losing his license to practice law, memorably described Fina to the state's highest court as "someone who cannot or will not separate right from wrong."
A decade later, Fina's fingerprints are all over this travesty of a case, particularly when it comes to illegal grand jury leaks. But when we're talking about bad actors in the Sandusky case, Fina's got plenty of company.
The tragedy of all this is if the state gets its wish, Sandusky, who at 77, still professes his innocence, may die in prison before the truth about the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State is finally known.
Much of the material published below will be familiar to Big Trial readers, as it has been presented piecemeal over the past five years in some 60 blog posts published on this website.
The stories were written by myself as well as author Mark Pendergrast, who excerpted on bigtrial.net several chapters from his 2017 book, The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.
It was ten years ago this month, on Nov. 4, 2011, that the premature leak of the pending grand jury indictment of Sandusky to reporter Sara Ganim set off the media firestorm that would railroad Sandusky into spending what amounts to a life sentence in jail.
Just five days after that leak, without doing any fact-finding, Penn State's panicked board of trustees hastily fired Joe Paterno, the winningest football coach in America, as well as longtime Penn State President Graham Spanier.
With the tenth anniversary of the Penn State case upon us, rather than examine its own malpractice and negligence, the news media has chosen to regurgitate a completely discredited story line that's built around a big lie.
To counter the prevailing narrative, I've decided to publish in one spot large chunks of the evidence that clearly shows Sandusky was railroaded.
As outlined below, the level of official misconduct in this case is so extreme that it rises to the level of egregious. That's the term the state Supreme Court used in 1992 when it freed former Lower Merion High School Principal Jay Smith from prison, where he had been on death row for six years, after his conviction for the murders of English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children, whose bodies were never discovered.
In the Jay Smith case, the state Supreme Court found that prosecutors in the state attorney general's office committed egregious misconduct when they hid exculpatory evidence that would have benefitted the defendant. The hidden evidence included two grains of sand found between the toes on Reinert's body that indicated she may have died at the Jersey Shore, as opposed to the the prosecution's theory of the case, which was that Smith had killed Reinert in his basement.
In freeing Smith, the state Supreme Court barred a retrial on the grounds that it would amount to unconstitutional double jeopardy.
In the Sandusky case, the state attorney general's office outdid its previous standards for corruption by knowingly writing a false and inflammatory grand jury presentment, deliberately leaking that false presentment to the media, and then basically manufacturing the trial testimony that was used to convict Sandusky. To finish the job, the judges in this case trampled on Sandusky's constitutional rights at every turn, while turning a blind eye to overwhelming evidence of official misconduct.
Stated simply, the Sandusky case is a cluster f--k from start to finish that can't be undone.
The Rape In The Showers
Let's start at the beginning, with the headline charge in the grand jury presentment that has permanently convicted Sandusky in the minds of an entire nation, as well as the jury pool in Centre County. The headline charge that was also responsible for the firing of Paterno and Spanier.
“Remember that little boy in the shower,” then-Gov. Tom Corbett told the university’s board of trustees on Nov. 9, 2011, just before they decided, in a mad rush to judgment, to fire Paterno and Spanier without even taking a formal vote.
According to that grand jury presentment, a decade earlier, at 9:30 p.m. on March 1, 2002, a then-28-year-old Penn State graduate assistant walked into the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus.
[The prosecutors subsequently claimed they had gotten the date of the shower story wrong, and moved the date of that alleged incident back 13 months to Feb. 9, 2001.]
The graduate assistant, subsequently identified as assistant Penn State football coach Mike McQueary, heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" emanating from the showers, sounds that he "believed" to be evidence of "sexual activity."
According to the grand jury presentment, McQueary looked into the showers and saw "a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky."
According to the grand jury presentment, the "distraught" graduate assistant called his father for advice, and then he left he Lasch Building and went straight home.
"The next morning," according to the grand jury presentment, McQueary "went to [Coach Joe] Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
The rape in the showers, as well as the implication that McQueary promptly told Paterno about "what he had seen" -- as in that rape in the showers -- are both works of fiction written by overzealous prosecutors in the state attorney general's office.
How do we know this? From the words of the sole witness himself, in emails first disclosed by blogger Ray Blehar.
On Nov. 10, 2011, six days after the grand jury presentment was leaked, McQueary emailed deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach to tell her that the grand jury report the AG had just published was factually incorrect.
"I feel my words are slightly twisted and not totally portrayed correctly in the presentment," McQueary wrote. "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion. It was a sexual act and or way over the line in my opinion whatever it was."
In a second email that day to Eshbach, McQueary complained about "being misrepresented" in the media. To which Eshbach replied, "I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and it is hard not to respond. But you can't."
During a defamation suit that McQueary subsequently filed against Penn State, Eshbach was sworn in as a witness and asked to explain what she meant by telling McQueary not to talk.
"My advice to Mr. McQueary not to make a statement was based on the strengthening of my -- and saving of my case," Eshbach testified. "I did not want him [McQueary] making statements to the press at that time that could at some time be used against him in cross-examination. He [McQueary] was perfectly free to make a statement, but I asked him not to."
Less than a month after the grand jury presentment, Paterno issued a statement disclosing that when he went before the grand jury, he testified, "It was obvious that the witness [McQueary] was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report."
To further confirm this, on Dec. 16, 2011, McQueary testified under cross-examination that "I have never used the word anal or rape in this -- since day one."
Besides Paterno, McQueary told his story about "whatever it was" that he had allegedly witnessed within hours of the alleged incident in the Penn State showers to his father, John McQueary, and his father's friend, Dr. Jonathan Dranov, who, as a doctor, was a mandated reporter when it comes to allegations of sex abuse.
Approximately 10 days later, McQueary told Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior Vice President for finance and business Gary Schultz about what he had allegedly seen in the showers.
All five men -- Paterno, McQueary's father, Dr. Dranov, Curley and Schutz -- have testified under oath that Mike McQueary never told them that he witnessed anything sexual going on in the showers. Instead, Paterno, Curley and Schultz characterized what McQueary told them about as "horseplay."
On Nov. 23, 2010, recounting what was then a nearly decade-old incident in the showers, McQueary wrote out a statement to police that said whatever he witnessed took place during a brief time period that lasted between 30 and 45 seconds.
During that time, McQueary wrote to the cops, he glanced into a mirror once, which gave him a reflected view of the showers, and then he glanced directly into the showers.
McQueary told a grand jury in 2010 that the two “glances” he took each lasted “maybe one or two seconds.”
But the story McQueary told kept changing.
On Nov. 8, 2011, after the grand jury presentment became public, McQueary emailed a friend and claimed that instead of leaving the locker room and doing nothing to stop an alleged rape of a child in progress, "I did stop it, not physically, but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room."
In that email that was subsequently published in Thee Morning Call of Allentown, PA, on Nov. 15, 2011, McQueary also claimed that he told the police about the rape in the showers. But the next day, representatives from both the Penn State campus police and the State College police publicly stated that they had no record of McQueary ever reporting any sex crime to them.
In subsequent retellings of the shower story, McQueary claimed that when he left the locker room, he slammed his locker door, which he said, made Sandusky look up and stop the abuse. McQueary also claimed that as he was leaving the shower room, he took another glance in the showers a second time, to make sure that Sandusky and the boy remained apart.
At the Sandusky trial in 2012, McQueary testified that when he first glanced in the showers eleven years earlier, this time he said that glance lasted between one and five seconds, and that he saw Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall.
On the witness stand, McQueary claimed that he now recalled a "very slow, slow, subtle movement" of Sandusky's crotch against the boy's buttocks.
The identity of the victim, the boy in the showers, Deputy Attorney General Joe McGettigan told the jury at the Sandusky trial, was "known only to God." But jurors didn't buy that story, and despite convicting Sandusky on 45 other counts, they acquitted Sandusky on the charge of abusing the unknown boy in the showers.
[According to author Mark Pendergrast, McGettigan was lying when he said they didn't know the identity of the boy in the showers. He's a former Marine named Allan Myers, who was 14, and not 10 at the time of the alleged shower incident. Myers initially told the state police and a private investigator that Sandusky was a father figure and mentor who had never abused him, and that they were horsing around that day in the shower, snapping some towels, when McQueary walked in.
That was before Myers decided to drastically change his story and cash in, to the tune of a $6.9 million civil settlement. During Sandusky's bid for a new trial, Myers was sworn in as a witness in 2016 and asked which story he told was the truth. He responded by saying he couldn't remember 34 times.]
The Previously Undisclosed Federal Investigation At Penn State
The Penn State sex scandal was the subject of a criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office, and a supposedly independent civil investigation conducted at the cost of $8 million by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.
The investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office resulted in the indictment of Sandusky for the alleged rape of the boy in the showers, as well as for allegedly abusing seven other minors.
On June 22, 2012, a Centre County jury found Sandusky guilty of 45 out of 48 counts of sex abuse, and sentenced him to 30 to 60 years in jail.
The state attorney general's office also initially charged Spanier, Curley and Schultz with failing to report allegations of child abuse to authorities, along with allegedly committing perjury during grand jury testimony.
The Freeh Report concluded that there was an official cover up of Sandusky's sex crimes at Penn State. And that during that cover up, the Freeh Report claimed, Spanier, Curley and Schultz had displayed a "total and consistent disregard" for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's alleged victims, as well as a "striking lack of empathy."
In publishing their 267-page report, the authors of the Freeh Report claimed they operated "with total independence," and that "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report."
The media has dutifully reported on the two investigations done by the state attorney general's office, and former FBI Director Freeh, as well as their findings about a rape in the showers, followed by an official cover-up on the part of Penn State's top officials.
But there has been a total news blackout in the mainstream media on the third investigation done at Penn State. It was done by the federal government in 2012, which resulted in a 110-page report that initially was stamped confidential, but was finally declassified in 2017.
The federal investigation was conducted by former NCIS Special Agent and veteran cold case investigator John Snedden, then on assignment for the U.S. Federal Investigative Services.
Against the backdrop of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Snedden's job was to determine whether former Penn State President Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed amid allegations that he had orchestrated an official cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes.
With national security at stake, Snedden conducted a five-month investigation on the Penn State campus in 2012. And what did he find?
That the rape in the showers story told by McQueary made no sense, and that McQueary, who told so many different versions of that story -- according to author Mark Pendergrast, a total of five different accounts -- wasn't a credible witness.
Snedden also concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime in the showers to cover up. It was the exact opposite of the conclusions reached by the state attorney general's office, and the Freeh Report.
As a result, the feds cleared Spanier, and renewed his high level security clearance.
Why didn't Snedden buy the rape in the showers story?
Back in 2001, Snedden told Big Trial, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen. If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something about it.
"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.
If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"
Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, instead of going home and doing nothing about a child rape in progress, why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building?
As Snedden says, the story makes no sense. It was also egregious prosecutorial misconduct for the state attorney general's office to fictionalize and sensationalize such a flimsy, decade-old story, and then hang an entire grand jury presentment on it.
Evidence of Corruption, Collusion & Illegal Grand Jury Leaks
While the Freeh Group investigation claimed to operate with "total independence," there's a confidential record that meticulously documents ample evidence of routine collusion between the criminal investigation of Penn State conducted by the state attorney general's office, and the supposedly independent investigation conducted by the Freeh Group.
And that evidence comes from a seemingly unimpeachable source, former FBI Special Agent Kathleen McChesney, who was credited with starting the investigation that led to the capture of serial killer Ted Bundy.
In "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," McChesney revealed on camera how the federal investigation of the serial killer got started. A woman called and said, "I'm concerned about my boyfriend -- his name is Ted Bundy."
The girlfriend proceeded to detail Bundy's suspicious behavior that included following women around at night, hiding a knife in his car and keeping a bag of women's underwear in his apartment.
McChesney, who was on the task force that ultimately arrested Bundy, rose to become the only female FBI agent appointed to be the bureau's executive assistant director. Her credibility was such that in 2002, in the wake of the widespread sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic clergy, the U.S. Conference of Bishops hired McChesney to establish and lead its Office of Child and Youth Protection.
McChesney is also the author of a 2011 book, "Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way."
But in the Sandusky case, the decorated former FBI special agent is now known for another book she wrote -- an unpublished, confidential 79-page diary written in 2011 and 2012, back when McChesney was a private investigator working for her old boss, former FBI Director Freeh, while investigating Penn State.
In her diary, McChesney records multiple contemporaneous instances of then Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group.
It's clear from the McChesney diary that multiple grand jury documents were also regularly leaked to the Freeh Group, as was a 1998 police report on an earlier alleged shower incident that was investigated and found to be unfounded, resulting in a report that was supposed to have been expunged in 1999.
While the Freeh Group claimed in their report that they operated with "total independence" and "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report," the McChesney diary tells a different story.
Namely, that in conducting their supposedly independent investigation, the Freeh Group was regularly colluding with and working seemingly under the direction of the state attorney general's office, and particularly under the direction of deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
According to McChesney, members of the Freeh Group "don't want to interfere with their investigations," and that she and her colleagues were being "extremely cautious & running certain interviews by them."
McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group even "asked Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the A.G.'s office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for disadvantaged youths.
According to McChesney, Fina was actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses.
For example, McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, an investigator for Penn State Police who probed the earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy that turned out to be unfounded; he also wrote the police report that was supposed to be expunged.
After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."
According to the McChesney diary, Fina also routinely kept the Freeh Group up to date on what was going on with the grand jury investigation, telling Freeh's investigators secrets that the defendants and their lawyers weren't privy to.
For example, the night before former Penn State President Spanier, Curley and Schultz were going to be arrested, Gregory Paw, another Freeh investigator, sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest.
The subject of Paw's email: "CLOSE HOLD -- Important."
"PLEASE HOLD VERY CLOSE," Paw wrote his colleagues at the Freeh Group. "[Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina called tonight to tell me that Spanier is to be arrested tomorrow, and Curley and Schultz re-arrested, on charges of obstruction of justice and related charges . . . Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
When I asked Freeh, through a spokesperson, whether he as a private citizen during the Penn State investigation, was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, Freeh declined comment.
Other emails contained in documents under seal show that while investigating Penn State, Freeh may have had a conflict of interest. According to the emails, Freeh, whose investigators had telephone conferences with every Friday with NCAA officials, saw the Penn State investigation as a way to land the NCAA as a permanent client.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA. It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
It took seven years but Freeh's efforts finally paid off. In August, 2019, the NCAA hired five employees of the Freeh Group to staff its new Complex Case Unit.
The McChesney diary was the basis for a motion for a new trial filed with the state Superior Court in 2020 by Sandusky's appeal lawyers. In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers requested an evidentiary hearing where McChesney would have been summoned to testify under subpoena and asked to authenticate the diary.
But a year later, on May 13, 2021, the state Superior Court denied that motion, ruling that Sandusky's lawyers did not file their appeal in a timely fashion.
Instead, the state Superior Court blasted Sandusky's appeal lawyers, saying that they "dithered for one-half a year" before bringing the newly discovered evidence to the court's attention.
Evidence of Jury Tampering
The Freeh Group's investigation at Penn State involved interviewing hundreds of people, including a Penn State faculty member before she was chosen as a juror in the Sandusky case.
And when it came time for defense lawyers to question the juror, she misrepresented what she had told the Freeh Group.
The juror was identified by Freeh's investigators as Laura Pauley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, who did not respond to a request for comment. During jury selection on June 6, 2012, Pauley was asked by Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, what she told Freeh's investigators.
"It was focused more on how the board of trustees interacts with the president," Pauley told Amendola, as well as "how faculty are interacting with the president and the board of trustees . . ."
But an April 19, 2011 confidential summary of that interview shows that the juror had already made up her mind about the guilt of Sandusky, by reading her local newspaper. According to the report of the interview, Pauley had also already decided that Penn State's top administrators were guilty of a cover up.
In her interview with Freeh's investigators, Pauley stated that she was "an avid reader of the Centre Daily Times" and that she believed that the leadership at Penn State just "kicks the issue down the road."
"The PSU culture can best be described as people who do not want to resolve issues and want to avoid confrontation," she told Freeh's investigators.
Pauley, a tenured professor who served on the Faculty Advisory Committee for three years, told Freeh's investigators that Penn State President Graham Spanier was "very controlling," and that "she feels that [former Penn State Athletic Director Tim] Curley and [former Penn State vice president Gary] Schultz are responsible for the scandal."
"She stated that she senses Curley and Schultz treated it [the scandal] the 'Penn State' way and were just moving on and hoping it would fade away."
While Pauley was being questioned by Amendola, Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote, "at no time during this colloquy, or any other time, did the prosecution disclose that it was working in collaboration with the Freeh Group which interviewed the witness."
Had Amendola known what Pauley told Freeh's investigators, he would have sought to have her stricken from the jury. He would have also asked the judge to find out whether any other jurors had met with Freeh's investigators.
At Sandusky's trial, while Amendola was questioning Pauley about what she told Freeh's investigators, Deputy Attorney Frank Fina sat silently at the prosecution table and said nothing.
Since the McChesney's diary documents how the Freeh Group routinely kept the attorney general's office abreast of the Freeh investigation, it's possible that Fina knew all about the Freeh Group's interview with Pauley.
It's also possible that Fina may have even been given his own copy of that interview with the juror.
On Feb. 19, 2020, the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania voted to suspend for a year and a day the law license of former deputy attorney general Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, for his "reprehensible" and "inexcusable" misconduct during the grand jury investigation of three Penn State officials that he accused of orchestrating a cover up.
Fina, the disciplinary board found, was guilty of purposely "misleading" a grand jury judge into thinking that Fina wasn't going to press Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel, into breaking the attorney-client privilege behind closed doors and betraying three top Penn State officials who were her former clients -- Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
Fina got Baldwin to cooperate by threatening her with an indictment for obstruction of justice. So Baldwin went into the grand jury and testified against her clients, without even notifying them of her betrayal.
After deliberately misleading the judge back in October 2012, Fina then "proceeded to question [Baldwin] extensively about the very subjects he represented to Judge [Barry] Feudale he would avoid," the disciplinary board concluded.
"These actions are reprehensible" and "inexcusable," the disciplinary board wrote.
Even worse, the disciplinary board found that Fina's alleged defense of his behavior before the board was "without substance." What Fina did, the disciplinary board said, was to tear down all the safeguards built into the criminal justice system by turning defense attorney Baldwin "into a witness for the prosecution against her clients."
"Unlike other lawyers, the prosecutor is more than a zealous advocate for a client," the state Supreme Court wrote. "The prosecutor bears as well the high and non-delegable duty of ensuring a fair process for the defendant and of comporting himself or herself always in a manner consistent with a position of public trust."
"To state it plain, instead of Baldwin serving as a shield for her former clients, her testimony was elicited and used by Fina as a sword against them, to devastating effect," the court wrote. In addition, when he was brought up on charges of misconduct, the disciplinary board concluded, Fina "failed to acknowledge he had a special responsibility to ensure justice and utterly failed to acknowledge the ramifications of his conduct."
The board found that "deflecting responsibility and displaying a lack of sincere remorse constitute aggravating factors."
Clearly, Fina was a man who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. Even if it meant breaking the law.
There was more fall-out from Fina's actions.
In 2013, then state Attorney General Katharine Kane ousted Judge Feudale from his duties as supervising grand jury judge in Harrisburg, citing his close relationship with Fina and lack of objectivity.
On Feb. 21, 2020, the state Supreme Court publicly censured Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice herself, for her "unfathomable" and "incompetent" actions in betraying her own clients.
In censuring Baldwin, the court noted her "lack of remorse for her actions," saying she "cast blame for her problems on everyone involved," but never herself.
The Corruption Of the Trial Judge In The Sandusky Case
The trial of Sandusky was presided over by the Honorable John Cleland, who oversaw a rush to judgment that resulted in Sandusky going from indictment to conviction at trial in just seven months.
How did the judge pull that off? By trampling on Sandusky's constitutional rights.
Before the trial started, Sandusky's defense lawyers tried to get the trial postponed so they could wade through 12,000 pages of grand jury transcripts he had just received only 10 days before the start of trial.
Amendola, Sanduksy's trial lawyer, begged for a continuance, telling the judge that he needed time to read the files and find out what Sandusky's accusers were saying about him; he also needed time to subpoena witnesses.
"We can't prepare . . . I felt like Custer at Little Bighorn for God's sake," Amendola testified during an appeals hearing. But Judge Cleland turned him down.
[Besides being unprepared, Joe Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, was painfully inept, as detailed on this blog by author Mark Pendergrast.]
Jerry Sandusky had a constitutional right to a fair trial. But in order to save Penn State football, which was being threatened with the death penalty by the NCAA, Sandusky had to be convicted and sitting in jail before the start of the 2012 college football season to wrap up the Penn State scandal in a nice, neat bow.
Putting Sandusky in jail for life fit right into the deal that PSU had struck with the NCAA, which was to voluntarily admit guilt and take their lumps, which included a $60 million fine. But the payoff for Penn State was that the Nittany Lions would escape the death penalty that the NCAA had threatened to impose on the football program in Happy Valley.
Jerry Sandusky also had a constitutional right to confront his accusers, but Judge Cleland took care of that as well.
The night before the preliminary hearing in the case, the only pretrial opportunity where Sandusky's lawyers would have had the right to confront his accusers -- the eight young men who claimed that Sandusky had abused them -- Judge Cleland convened an unusual off-the-record meeting of prosecutors, a magistrate, and defense lawyers at the Hilton Garden Inn at State College.
At the meeting, with prosecutors nodding in agreement, the judge talked Amendola into waiving the preliminary hearing so that Sandusky could remain out on bail for his trial. On their end of the deal, the state attorney general's office, which had previously requested bail of $1 million for Sandusky, agreed to lower that amount to $250,000.
The A.G. had also had threatened to file more charges against Sandusky, but according to the deal worked out by the judge during the off-the-record session at the Hilton Garden Inn, no more charges would be forthcoming.
So Amendola caved and took the deal. The grand result of Sandusky's lawyers waiving the preliminary hearing was that the Pennsylvania railroad that Sandusky was riding on would stay on schedule.
During the appeal process, after Judge Cleland's actions were disclosed regarding the Hilton Garden Inn conference, the judge had to turn over notes that he had taken during the off-the-record session. Cleland then voluntarily recused himself from continuing to preside over the appeals in the Sandusky case.
While the Sandusky case was headed to trial at breakneck speed, some people in the know were aware that the Honorable Judge Cleland wasn't going to budge on the scheduled trial date.
In the McChesney diary, on May 10, 2012, the former FBI agent noted in a conference call with Gregory Paw and Omar McNeil, two of Freeh's investigators, that Paw is going to talk to Fina, and that the "judge [is] holding firm on date of trial."
In an affidavit, Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, stated that McChesney didn't get that information from him.
"An obvious question arises as to whether or not the trial judge was communicating with a member of the Freeh Group, attorneys for the attorney general's office, or anyone else concerning the trial date," Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote.
In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers sought to question Judge Cleland at an evidentiary hearing "to determine whether, and to what extent, collusion between the office of the attorney general, the Freeh investigation and the NCAA had an impact on the trial."
But the court denied that appeal.
Gullible Judges Deny A New Trial For Sandusky
During the appeals of Sandusky's conviction, his lawyers accused deputy attorney generals Fina and Eshbach of breaking state law by repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets.
But on Oct. 18, 2017, Jefferson County Presiding Judge John Henry Foradora issued a 59-page opinion where he cleared Fina and Eshbach of leaking, while denying Sandusky a new trial sought under the Post Conviction Relief Act.
In his opinion, Judge Foradora concluded that Fina and Eshbach weren't the leakers who were feeding reporter Sara Ganim intel about the impending grand jury presentment.
Why? Because Fina said so.
The judge bought Fina's alibi that he and Eshbach had supposedly set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers. But apparently the two prosecutors were about as successful as O.J. Simpson was in his hunt for the real killers.
Fina had asked his old buddy, Judge Barry Feudale, the supervising judge of the grand jury, to investigate the leak, Judge Foradora wrote. So, Judge Foradora decided, after hearing testimony from Fina, that it couldn't be Fina or Eshbach who were doing the leaking at the A.G.'s office.
At the PCRA hearing, "the testimony, then did not support the idea that the prosecution leaked grand jury information for any reason, let alone for the purpose of generating more victims," the judge wrote.
"If anything it supports the opposite conclusion, because while someone might be skeptical about the validity of Eshbach and Fina's internal 'trap'" to catch the real leakers, the judge wrote. "It is a fact of human nature that one engaged in or aware of misconduct he does not wish to have exposed does not ask an outside source to investigate it."
Unless the judge in question is an old pal. As in wink, wink.
One of the allegations of a leak raised by Sandusky's lawyers involved an incident related by the prosecution's official whistle blower in the Sandusky case, Mike McQueary.
At the 2017 trial of former PSU President Graham Spanier, McQueary was asked by a prosecutor how he found out that Sandusky was going to be arrested.
During the bye week of the 2011 Penn State football season, McQueary said, "I was on my way to Boston for recruiting and I was going from the F terminal over to the B terminals over in Philadelphia Airport."
That's when "the AGs called," McQueary said, referring specifically to Eshbach. According to McQueary, Eshbach told him "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."
But rather than believe McQueary, Judge Foradora decided to trust Fina and Eshbach.
In denying Sandusky a new trial, Judge Foradora foolishly staked his entire 59-page opinion on the credibility and integrity of Frank Fina, which is now in tatters.
On Feb. 5, 2019, the state Superior Court, in a 70-page written by another gullible judge, the Honorable Judge Carolyn Nichols compounded this lunacy by denying Sandusky's appeal of Judge Foradora's opinion not to grant a new trial.
Once again, Judge Nichols and another court bought Fina and Eschbach's explanation that they had set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers, and didn't do any leaking themselves.
Recovered Memory Therapy
According to Mark Pendergrast, therapists in the Sandusky case used scientifically-discredited recovered memory therapy on six of Sandusky's eight accusers at trial, and on several other alleged victims who wound up getting civil settlements.
Pendergrast focused on the work of therapist Mike Gillum, who for three years, in weekly and sometimes daily skull sessions, basically brainwashed Aaron Fisher, Victim No. 1, into recalling memories of abuse, after he had originally denied he had been abused.
In a book Gillum co-wrote with Fisher, Silent No More, the therapist, who was convinced from the get-go that Sandusky was a serial abuser, stated that he sought to “peel back the layers of the onion” of Fisher's brain to recover memories of abuse that Gillum already knew were there.
During these weekly and sometimes daily sessions, Fisher didn't have to say anything. According to Silent No More, Gillum would guess what happened and Fisher only had to nod his head or say Yes.
“I was very blunt with him when I asked questions but gave him the ability to answer with a yes or a no, that relieved him of a lot of burden,” Gillum wrote. In the same book, Aaron Fisher recalled: “Mike just kept saying that Jerry was the exact profile of a predator. When it finally sank in, I felt angry.”
The grand result of Gillum's work --- Fisher cashed in for $7.5 million.
Another alleged victim who initially denied he had been abused, Dustin Struble, Victim No. 7, dramatically changed his story after he also underwent recovered memory therapy.
Like many of the other alleged victims in this case, Struble's story kept evolving. Struble told the grand jury that Sandusky had never touched his privates or touched him in the shower, which Struble said he and Sandusky shared with other coaches and players.
But at Sandusky's trial, Struble changed his story to say that Sandusky put his hands down the boy's pants when they were riding in Sandusky's car. And this time when he told the story about showering with Sandusky, Struble claimed that Sandusky was alone with him in the shower. And that Sandusky grabbed the boy and pushed his own naked front against the boy's backside, then he touched the boy's nipples and blew on his stomach.
When asked why his account had changed, Struble testified, "That doorway that I had closed has since been reopening more. More things have been coming back and things have changed since that grand jury testimony. Through counseling and different things, I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside than I did at that point."
Struble's new story won him a civil settlement of $3,250,000.
A prominent critic of recovered memory therapy is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world’s foremost experts on the malleability of human memory. Loftus, who testified at a hearing on behalf of Sandusky’s unsuccessful bid for a new trial, has given lectures on how memory works to the Secret Service and FBI; she also has a contract to work for the CIA
On May 11, 2017, testifying by phone, Loftus told Judge Foradora, “There is no credible scientific support for this idea of massive repression."
Nor is there any credible support, she added, for the idea that “you need psychotherapy to dig it out, and you can reliably recover these memories . . . in order to heal yourself.”
In many jurisdictions, Loftus told the judge, cases involving repressed memories have been thrown out of court.
Human memory “doesn’t work like a recording device” that can simply be played back at a later date, Loftus told the judge. Memories evolve over time and can be distorted or contaminated with suggestive and leading questioning. Her experiments have also shown that people can be talked into believing things that aren’t true.
“You can plant entirely false memories in the minds of people for events that never happened,” she explained to the judge. And once those false memories are planted, she said, people will relate those memories as if they were true, “complete with high levels of detail and emotion.”
But at the Sandusky trial, repressed memories were consistently presented as fact. Prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury before calling his witnesses that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization,” because “they don’t want to remember.” That’s why the investigation was slow,” McGettigan told the jury, because “the doors of people’s minds” were closed.
After a jury found Sandusky guilty, then Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly held a press conference outside the courthouse where she said of the alleged victims, “It was incredibly difficult for some of them to unearth long-buried memories of the shocking abuse they suffered at the hands of this defendant.”
During the appeal hearing over Sandusky's conviction, memory expert Loftus told Judge Foradora, “It seems pretty evident that there were drastic changes in the testimony of some of the [Sandusky] accusers.”
One reason for those changes, she testified, was the “highly suggestive” way police and psychotherapists interviewed them.
But rather than listen to Loftus, and the science, Judge Foradora chose to believe the recovered memories of the victims, which was the basis for the state attorney general's X-rated fractured fairy tale.
Victims' Stories Totally Unvetted
At Penn State, the university paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims without investigating anything.
The average cost of the settlements was $3.3 million, more than double the average settlements paid out by the Catholic Church in abuse cases in Los Angeles and San Diego.
In 2013, the extravagant payouts prompted the university’s insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company [PMA], to sue Penn State and the various “John Doe” claimants. The lawsuit ended three years later in a confidential settlement that lawyers in the case told Big Trial they were prohibited from discussing.
One of those lawyers is Eric Anderson of Pittsburgh, an expert witness who testified on behalf of the insurance carrier.
“It appears as though Penn State made little effort, if any, to verify the credibility of the claims of the individuals,” Anderson wrote on October 5, 2015. In his report, Anderson decried “the absence of documentation” in the claims, saying in many cases there was “no signed affidavit, statement or other means of personal verification of the information which I reviewed."
“I do not know why so many of the cases were settled for such high sums of money,” Anderson wrote.
In paying out the $118 million, the university did not undertake any of the usual methods to vet the stories of the accusers, such as having them questioned by private investigators, deposed by lawyers, personally examined by forensic psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.
Instead, the university just wrote checks.
How The Alleged Victims Were Recruited
On May 1, 2009, deputy state attorney general Eshbach wrote a formal request to initiate a grand jury probe of Sandusky. Nineteen months later, the state attorney general's investigation of Sandusky the alleged serial pedophile, had produced only one alleged victim, the brainwashed Aaron Fisher.
To make matters worse, the first grand jury that heard Fisher testify didn't believe him, so they issued no indictment.
But in November 2010, the A.G. got a tip about the shower incident that Mike McQueary had supposedly witnessed a decade earlier, a breakthrough that suddenly energized the Sandusky investigation.
On March 10, 2011, the state attorney general convened a second grand jury. They were aided by reporter Sara Ganim, who on March 31, 2011, wrote the first story about the secret grand jury probe of Sandusky that revealed for the first time the allegation that Sandusky was a serial sexual abuser of children.
The Ganim story basically functioned as a want add for the A.G.'s office to recruit more sex abuse victims.
The state police and the attorney general's office promptly created a seven-member joint task force and sent them out knocking on the doors of hundreds of young men who were alums of Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for disadvantaged youths, hunting for alleged victims.
But the joint task force didn't have much success.
As one frustrated investigator emailed on June 3, 2011, as recounted by author Mark Pendergrast in his book, “We have recently been interviewing kids who don’t believe the allegations as published and believe Sandusky is a great role model for them and others to emulate.”
On Jan. 4, 2012, Anthony Sassano, a narcotics agent from the state attorney general's office who led the Sandusky investigation, testified that the special task force interviewed 250 men who were former members of the Second Mile charity, but found only one man who claimed to be a victim of abuse.
Ask yourself a simple question. If Jerry Sandusky was allegedly the most notorious pedophile in America who's been on rampage in a small town of 42,000 for nearly four decades, why does the state have to create a special joint task force to go out knocking on doors, and hunting down victims?
Shouldn't they be lined up around the block?
But then the grand jury presentment hit the media. On Nov. 10, 2011, Business Insider ran a story predicting that Penn State wound wind up paying Sandusky's accusers a total of $100 million.
Suddenly, every plaintiff’s lawyer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had been alerted about a possible jackpot at Penn State. All they had to do to hit the lottery was to round up some guys who were willing to claim they were abused.
In seeking a lottery payoff, these alleged victims wouldn't even have to give up their real names. The media, for sure, could be counted on to keep their identities secret. While they were vilifying and destroying Jerry Sandusky's name and reputation every day.
After Sandusky was convicted, the floodgates opened, and 41 men filed civil claims for damages. Thirty-six of them would eventually get paid.
And it didn't require any heavy lifting.
Penn State had hired Kenneth Feinberg, dubbed “The Master of Disaster,” to oversee the settlement process with victims. Feinberg specialized in a global approach to settlements, rather than duke it out in court with one individual claim after another.
At Penn State, Feinberg prepared a form for alleged victims that merely required their lawyers to make their allegations, as part of what was billed as a “claims resolution process."
The claims as submitted in more than 120 pages of confidential records that the press or public has never seen, are entirely devoid of evidence.
None of the initial claims were authenticated by signed affidavits, there were no reports of forensic evidence or witness testimony, or corroboration of any kind. Except when a few of the victims who were pals got each other to vouch for their stories.
The stories of the alleged victims, which were often improbable, and featured constantly changing details, remain completely unvetted to this day.
Jack Rossiter, a former FBI agent of 30 years, investigated more than 150 cases of alleged sex abuse as a private detective employed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia between 2003 and 2007.
As far as the Penn State case was concerned, Rossiter told Big Trial he was surprised to hear that apparently not one of the 36 alleged victims ever told anyone about the attacks when they allegedly occurred -- a period that spanned nearly four decades.
Got that? Over four decades, in at least 500 alleged sex crimes involving 36 innocent victims, there was not one contemporaneous report of abuse.
If a pedophile was running loose for that long in small town, Rossiter said, "You would think someone would pick it up. Either at school or the parents or a close friend."
On top of that, in a scandal involving national publicity, like the Sandusky case, Rossiter said, if you were a gate keeper at Penn State, you'd have to be on guard against criminals and drug addicts coming forward to seek a pay day.
"With national headlines and all these people lining up, you'd have to be more skeptical" of the claims," Rossiter said.
But Penn State never even ran background checks to see if any of the alleged victims had criminal records. When Big Trial checked, we found that 12 of the 36 alleged victims who got paid did indeed have criminal records, including arrests for tampering with and fabricating physical evidence, identity theft, criminal conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property, theft by deception, robbery and terroristic threats.
The way the system is supposed to work, somebody at Penn State should have investigated the stories told by the alleged victims.
"That's what you do, you investigate," Rossiter emphasized. "The key is to find corroboration for the victim's story, to see if their stories hold up."
But Penn State didn't do any of that. Instead, they just wrote checks.
Why? Because the trustees had already decided that they would pay any price to save their beloved Nittany Lions.
As for Jerry Sandusky, and his constitutional rights, nobody gave a damn.
The Defendant's Medical Records
In their civil claims of abuse, the 36 alleged victims portray Sandusky as a sexually insatiable predator with the virility of a male porn star in his 20s. According to the claims, Sandusky was constantly on the prowl for forced sex with boys, and never had any problems achieving an erection.
Sandusky’s medical records, however, from 2006 to 2008, depict a man in his 60s suffering from all kinds of ailments and conditions, including atrophied testicles and chronic prostatitis.
A doctor who reviewed Sandusky’s medical records, but asked to remain anonymous, told Big Trial in an email, “This guy couldn’t get an erection no matter how he tried. Even Cialis/Viagra would probably not work.”
The doctor added that because the medical issue was never raised at trial, Sandusky should have sued his lawyers for malpractice.
Doctors described Sandusky as having an “androgen deficient state,” meaning he had levels of male sex hormones so low it was unhealthy. Sandusky’s medical records state that he was undergoing “testosterone replacement therapy for significant low levels of both free and total testosterone.”
Sandusky's medical records reveal that he was being treated with antibiotics for chronic prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate commonly caused by bacterial infection that results in frequent and painful urination. Prostatitis can also cause sexual problems such as low libido, erectile dysfunction, and painful ejaculations.
Sandusky’s chronic prostatitis began in 2005 and continued through 2008, his medical records state. Doctors described Sandusky as being “light-headed” and suffering “dizziness” from using Flomax, which he began taking in 2006, because he was having trouble urinating.
In addition to his urological problems, Sandusky’s medical records list many ailments that raise the question of whether Sandusky was healthy and energetic enough to be out having rampant, promiscuous sex with all those boys.
Sandusky’s ailments include cysts on one of his kidneys, a small aneurysm in his brain, a 2006 hernia operation, bleeding hemorrhoids, chest pains, headaches, drowsiness, elevated blood pressure, and sleep apnea.
He was on thyroid medication when he went to the doctors and told them he began “falling apart” in 2005. By 2008, his doctors wrote, Sandusky reported he was falling asleep at the wheel and gotten involved in two car accidents.
The medical records also describe a distinctive feature of Sandusky’s anatomy that none of his accusers have ever mentioned.
On February 2, 2006, Dr. Frank B. Mahon at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, who was treating the 62-year-old Sandusky for chronic prostatitis, wrote that Sandusky had “small” testicles of “perhaps 2 cm” or centimeters each, which equals .787 of an inch. The average size of adult testicles are between two and three inches.
On December 18, 2008, another doctor at the Hershey Medical Center wrote that the 6-foot-1 210-pound former coach, nearly 65, had “marked testicular atrophy with very little palpable testicular tissue.”
In stark contrast to the way he is portrayed in the claims against him, a couple of law enforcement types who have observed Sandusky in close quarters describe him as an anomaly in the hyper-macho world of football coaches, saying he comes across as asexual.
There may be genetic reasons for that. Sandusky’s medical records state that as a boy, he had “delayed development of secondary sexual characteristics” that required shots, but they don’t say what kind of shots. Sandusky told his doctors he was “unable to have children” because his “sperm counts were low.”
Sandusky's medical records state that he suffered from hypothyroidism, [underactive thyroid] as well as hypogonadism, meaning his body didn’t produce enough testosterone to maintain good health.
The medical records, which date from 2006 to 2008, cover the same time period during which a couple of key trial accusers, Aaron Fisher and Sabastian Paden, claimed they were being raped hundreds of times by Sandusky.
Fisher settled his civil case against Penn State for $7.5 million. Paden, whose lawyers won in court access to all the confidential records in the Penn State case that are still under a judge's seal, got the biggest pay out of all the alleged victims, $20 million.
Totaling up the allegations made in 36 civil claims that were paid, the alleged victims stated that they had been raped or sexually abused by Sandusky at a minimum of least 520 to 620 times.
At his trial, Sandusky’s lawyers never used his medical records in his defense, probably because they didn’t have time to even read boxes of grand jury testimony, or serve subpoenas on witnesses.
In prison, Sandusky’s appeals lawyer said, he remains on a half-dozen medications, including continuing testosterone replacement therapy, and Terazosin for continuing prostate infections.
There’s another angle to the story of Sandusky’s medical records -- there are 36 alleged victims who got paid after claiming they were raped and abused hundreds of times by Sandusky, including nine alleged victims who claim that Sandusky had engaged with them in high-risk and apparently unprotected anal sex.
Yet not one of these alleged victim has ever asked to see Sandusky’s medical records, to find out whether he had HIV or any venereal disease. Nor has any victim ever sought to have Sandusky tested for any diseases.
That's the kind of evidence that would aid a criminal case. In a civil case, if Sandusky was found to have infected his victims with disease, it would have raised the damages.
But in the Penn State case, none of the alleged victims ever pursued the disclosure of any of Sandusky’s medical records.
You have to ask why.
And whether the answer is because it never really happened.
The Last Word
Jerry Sandusky is a relic from another time. He's an only child who was the son of Polish immigrants. His father, Art Sandusky, a trolley conductor, was the coach of a local baseball team who ran a recreation center that took in troubled kids and hired disabled people as employees.
At the recreation center, the motto hung on the wall by Sandusky's father said, "Don't give up on a bad boy, because he might turn out to be a great young man." Jerry Sandusky, a devout Methodist who grew up in that rec center, adopted his father's mission, and was out to save the world one troubled kid at a time.
At the rec center, it was a common practice for men and boys to shower together. When Sandusky first got in trouble in 1998, for taking a shower with 11 year-old Zachary Konstas, after a complaint from the boy's mother, the incident wound up being investigated by authorities that included an official from the Centre County Children and Youth Services, a detective from the Penn State police, an investigator from the state Department of Public Welfare, the boy's therapist, as well as a psychologist hired by the county.
The authorities concluded that there was no evidence of abuse or of any sexual conduct whatsoever, so the mother's alleged claim was officially deemed unfounded. As recounted in The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment, by author Mark Pendergrast, the psychiatrist who questioned young Zach Konstas for an hour concluded:
"The behavior exhibited by Mr. Sandusky is directly consistent with what can be seen as an expected daily routine of being a football coach. This evaluator spoke to various coaches from high school and college football teams and asked about their locker room behavior. Through verbal reports from these coaches it is not unusual for them to shower with players. This appears to be a widespread, acceptable situation and it appears that Mr. Sandusky followed through with patterning that he has probably done without thought for many years."
The problem in the Sandusky case is that the customs of an earlier time, as in a communal shower for men and boys, are being viewed through a modern lens.
Since he couldn't have kids of his own, Jerry and his wife Dottie adopted six children, five girls and a boy. Only one of those adopted kids, Matt Sandusky, who took his adoptive dad's name, would ultimately claim to be abused.
According to author Mark Pendergrast, after Matt sat next to his adoptive mother on the first day of the Sandusky trial and heard the alleged victim spout accusations of abuse that were the result of recovered memory therapy, Matt came home and told one of his siblings, "This is ridiculous. Anyone can make accusations without evidence, and get paid. I could, you could, anyone could . . . but I actually have morals."
Three days later, Matt famously flipped. After first telling authorities he hadn't been abused, Matt gave a statement to the police that said that after he went to a psychiatrist, he had recalled memories of past abuse. His flip earned him an appearance on Oprah, and a civil settlement of $325,000.
The other five of Sandusky's adopted kids, however, told Pendergrast that they'd never been abused, and that they didn't believe that Matt had ever been abused either.
I'll leave the last words to the man who's been in prison for the past ten years as a result of egregious official misconduct and a decade of media malpractice.
"I am an innocent person, wrongly convicted by sinister ways of deception, dishonesty and disregard," Sandusky wrote from prison.
"I did not commit the heinous crimes I was accused of doing. Oral and anal sex never entered my mind, nor did I ever engage in them with anybody. This includes my wife, who has been my only sexual partner and loyally stands with me today."
Those NCAA didn't exist at the time. But as they are written now, Joe did follow them. He also followed the PSU guidelines at the time. He was very thoughtful about not interjecting himself into the legal process because he did not want to be seen as influencing anything in either direction.
Funny how this aligns with the results of two trials and MM's whistle blower case and the public narrative. From how I know him I have no reason to doubt anything he has told me. It's not just this case of course. One time he warned us about a serial rapist operating in the area. My wife was off from work due to an operation then and he was concerned she could be at risk. The rapist would kidnap women, take them to a remote location, rape the,, then take them home. This man was operating in a few different jurisdictions for over a decade and only picked attached women living in rural areas.
The concern went beyond a rape, they were thinking he might escalate to murder. When the local AG finally talked about the case they said " the last few years". It was over 15. There were other things brought to my attention over the years and he's never been wrong, not once.
So in this case I will say they knew, and they covered it up.
I think many people would be very interested in learning about this case from someone who actually was involved in the investigation. It would definitely be worth the effort.
that is quite a leap. Even if you "knew", it had to be actionable and worthy of a charge. Why didn't your friend do anything if he "knew?" It isn't that easy, not that cut and dried.
I have no interest in debating C/S/S. The posters are conflating other actions or inactions with Paterno. Paterno did what he should have done, period, stone cold fact.
Just read Ganim and take notes.
On the tenth anniversary of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Sara Ganim is hosting a podcast where she claims that Shawn Sinisi, a previously unknown alleged victim of Jerry Sandusky's, was the first alleged Sandusky victim to die as a result of that alleged abuse.
"In so many ways, Shawn Sinisi was a textbook abuse victim: he was ashamed, confused, angry, unable to admit or discuss what had happened," Ganim says on the new podcast, The Mayor of Maple Avenue, which was Shawn Sinisi's nickmame. "He was a child who seemingly overnight went from a happy go lucky and outgoing kid to a quiet, distant, and then troubled young man."
"He began to escape his pain and bury his memories of abuse with drugs and alcohol," Ganim said. "He became an addict. And when his addiction led him down a darker path, he was given yet another label: criminal."
There's only one problem with Ganim's tragic story of abuse. Shawn Sinisi, who grew up in Altoona, PA, isn't around to speak for himself; in 2018, he died of an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl, at 26. But "during his lifetime," wrote Don Litman, a civil lawyer for Sandusky, to lawyers for the Sinisi family, Shawn Sinisi "unequivocally stated that he was not sexually abused by Mr. Sandusky."
So did Josh Sinisi, Shawn's older brother, who attended the Second Mile camps with his brother, and claimed that they stayed together overnight at Sandusky's house.
That's the story told in a trio of contemporaneous police reports from 2011 and 2012 emanating from the state attorney general's office that are marked "confidential." That's why Litman, who's defending Sandusky against a civil suit filed by the Sinisi family on March 12, 2021, has told the Sinisis, who are the featured guests on the Ganim podcast, that they are engaged in "publishing false and misleading information." So Sandusky's lawyer has called on the parents of Shawn Sinisi to cease and desist.
Litman, who referred a request for comment to Sandusky's criminal layers, has demanded that the Sinisi family take the podcast series off the internet "or we shall bring this to the attention of the Court and seek injunctive relief along with further consequences for such blatant misconduct."
Ronald Carnevali, a lawyer for the Sinisi family, did not respond to a request for comment.
But those contemporaneous police reports have a lot to say.
On May 27, 2011, Agent Anthony Sassano of the state attorney general's office interviewed Shawn Sinisi at his home.
In the Sandusky grand jury probe, Sassano was the lead investigator of a joint seven-member task force between the state attorney general's office and the state police that went out knocking on the doors of some 300 young men who had been participants in programs sponsored by The Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for wayward youth.
What the task force that worked under Sassano and then Deputy Attorney Jonelle Eshbach were looking for was victims of sex abuse, but they weren't very successful.
On Jan. 4, 2012, Sassano testified that the special task force had interviewed 250 men who were former members of the Second Mile charity, but they only found one man who claimed to be a victim of abuse.
According to a Penn Live story that was based on Ganim's "reporting" for her new podcast, "The Sinisis say that Shawn disclosed a small part of his abuse to detectives when Sandusky came under a grand jury investigation, but he was already mired in the underworld of drugs and addiction by the time the case went to trial. His mother said investigators told her it wasn’t worth pitting two brothers against each other."
The police reports, however, tell a different story.
When Sassano went to see Shawn Sinisi on May 27, 2011, the then 19-year-old told the agent that he and his older brother Josh had attended the Second Mile summer camps annually for one week between 2004 and 2007, when he would have been between approximately 12 and 16, until Shawn "lost interest in the programs as he became older."
The programs at the Second Mile had been recommended to Josh Sinisi, who had "mental problems" similar to Attention Deficit Disorder by Josh Sinisi's counselor, Shawn Sinisi told Sassano, according to the police report.
Shawn Sinisi, then 19 years old, told Sassano that he and his brother stayed overnight at Sandusky's home seven or eight times, and that the two brothers "always were together in these overnight stays and summer camp stays."
"Shawn indicated he did not know why Sandusky showed a special interest in him and/or his brother," Sassano wrote. "He indicated that Sandusky would tell him he loved him and occasionally gave him a kiss on the head. He indicated that he did not view these acts as sexual in nature."
On March 30, 2011, Ganim, then working for the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, published the first story that disclosed there was a secret grand jury of Sandusky under way, amid allegations that Sandusky was a serial sexual abuser of children.
"He [Shawn Sinisi] indicated he never felt uncomfortable around Sandusky and would tell me if anything inappropriate had occurred," Sassano wrote.
"He [Shawn Sinisi] elaborated that he [Sandusky] has a current legal charge of rape pending against him and if something was done by Sandusky, he would report it," Sassano wrote.
But Shawn Sinisi wasn't claiming to be a victim. Instead, he was a booster of Sandusky.
"Shawn indicated he believes Sandusky is a great role model as he helps people in need," Sassano wrote.
What Shawn Sinisi's Older Brother Told Agent Sassano Of The A.G.'s Office
Four days after he interviewed Shawn Sinisi, on May 31, 2011, Agent Sassano returned to interview Josh Sinisi, then 23.
Josh Sinisi told Sassano that he began attending Second Mile events in 2001, when he was a 12 year-old seventh grader, and stayed in the program until 2005 or 2006, when he was 16 or 17.
Josh Sinisi said he developed a "closer relationship" with Sandusky, and stayed overnight with his brother at Sandusky's house about a dozen times. Josh Sinisi said he used to attend Sandusky family tailgate parties at Penn State football games, and then go to the football games.
Josh Sinisi said that Sandusky used to throw footballs to him, and that they played Polish soccer together, and lifted weights.
As the task force typically did, Agent Sassano of the state attorney general's office proceeded to ask a bunch of leading questions.
"I asked him [Josh Sinisi] if Sandusky ever touched him physically in any way that made him feel uncomfortable," Sassano wrote, and Josh Sinisi "indicated no."
"I asked if Sandusky ever tried to get him to take a shower with him at PSU, and if so, did he touch him and again he indicated no," Sassano wrote.
Josh "Sinisi indicated that if Sandusky had ever done touched him in a sexual manner, he would have let his mother know and he would not have tolerated it even at his younger age," Sassano wrote.
Not even the free publicity from Sara Ganim was beneficial for the state attorney general's investigation of Sandusky, when it came to Agent Sassano's interviews with the Sinisi brothers.
Josh "Sinisi indicated he heard of the allegations against Sandusky in the news and that he does not believe they are true," Sassano wrote. "He indicated that Sandusky is a very generous and most positive person who helps people [kids] with problems. He indicated to this day, he has occasional contact with Sandusky via phone and considers him a friend."
That's the story that Josh Sinisi told, but it wasn't the story that Sassano was hoping to hear.
Agent Sassano Interviews Shawn's Brother A Second Time
On May 9, 2012, when the state attorney general's office was getting ready to prosecute Sandusky at trial, Sassano returned to visit Josh Sinisi again to see if he would tell a different story, as did so many of Sandusky's accusers after they had initially said they weren't abused.
But Josh Sinisi didn't change his story.
Josh Sinisi told Sassano that he first met Sassano at the Penn State swimming pool, where Sandusky was often "horsing around in the pool with a lot of the kids."
When he stayed over at Sandusky's house, Josh Sinisi told Sassano, he brought his girlfriend along, as well as his brother, Shawn.
"He [Josh Sinisi] aways felt very comfortable with Jerry Sandusky and also brought a lot of his cousins with him to go to games and hang out at the Sanduskys' house," Sassano wrote.
"He stated that after staying at Sandusky's house many, many times, he knows that Sandusky would have had ample opportunity to abuse him if he was so inclined to do so," Sassano wrote.
But, "He [Sandusky] never once tried anything out of line with Sinisi," Sassano wrote. Instead, Josh "Sinisi stated that Sandusky is kind of a grandfatherly, huggy type of guy and genuinely tries to encourage kids with his enthusiasm. His hugging and caring for the kids is never sexual at all."
Josh Sinisi told Sassano "that he does not believe that these allegations are true and feels that this might be some attempt by these kids to get money from Penn State and Jerry Sandusky."
Josh Sinisi added that "he has never heard anyone speak about Jerry Sandusky in a negative way" and that Sandusky "always had a tremendous impact on a lot of kids."
Josh Sinisi also told Sassano that "Sandusky was a positive influence in his life to say the least. Sandusky set Sinisi on his life course and Sinisi feels he would have never gotten into college and would never bein the position he is in today without Sandusky's help," Sassano wrote. "He [Josh Sinisi] said that Sandusky was extremely influential in his life."
What Marianne Sinisi Told The Newspapers
When Sandusky retired as a football coach, in a Sept. 17, 2010 story published in the Altoona Mirror, Josh Sinisi described Sandusky in an email as "kind, loving, caring, generous, strong, positive, successful."
In the story dug up by blogger Ray Blehar, Josh Sinisi, who had attention deficit disorder as a child, told the newspaper that Sandusky "taught me to be strong and never let anything [or anyone] stand in my way between what I wanted."
"He's an amazing man," agreed Marianne Sinisi.
When the sex abuse scandal hit the media, the Sinisis didn't change their story, and they continued to publicly defend Sandusky.
On Nov. 6, 2011, after Ganim's bombshell on the leaked grand jury report, Marianne Sinisi was quoted on statecollege.com as saying about the charges against Sandusky, "I don't believe it. I think he is a good man, and they are railroading him.
In the story, disclosed on Twitter by reporter John Ziegler, Josh Sinisi added, "I don't think it is true at all . . . I just went to a Penn State game with him a few weeks ago . . . I think it is ridiculous. I don't believe the charges are true at all."
Josh Sinisi told statecollege.com that he spent a lot of time with Sandusky. "He had the opportunity to do things with me and my brother," he said, but it never happened.
A year after her son's death, in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette feature story on Dec. 24, 2019, Marianne Sinisi discussed her tragic loss, as well as the work of a charity she founded to aid the families of drug addicts. But according to the story that was posted on Twitter by Ziegler, Marianne Sandusky never even mentioned Sandusky.
On the new podcast, however, Marianne Sinisi tells Sara Ganim an entirely different story.
According to the Penn Live story based on Ganim's reporting, "Years would pass before Shawn told his mother and a lawyer that he was sexually abused by Sandusky. Afraid of disappointing his family, who were fans of Sandusky’s mentorship for Josh, Shawn began coping by self-medicating, first with alcohol and marijuana, quickly escalating to hardcore drugs."
And now, according to Penn Live, Josh Sinisi has changed his story as well.
According to the Penn Live story, "Brother Josh, who was also in Sandusky’s orbit, said the convicted child molester used his good relationship with him to intimidate Shawn into being silent. It worked for many years. Shawn kept his abuse bottled up, instead turning to drugs to cope, starting at age 13."
Phil Lauer, a criminal defense lawyer who is representing Sandusky in his appeal of his conviction, "I was not aware of the Sinisi family ever coming forward in the previous ten years."
Sara Ganim's Story Of Abuse
"In the summer of 2019, I got a call from a woman who identified herself as Marianne Sinisi," Ganim said. "She wanted to talk to me about her son Shawn — and what had happened just a year earlier, when Shawn was found unconscious on the floor of a McDonald’s bathroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shawn died that night of an overdose. He was just 26 years old."
"Marianne sounded somewhat frantic on the phone that day as she described what had happened to her youngest child," Ganim said. "She reached out to me to share her story, because Shawn had also been a victim. A victim of a man who is now one of the most well known serial pedophiles, Jerry Sandusky."
"Jerry Sandusky’s conviction was punishment for what he had done, and it ensured that he could not harm any other children, but it couldn’t undo the abuse — or the consequences and myriad of ways it would manifest in his victims’ lives," Ganim said according to a transcript of the first episode of the podcast posted online.
"As someone who had followed the Sandusky story since the very beginning, I recognized immediately: that Shawn’s death marked a grim milestone — a fatality stemming from Jerry Sandusky’s abuse," Ganim said according to the transcript.
The Sinisi family is suing Penn State. The Penn Live story, based on Ganim's reporting, states, "Penn State had agreed to pay for Shawn to go to The Meadows, a treatment facility in Arizona with a sterling reputation . . ."
"What they [the Sinisi family] did know is that after just eight days in the rehab center, Shawn was told to leave. He was put on a plane to Pittsburgh, with no safe destination lined up for him."
"His family doesn’t know exactly what happened from there. He ended up at a McDonald’s and overdosed in the bathroom."
“Our poor Shawn,” his mother Marianne told Penn Live. “I felt like he wasn’t cared for at all ... not even leaving the planet."
In a Nov. 3rd press release, Meadowlark Media announced the new multi-episode podcast chronicling the Jerry Sandusky scandal that would be broadcast "on the 10th anniversary of his arrest."
'"The Mayor of Maple Avenue' is a multi-part investigative podcast with reporting by Sara Ganim," the press release states.
"Sinisi died in 2018 at the age of 26 from an opioid overdose. He is the only one of Sandusky’s victims known to have died since the former coach was convicted on 45 counts of sexual child abuse."
The press release says the podcast is a "joint project between the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Pulitzer Center for Local Reporting."
“Sara’s powerful reporting details how Shawn spent 14 years bouncing between jail, rehab facilities, and homelessness," the press release says. "The endless roadblocks the young man and his family faced, as they attempted to overcome addiction and trauma, clearly point to a national rehab system in drastic need of overhaul.”
"The Mayor of Maple Avenue will debut Thursday, Nov. 4 (the 10th anniversary of Sandusky’s arrest and indictment), available on your podcast platform of choice, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify."
To get a response to this story, I emailed or tweeted Ganim, Meadowlark Media, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Pulitzer Center for Local Reporting, but all of these alleged champions of the First Amendment are stonewalling.
Not one of them respond to my requests for comment.
More Holes In Ganim's Story Of Abuse
There are a few more problems with the story that Ganim and the Sinisis are peddling.
If Shawn Sinisi was an alleged victim of Sandusky's, why didn't he come forward any time after Sandusky was convicted on June 22, 2012 until Sept. 4, 2018, when Sinisi died?
That's what 41 men did and 36 of them got paid a total of $118 million, or an average of $3.3 million each. But when Penn State was taking in all those claims, investigating nothing and writing some big checks, Shawn Sinisi wasn't on the list of alleged victims.
Why not? Why would Shawn Sinisi and/or his family miss out on the gold rush?
Instead, the Sinisi family filed a lawsuit two years after Shawn's death in Philadelphia in 2020 but waited until March 12th of this year to notify the defendants in the case about the civil complaint in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
The complaint is filed against Sandusky, the Second Mile, and Jack Raykovitz, former president, CEO and executive director of the Second Mile, and his wife, Katherine, who was the charity's executive vice president. In that lawsuit, Penn State is not listed as a defendant.
In the 77-page complaint, the lawyer for the Sinisis reprises the entire now-discredited narrative of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, complete with the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy in the Penn State showers that was an invention of the fiction writers in the state attorney general's office, and the alleged cover up conducted by top Penn State officials, which was the invention of the authors of the Freeh Report.
On this blog, I have printed an 8,000 word summary of what really happened in the case, compiled from thousands of pages of court records, and hundreds of pages of confidential records that are still under seal.
It's a synopsis that thoroughly debunks the entire false narrative from start to finish. If you haven't read it previously, you might want to take a look.
The typical pattern with most of Sandusky's accusers was that they initially denied they'd been abused. And then they'd hire a lawyer, undergo scientifically-discredited recovered memory therapy, and then they'd say that the doors of their minds had been opened, and now they recalled all kinds of abuse that they had apparently forgotten about.
But nowhere in the 77-page complaint filed by the Sinisis does it mention any recovered memory therapy undergone by Shawn. While the complaint claims that Shawn Sinisi was alone when he was abused by Sandusky, the complaint never mentions Josh Sinisi, Shawn Sinisi's older brother, who, according to the three police reports was always with Shawn whenever they attended a Second Mile event, or stayed over at Sandusky's house.
The Civil Claim Filed By The Sinisis Against Sandusky
The complaint does state that in the summer of 2000, Shawn Sinisi, then eight years old, attended a summer camp sponsored by the Second Mile that was held on the Penn State campus.
That's in stark contrast to Shawn Sinisi's interview with Agent Sassano, when he states that he began attending Second Mile events in 2004, when he was approximately 12 years old.
The complaint is also in stark contrast with older brother Josh Sinisi's interview with Agent Sassano, where he stated he began attending Second Mile events in 2001, when he was a 12-year-old seventh grader.
But the complaint states that back in 2000, when Shawn was eight, that Sandusky "began to groom Shawn Sinisi to become a victim of his sexual assaults."
"During that summer camp, Sandusky would, among other things, swim in the pool with Shawn Sinisi and grope his genitalia," the lawsuit claims. The following summer, in 2001,Sandusky continued to sexually assault Shawn Sinisi, including while in the showers of the Lasch Building."
"Over the next several years, Sandusky continued to groom Shawn Sinisi, spend excessive time with Shawn Sinisi, purchase gifts for Shawn Sinisi and his family, and sexually assault and abuse Shawn Sinisi," the complaint states.
"Sandusky continued to invite Shawn Sinisi to events hosted by Penn State and The Second Mile; invited Shawn Sinisi to attend various sporting events as his guest, including Penn State, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Philadelphia Eagles football games; invited Shawn Sinisi to attend football camps hosted by Penn State and The Second Mile on various Penn State campuses; invited Shawn to his home in State College, Pennsylvania, where Shawn was encouraged to spend the night on numerous occasions; and invited Shawn Sinisi to Penn State athletic facilities in order to exercise and spend time with Sandusky."
"During these activities, Sandusky sexually assaulted Shawn Sinisi in various manners," the complaint states.
"As a direct and proximate result of the sexual abuse suffered by Shawn Sinisi at the hands of Sandusky, Shawn Sinisi began to utilize drugs and alcohol in order to manage and/or cope with the physical and emotional trauma, physical and mental pain, and other damages and injuries, as set forth above."
"Shawn Sinisi continued to utilize drugs and alcohol to manage and/or cope with the damages and/or injuries he suffered, as set forth above, until around or about September 4, 2018, when he overdosed on heroin and died," the complaint concludes.
"The death of Shawn Sinisi is a direct and proximate result of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Sandusky."
The Problems With Sara Ganim's Reporting
Ganim, who, at 24, won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on Sandusky, was the beneficiary of many leaks about the supposedly secret grand jury investigation of Sandusky, leaks that would forever poison Sandusky's reputation, and deprive him of his right to a fair trial.
Ganim reported on a prior 1998 investigation into another Sandusky shower incident that turned out to be unfounded. Somebody in the know had leaked to Ganim a police report from the prior 1998 case that had turned up no crime, a police report that was supposed to be expunged.
Who gave Ganim that police report? There's a short list of suspects, a few of whom were employed by the state Attorney General's office.
In a 79-page diary compiled by former FBI Agent Kathleen McChesney, who was an investigator for former FBI Director Louis Freeh during his civil investigation into an alleged cover up at Penn State, McChesney recorded that one of the first documents that Freeh's investigators sought was a "1998 investigation report [that] has been provided," regarding the investigation of that first shower incident, a police report that was supposed to have been expunged.
On Jan. 4, 2012, McChesney wrote that during a meeting with investigator Anthony Sassano and another official from the state attorney general's office, she learned that the "1998 police report" was "out of sequence and filed in administrative rather than criminal." And that the Penn State police chief and the original investigator from the 1998 incident were the "only ones who knew."
McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify deputy Attorney General Frank Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, the investigator from Penn State Police who probed the 1998 shower incident. After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."
Scrheffler became convinced that there was a leak in the state attorney general's grand jury investigation of Sandusky.
On March 12, 2012, the retired detective called Richard Sethman, one of Freeh's investigators.
What did Schreffler have to say? According to a confidential report from Sethman, the retired detective stated that "it has been clear to him from the beginning that there has been a leak of information in the attorney general's grand jury investigation of Sandusky."
How did Schreffler know that?
"In March of 2011," the report says, "Sara Ganim, a reporter for the Patriot News in Harrisburg came to his residence and asked pointed questions about the 1998 Sandusky investigation," Sethman wrote after his conversation with the retired detective.
"Ganim advised Schreffler that she had a copy of the Pennsylvania State University Police report. She made specific reference to what Schreffler had written in the report. Schreffler asked Ganim how she got a copy of the report but Ganim would not reveal her source."
Besides publishing grand jury leaks that permanently destroyed Sandusky's chances for a fair trial, Ganim also functioned during the secret grand jury probe of Sandusky as an official courier for the A.G.'s office.
According to a brief filed by Sandusky's appeal lawyers, at a time when the grand jury probe was struggling to find victims, and in danger of expiring, Ganim "approached the mother of accuser 6," Deb McCord, according to the testimony of State Police Corporal Joseph Leiter, and gave McCord the name and phone number for an investigator assigned to the attorney general's office.
Ganim, according to the brief, had a message for McCord:
"Debra, it's Sara from the Patriot. I just want to pass along this agent's name and number. The Attorney General has expressed interest in helping you."
At Sandusky's trial, rather than have Ganim testify in court, the prosecutors from the state attorney general's office admitted in a legal stipulation that Ganim had acted as a messenger for the state attorney general's office by contacting McCord.
In 2017, Ganim, then working for CNN, struck again with a highly prejudicial scoop that was the result of another leak.
Ganim claimed she had obtained a one-page police report about the 1998 shower incident that "bolsters evidence" that the late Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno, "knew years before Jerry Sandusky's arrest that his longtime assistant might be abusing children."
The one page Pennsylvania state police report from 2011, supposedly obtained from a source, Ganim wrote, is "described here for the first time." The report, which she never published, supposedly "lays out an account from whistleblower Mike McQueary," who was telling Paterno about the since-discredited story about the rape in the showers of a 10-year-old boy.
"Paterno allegedly told McQueary in 2001 that the claim against Sandusky 'was the second complaint of this nature he had received," according to the police report, which was written after Sandusky's arrest 10 years later," Ganim wrote.
"Paterno, upon hearing the news, sat back in his chair with a dejected look on his face," the report states, adding that McQueary "said Paterno's eyes appeared to well up with tears."
As somebody who's read a lot of police reports, those are some pretty dramatic flourishes.
Here's the rest of the story, as reported by Ganim:
"Then he [Paterno] made the comment to McQueary this was the second complaint of this nature he had received about Sandusky," the report states, citing McQueary's recollection."
The police report also noted, Ganim wrote, that Paterno allegedly told McQueary that Dottie Sandusky, Jerry's wife, had told Sue Paterno, Joe's wife, that "Jerry doesn't like girls."
Ganim's 2017 scoop was immediately denounced as false by both the Paterno family and Sandusky's wife.
"Well CNN published a lie from Sara Ganim," tweeted Scott Paterno, a lawyer who defended his father during the Sandusky scandal. "Sue [Paterno] never said that Dottie [Sandusky] told her anything and this was categorically denied before publication."
"To be clear Sara Ganim and @CNN is using triple hearsay to get clicks and it's false. And enough is enough."
"To my knowledge we were not contacted by Sara Ganim for a response," Dottie Sandusky wrote. "If we had been, I would have told her that this is old news which actually exonerates both Joe and Jerry."
"The incident in question is the 1998 [shower] episode which, according to [Former Penn State Athletic Director] Tim Curley's testimony, Joe knew was fully investigated by the D.A. and determined to be unfounded," Dottie Sandusky wrote.
"I never said that Jerry doesn't like girls and the factual record, including at trial, makes that extremely obvious to anyone not invested in this entire fairy tale."
To sum up, this month marks the tenth anniversary of Sara Ganim's report of the illegal grand jury leak of the grand jury presentment that contained the false allegation that Jerry Sandusky had been by seen a lone witness raping a 10-year-old boy in the showers. The leak to Ganim set off the entire media firestorm over the alleged sex abuse scandal at Penn State.
Now on the tenth anniversary of that sorry event, Sara Ganim has taken it upon herself to provide all of us with a fresh example of how, when it comes to Jerry Sandusky, her reporting can't be trusted.
you haven't shown any "proof" that Paterno did anything but what he was supposed to do yet I am the one that "spouts lies as if they are fact". Go figure.
I'm not interested in that debate, either.
But you mentioned that they "underperformed". I'm asking why you think that. Are you suggesting that they should have done more when provided the information about Sandusky in 2001?
I appreciate the question but I am not going to go down that path lest the "others" on this board use it to conflate the term "They". They can and will include psychologists, Sandusky, high school teachers, janitors, professors, MM, MM-s Dad, MM's neighbor, MMs Mother, investigators, police, principles, The Second Mile, and dozens of others along with C/S/S and Paterno. The argument gets so convoluted, it is impossible to make points.
For me, on this thread, I only want to expose these two idiots of jumping to conclusions with zero evidence to denigrate Paterno, while at the same time will excuse Bear Bryant with even more evidence of direct wrongdoing than Paterno.
Happy to discuss CSS in another thread.
Opinions by a couple of jackasses mean nothing.....except to other jackasses, especially ones that reference Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock as subject matter experts in this.
Seriously? You're getting quite emotional with this . He was one of the investigators on this case. He did his job.
The AG's office tries the case not the PSP. Check back when charges were filed against Curley, Schultz, and Spanier . Then tell me why no charges were ever filed against Paterno ? Maybe it's because he was dead almost a year by then and most likely they knew he was very ill by the time Jerry was arrested?
The AG's office tries the case not the PSP. Check back when charges were filed against Curley, Schultz, and Spanier . Then tell me why no charges were ever filed against Paterno ? Maybe it's because he was dead almost a year by then and most likely they knew he was very ill by the time Jerry was arrested?
