The Shame of It.

[joeaubie21]

I think you nailed it. The media was in such an uproar, the effort was to save your ass. PSU was the deep pocket used to make it go away and JVP/C/S/C were the scapegoats.

Suhey and the other farm boy were providing food to TSM events. Another pud who owned a rental business was providing tables, tents etc. One with ties to food service was providing food.

I can't remember all these tools names that were doing this at inflated prices. Brucey boy was providing hotels and facilities.

And don't forget Charlie Brown Airlines and the criminal activity that occurred there.

TSM records were shredded in record time, it was closed, and the PSP stood by and allowed the bullshit to happen.

 

[joeaubie21]

J. Edgar Hoover photographed wearing a dress was bush league nonsense compared to the shit the Old Guard BOT was pulling and their hand selected asswipes continue to pull today.

 

[jerot]

Read the Eshbach saga.

MM too.

As in -

The night before former Penn State University President Graham Spanier was going to be arrested, Spanier didn't know about it, and neither did his lawyers.
But Gregory Paw, a senior investigator for the Louis Freeh Group did, thanks to a tip from then Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
On Oct. 31, 2012, Paw sent an email to the Freeh Group, which had conducted a separate $8.3 million investigation of the Penn State scandal.

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 [former Penn State Athletic Director Tim] Curley and [former Penn State Vice President for business and finance Gary] 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."
Fina, now a criminal defense lawyer, has not responded for months to multiple requests for comment. His alleged misconduct as a deputy attorney general is currently the subject of an ongoing hearing before the Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court, where Fina has been accused of repeatedly violating the attorney-client privilege in secret grand jury proceedings, and in the process, trampling on the constitutional rights of three former Penn State officials.

And now the propriety of Fina's actions while he was leading the grand jury probe on behalf of the state attorney general's office, and routinely swapping intel with investigators for the Freeh Group, have been called into question by 11 Penn State trustees.

On Friday, the 11 trustees called on the full 38-member Penn State board to release a confidential 200-page review of source materials for the 267-page Freeh Report. The trustees also called on the board to formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.

Alice Pope, a St. John's University professor who is a Penn State trustee, told spectators and reporters that she was concerned about "additional information" that has "emerged in the public domain" indicating there was "cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh" during their parallel investigations into the Penn State sex abuse candal.

"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General," Pope said.

The trustees have been concerned for years about the extent of this cooperation between Fina and the Freeh Group, and in the past, have privately questioned whether Fina's conduct was improper or illegal.

In an "Executive Summary of Findings" of the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh Report, dated Jan. 8, 2017, Penn State's trustees cited concerns over "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General."

That interference was defined in the executive summary as: "information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials" that was "improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."
During his career, Fina has frequently been accused of being an overzealous prosecutor who repeatedly stepped over ethical boundaries during his crusades. Last month, the counsel for the disciplinary board accused Fina of "deliberately and recklessly" violating the attorney-client privilege when he questioned former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin before a grand jury.

On Oct. 22, 2012, Fina told grand jury Judge Barry Feudale not to worry about rule 3.10 of the code of professional conduct for lawyers in Pennsylvania that required the judge to hold a hearing first to see whether Baldwin's testimony would violate the attorney-client privileges of three of her former clients.

As far as Fina was concerned, it was more important to keep the grand jury proceedings secret, as well as the news that Baldwin was now cooperating with the state attorney general's office, and testifying behind closed doors against her former clients -- former university president Graham Spanier, former university vice president Gary Schultz, and former university athletic director Tim Curley.

"We need not address the privilege issue," Fina told the judge. "We can address that later on," because Fina promised not to ask any questions that would violate that privilege. The judge instructed 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.

Then, four days later, according to the disciplinary board, Fina proceeded to do just that a total of 73 times. In the grand jury, Fina questioned Baldwin about her representation of the former clients, what they said to her, and what she said to them.

Amelia C. Kittredge, counsel to the disciplinary board, declined comment on Fina's cooperation with the Freeh Group. Dennis C. McAndrews, the lawyer representing Fina before the disciplinary board, also could not be reached for comment.

Confidential records reveal that Fina was repeatedly swapping inside dope with investigators at the Freeh Group throughout the attorney general's secret grand investigation of Penn State The intel exchange allowed investigators for the Freeh Group and the attorney general's office to play tag-team with grand jury witnesses such as Baldwin.

Freeh's investigators questioned Baldwin three times, on Nov. 23, 2011, Feb. 29, 2012, and May15, 2012, before they released their report about Penn State on July 12, 2012. And Deputy Attorney General Fina seemed to know what was going on every step of the way before he brought Baldwin into the grand jury on Oct. 26, 2012, to testify against her three former clients.
The only problem was that grand jury proceedings in Pennsylvania are supposed to be kept secret. And nobody at the Freeh Group was authorized to share confidential grand jury information. But that didn't seem to bother Frank Fina or Louis Freeh and his team.

As a result, both investigations were contaminated, and may have yielded poisoned fruit.

On Oct. 31, 2012, the same day Fina was telling the Freeh Group about the imminent arrests of Spanier, Curley and Schultz, Paw, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote an email to Omar McNeill, another Freeh senior investigator, divulging the confidential details of how deputy Attorney General Fina was pressuring Baldwin's lawyer in his campaign to turn Baldwin into a cooperating witness.
"The ever colorful Fina said yesterday that he has told Baldwin's counsel that he was comfortable putting '12 people in a box' and being able to convict her," Paw wrote. "He [Fina] also said she [Baldwin] was 'looking at a bullet' and 'facing the Big Meglia."
"Meglia" appeared to be a misspelled reference by Fina to the Magilla Gorilla cartoon character from the 1960s. Apparently, Fina was a fan.

Internal emails from the Freeh Group reveal that the attorney general's office for months had been working hand-in-hand with the Freeh Group while investigating Penn State.

"Greg [Paw] spoke with Fina," Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote on April 19, 2012. The deputy attorney general conveyed that he "does not want Spanier or other [defendants[ to see documents; next 24 hours are important for case & offered to re-visit over weekend re: sharing documents; attys & AG's staff are talking, & still looking to charge Spanier . . ."
Emails showed that Fina had long targeted Baldwin and Spanier, for prosecution. In a June 6, 2012 email, written a month before Freeh released his report on Penn State, Paw informed the other members of the Freeh Group about the feedback that Fina was getting from the grand jury.

"He [Fina] said that the feedback he received from jurors was that they wanted someone to take a 'fire hose' to Penn State and rinse away the bad that happened there. He [Fina] said that he still looked forward to a day when Baldwin would be ‘led away in cuffs,’ and he said that day was going to be near for Spanier.”
"He [Fina] says that Baldwin has been significant in helping their case recently," Paw wrote the Freeh Group. "He [Fina] thanked us for our hard work and said we were instrumental in helping to bring this about. Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
What the Freeh Group, and Fina, were instrumental in bringing about was convincing Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice, to flip, and testify against her former clients. But Lawrence Fox, an ethics expert for the state Supreme court's disciplinary board, took a dim view of Baldwin's betrayal of her clients.
"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 response to a request for comment, former FBI Director Freeh wrote that several of the leaked emails in question “were written months after our Penn State work had ended, after our recommendations already were being implemented by Penn State.”
The emails regarding what Fina had to say, Freeh wrote, were attempts by “leakers” to “distract from the damning and conclusive record of the horrible acts that took place at Penn State in the years before Sandusky’s arrest.”
But was it proper for Freeh to know what was going on during the supposedly secret grand jury investigation? When asked if Freeh, as a private citizen during his Penn State probe, was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, the former FBI director declined comment.
On Feb. 29, 2012, Baldwin was interviewed by two investigators from the Freeh Group -- Gregory Paw and Kathleen McChesney. In that interview, according to a draft report, Baldwin didn't show any hesitancy in talking about Spanier. The former university president, however, has filed an affidavit saying that he believed Baldwin was his lawyer during the grand jury proceedings, and that he believed their communication was confidential under the attorney-client privilege.

But in her interview with Freeh's investigators, Baldwin had plenty to say about her former client. She described Spanier as a "rationalist," someone who "believed that if he explained the elements of a problem in a certain way people would accept his reasoning and the problem would go away."

When Penn State got hit with subpoenas in the Sandusky investigation for football coach Joe Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz, Spanier was "surprised but did not get excited and said things would be fine," Baldwin told the two investigators from the Freeh Group.

"Looking back, she considers his reaction to be another example that he [Spanier] was a 'rationalist in the extreme," the report quotes Baldwin as saying. "Furthermore, she did not get the impression that any of the three men are concerned about the subpoenas."

In her interviews with the Freeh Group, Baldwin revealed that Frank Fina wasn't the only person from the AG's office who was leaking secrets.
On Feb. 29, 2012, when Baldwin was interviewed by two investigators from the Freeh Group, Paw and McChesney, Baldwin disclosed a previous leak from the state attorney general's office, but did not specify the identity of the leaker.

"In late October 2011, General Counsel Baldwin heard discretely from an individual in the Attorney General's office that a grand jury presentment was about to be released," the report said. "According to this individual, Curley and Schultz were included in the presentment regarding their 'duty to protect' and 'reporting abuse.' "

On March 30, 2012, McChesney took notes about grand jury intel relayed by Fina to Paw.

"Grand jury re Baldwin; judge not happy with what she said about representing the university -- inconsistent statements -- we are getting [copies] of the transcripts . . . "

In the grand jury proceedings, Baldwin asserted that she had represented the university, and not Spanier, Schultz, or Curley. Apparently, the judge had a problem with that, according to McChesney's notes.

On June 28, 2012, McChesney noted an email Paw sent to the Freeh Group, talking about his frequent conversations with Fina. They were trying to figure out the identity of the other leaker from the attorney general's office who had previously tipped off Baldwin about what the grand jury was up to.
Paw complained that another member of the AG's staff, Bob Connolly, had told Baldwin in advance about the charges filed by the Penn State grand jury in 2011. But that leak was not authorized by the Attorney General's office, Paw wrote, according to his conversation with Fina.
Apparently in the AG's office, there are authorized leaks and non-authorized leaks.
Other emails circulated among the Freeh Group revealed that Fina was angry at Baldwin, and blamed her for obstructing the attorney general's investigation of Sandusky.
Fina, according to Paw, told the Freeh Group, "It is clear in many respects that Penn State and Baldwin interfered with the [grand jury] investigation, including their lack of any effort to search for relevant emails as well as their attitude on production of materials to [grand jury] subpoenas. He [Fina] suggested that Spanier be asked about his knowledge of Baldwin's litigation against [grand jury] subpoenas in 2011."

Penn State was served with subpoenas for documents in December 2010, but did not comply until April 2012.
Tracking Cynthia Baldwin's testimony during the course of the Penn State investigation is an amazing tale of flip-flops.

John Snedden, a former special agent for NCIS and the Federal Investigative Services, investigated the alleged coverup at Penn State to decide whether Spanier's high level security clearance should be renewed. As part of his 2012 investigation, Snedden interviewed Cynthia Baldwin in March 2012. In that interview, Baldwin called Spanier "a very smart man, a man of integrity," and said that she trusted Spanier, and trusted his judgment.
But when she testified seven months later, on Oct. 26, 2012 before the grand jury as a government witness, Baldwin told a different story. She told the grand jury that the information Spanier gave reporters about his knowledge of Sandusky or his own conduct was filled with falsehoods. “He is not a person of integrity,” Baldwin testified. “He lied to me.”

To Snedden, Baldwin, who, in May was also brought up on misconduct charges in front of the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, has lost all credibility.
"You've got a clear indication that Cynthia Baldwin was doing whatever they wanted her to do," Snedden said about Baldwin's cooperation with the attorney general's office.
An appeals court has already ruled that Fina's dealings with Baldwin were improper on both ends.

On Jan. 22, 2016, the Pennsylvania Superior Court dismissed a total of eight charges, including charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy against both former Spanier and Schultz, and charges of obstruction and conspiracy against Curley.
The court found Fina’s questioning of Baldwin “highly improper,” and said that Baldwin breached the attorney-client privilege when she testified before the grand jury in 2012, and was questioned by Fina. The Superior Court also found that Fina claimed that when he questioned Baldwin, he was going to avoid asking questions about her representation of the three Penn State administrators to ensure that there was no violation of the attorney-client privilege.
But the Superior Court found that Fina was “paying lip service” to the privilege concerns, misled the grand jury judge, and posed a “significant number” of questions to Baldwin before the grand jury that “implicated potential confidential communications.”
The subject of the inquiries being conducted by the Freeh Group and the Attorney General's Office into Penn State, and the prospect of the investigators working in tandem, was laid out in emails circulated among Louis Freeh's investigators.
"If we haven't, we should make certain that we determine the utility of looking into all the same areas of interest raised by the AG in the subpoenas, to ensure that we do not get 'scooped' [borrowing Louie's term used in connection with the recent federal subpoena]," Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for the Freeh Group, wrote his colleagues on Feb. 8, 2012.
"I think that we are delving into most of the same areas, but I am not sure at all," McNeill wrote.
"I want to make sure that we are comfortable that we have an understanding of all the areas the AG has inquired about in subpoenas [or otherwise if our contacts at the AG have provided us other insights] that we can state when asked -- as we certainly will be -- that we made a conscious, strategic decision as to whether to pursue those same lines of inquiry in some form," McNeill wrote.

Another term for those grand jury "insights" gleaned from our "contacts at the AG" -- leaks.
On April 30, 2012, McChesney made note of another email from Paw to the Freeh Group about the Attorney General's supposedly secret dealings with another witness in the Penn State investigation.
The subject of email: "Fina important."
"Fina said Kim Belcher lied to [the Freeh Group] about everything she told [them], Fina said CB [Cynthia Baldwin] 'deeper in the mix than he suspected.' Because even before the state issued subpoenas she was 'significantly informed about McQ [Mike McQueary] allegations."
Kimberly Belcher, a former secretary for Gary Schultz, received a grant of immunity from the attorney general's office. She testified on July 29, 2013 that she removed a confidential file on Jerry Sandusky from Schultz's office because, "I wanted to be helpful."
The file contained Schultz's handwritten notes into the 1998 investigation into Sandusky showering with an 11-year-old boy on the Penn State campus. The file also contained printed out copies of emails that Schultz had sent out regarding the 2001 shower incident allegedly witnessed by Mike McQueary.
In January 2012, Belcher met with investigators for Freeh. She had intended to tell the investigators about the Sandusky file, but apparently changed her mind once she found out that an attorney present was there to represent the university and not her.
On Oct. 16, 2012, the AG's office was looking for help from the Freeh Group in their investigation of Belcher.
"Fina called yesterday and would like to interview me and have me testify before the [grand jury] re: Kim Belcher's interview," Gerry Downes, a former FBI agent who was another Freeh investigator, wrote Paw.
"Apparently, Kim is still lying to them and they're planning to charge her with obstruction of justice," Downes wrote. "Lisa Powers [Penn State's director of news and media relations] is also under investigation for withholding information."
As the Attorney General's investigation into Penn State continued, so did the leaks from the AG's office. And Frank Fina wasn't the only leaker.
On April 17, 2012, McChesney recorded in her diary that Anthony Sassano, the lead investigator for the AG's office on the Sandusky case, had told the Freeh Group that Spanier would be arrested.
Two days later, on April 19, 2012, McChesney recorded in her diary that Fina and Greg Paw also discussed that Spanier would be arrested. And that Fina claimed that Jay Paterno, son of the Penn State coach, supposedly told Fina that Joe Paterno knew about a prior 1998 shower incident involving Jerry Sandusky.
On May 24, 2012, two months before their report came out, members of the Freeh Group were still working their contacts at the AG's office to find out about the possible arrest of Spanier.
Rick Sethman, a state trooper, wrote that he was meeting Anthony Sassano the next day.
"By the way," Gregory Paw wrote Sethman back that same day, "We heard another rumor that Spanier may be charged on Tuesday. You may want to see if you can get any sense from Sassano on whether he knows anything. I have a call into Fina but have not heard back from him."
The cooperation between the Freeh Group and the AG's office went both ways. On June 26, 2012, Gregory Paw told Fina that the Louie Freeh report would be out by the week of July 13th.
Fina agreed to keep it confidential, and then, according to Paw, "He [Fina] also said that he was willing to sit with us and talk to the extent he can before the report is released if we wished for any feedback," Paw wrote.
And then Paw wrote his colleagues about some feedback from the AG's supposedly secret grand jury investigation, as passed along by Fina. According to Paw, that's when Fina mentioned the grand jurors told them they wanted to take a "fire hose" to Penn State. And that Fina was looking forward to seeing Baldwin and Spanier taken out in handcuffs.
Months after the Freeh Report was released on July 12, 2012, a blogger questioned the close relationship between the Freeh Group and the AG's office.
In response, Freeh, on March 11, 2013 issued a statement that said, "Our communication with these offices in no way impacted the independence of our work or the conclusions contained in our report."
The subject of Frank Fina leaking grand jury investigation was also raised in an appeal filed on behalf of former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who herself was convicted of leaking grand jury secrets in an effort to get back at Fina, whom she had been feuding with.
In defense of Kane, her lawyer, Joshua D. Lock of Harrisburg, filed a June 10, 2017 appeal in state Superior Court that said, "Leaks of grand jury information have occurred repeatedly in recent high-profile Pennsylvania cases -- including two of Mr. Fina's own cases."
"None of these other leaks appear to have resulted in so much as an investigation, and certainly none have led to a criminal prosecution," Lock wrote.
"For example, during the grand jury investigation into Jerry Sandusky, the very charges against Sandusky were posted to the state court website while they were still supposed to be secret," Lock wrote. " And once those secrets were posted on the website, Sara Ganim got the big scoop about the impending indictment. "As mentioned earlier, the lead prosecutor on the Sandusky case was Frank Fina," Lock wrote.
"However, there is no indication in the public record that Fina or any other prosecutor submitted the matter for investigation or that anyone has been criminally prosecuted for it," Lock wrote.
"Similarly, during the 'Bonusgate' investigation, also supervised by Fina, a partial transcript of grand jury testimony was leaked to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette," Lock wrote. "Once again, there is no public indication that any investigation of this incident ever occurred and once, again, no one has been prosecuted for the leak."
In the appeal, Lock noted that in a March 17, 2014 Philadelphia Inquirer story about Tyron Ali, an AG informant in a sting operation that targeted black Democratic lawmakers, "contained multiple leaked facts from the Ali investigation." Those facts included which four state lawmakers took money and how much according to "people with knowledge of the investigation," Lock wrote.
"Although Mr. Fina supervised the Ali investigation, there appears to have been no investigation into the source of these leaks, and there was no prosecution," Lock wrote.
"In short, although there have been leaks of grand jury information in other recent, high-profile case, only Attorney General Kane has been prosecuted," Lock wrote.
Kane was sentenced in October 2016 to 10 to 23 months in jail after a jury found her guilty of two felony perjury counts and seven misdemeanor accounts. The charges resulted from Kane's leak of information pertaining to a grand jury probe led by Fina of former Philadelphia NAACP director Jerry Mondesire that produced no charges.
Fina, who left the attorney general's office in 2012, resigned from the Philadelphia district attorney's office in 2016 the wake of the "Porngate" scandal initiated by Kane. In that scandal, many pornographic emails were found in his emails from Fina's government account.

Fina is now a criminal defense lawyer. And one of his most prominent recent clients is Brendan Young, the Penn State fraternity president charged with manslaughter and other crimes in the alcoholic-fueled hazing death of Timothy Piazza, a former pledge.

Fina has also been accused in court of leaking grand jury secrets by Jerry Sandusky's appeal lawyers. But on Oct. 18, 2017, Jefferson County Presiding Judge John Henry Foradora issued a 59-page opinion where he cleared Fina of leaking, while denying Sandusky a new trial sought under the Post Conviction Relief Act.
In his opinion, Judge Foradora talked about allegations of prosecutorial misconduct raised by Sandusky's appeal lawyers against Fina. Judge Foradora, however, concluded that Fina wasn't the leaker who was feeding reporter Sara Ganim intel about an impending grand jury presentment because Fina said so.

And also because Fina told the judge that he supposedly set a trap to find the real leaker, the judge wrote, but apparently Fina was as successful as O.J. Simpson in his hunt for the real killers who murdered his wife.
Fina had asked 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 wasn't Fina 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 [Deputy Attorney General Jonelle] Eshbach and Fina's internal 'trap,'" 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."
Nice theory, judge. But perhaps Fina and Eshbach set that "trap" as a ruse to throw the hounds off the scent. Eshbach has previously been accused of leaking by Mike McQueary, the official whistle blower in the Penn State scandal.

On the witness stand at the trial of former Penn State President Graham Spanier on March 21, 207, McQueary testified it was Eshbach who called him during a bye week in the 2011 football season, days before the release of the grand jury report, and said, "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."

Apparently, that's how things are done in the attorney general's office; leak, leak, leak. Authorized leaks and non-authorized leaks. And that leaking is done without regard for grand jury secrecy, the constitutional rights of the accused, or any sense of fair play.

That's how the game is played in Pennsylvania, where the prosecutors, behind closed doors in secret grand jury proceedings before friendly judges, already hold all the cards.

 

[WHCANole]

The BOT was protecting themselves, family and friends due to their involvement with TSM.

Joe was involved with TSM quite a bit. Was he trying to protect himself?

Under the by laws of TSM, they would be personally responsible for any criminal activity.

That's rubbish. You've obviously never served on a non-profit board.

These turds made a lot of money providing goods and services to TSM.

Who?

 

[WHCANole]

Suhey and the other farm boy were providing food to TSM events. Another pud who owned a rental business was providing tables, tents etc. One with ties to food service was providing food.

So they covered up for a pedophile so they could serve lunches?

I can't remember all these tools names that were doing this at inflated prices. Brucey boy was providing hotels and facilities.

And for this they knew about Jerry and let him run amok? 🤣 🤣 🙄

And don't forget Charlie Brown Airlines and the criminal activity that occurred there.

TSM records were shredded in record time, it was closed, and the PSP stood by and allowed the bullshit to happen.

It's a goddam conspiracy I tell 'ya!

 

[jerot]

Still no actual arguments.

Even if you don’t accept Zieglers conclusion that Sandusky is 100% innocent, it is huge that Ziegler discovered the “boy in the shower” was Sandusky’s biggest defender for many years, even after the arrest. That clearly exonerates Joe Paterno and the admins even if there is still some guilt concerning Sandusky.

Take some time and read the Ganim - Ziegler - Snedden files.

Amazing.

On the tenth anniversary of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Sara Ganim was 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.

 

[joeaubie21]

Take some time and read the Ganim - Ziegler - Snedden files.

Amazing.

On the tenth anniversary of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Sara Ganim was 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.

Correction; There was, and is, no Penn State sex scandal. You keep stating this and it's incorrect.

 

[WHCANole]

Correction; There was, and is, no Penn State sex scandal. You keep stating this and it's incorrect.

There was and the guilty either went to jail or were disgraced.

 

[Lion84]

There was and the guilty either went to jail or were disgraced.

Hey jagoff why don’t you take your troll act somewhere else - I hear Cracker Barrel is hiring - seems like it would be a good fit for you.

 

[LandoComando]

Hey jagoff why don’t you take your troll act somewhere else - I hear Cracker Barrel is hiring - seems like it would be a good fit for you.

But he's right. There was because our BOT allowed it (if not wanted it) to be about Penn State and for football program. And the people that went to jail are connected to Penn State.
It's okay to acknowledge Sandusky is guilty as anyone has ever been and many people involved could have handled it while intelligently arguing it shouldn't ve about football but name calling just comes across desperate.

 

[jerot]

Still no actual arguments.

Even if you don’t accept Zieglers conclusion that Sandusky is 100% innocent, it is huge that Ziegler discovered the “boy in the shower” was Sandusky’s biggest defender for many years, even after the arrest. That clearly exonerates Joe Paterno and the admins even if there is still some guilt concerning Sandusky.

Again, Curley - Schultz

With their recent plea bargains in hand, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz showed up at the Penn State sex abuse trial today to testify against their old boss, former PSU President Graham Spanier. And by day's end, they seemed to have scored more points for the defense then they did for the prosecution.

Curley, the former Penn State athletic director who is battling lung cancer, seemed extremely uncomfortable with his role as a cooperating witness for the prosecution in front of a courtroom packed with many Penn State loyalists, including football icon Franco Harris. On the witness stand, Curley professed an amazing lack of memory about most of the key events in the official Penn State sex abuse story line.

"I can't recall the specifics," Curley said about a meeting he had with former football Coach Joe Paterno to discuss what Mike McQueary heard and saw in his infamous 2001 visit to the Penn State locker room. "I have no recollection of that particular encounter," Curley said about a Sunday morning powwow he and Schultz had at Paterno's house to discuss what McQueary had witnessed in the showers. "I don't recall what his [Paterno's] response was."

About a meeting he and Schultz had with Spanier, Curley said, "We gave Graham a head's up." But he added, "I don't recall what the conversation was."

About another meeting Curley and Schultz had in President Spanier's office, Curley said, "I don't recall any of the conversation."

Well, asked the prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte, wasn't the meeting about what Mike McQueary said he heard and saw in the showers?

"I don't remember the specifics," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he saw Jerry Sandusky doing with that boy in the showers was "sexual in nature," Schulte asked.

"No," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he witnessed in the shower was horseplay, the prosecutor asked.

"I don't recall Mike saying that," Curley said. "I just walked through what Joe [Paterno] told us" about what McQueary told him about his trip to the locker room.

Well, the frustrated prosecutor asked, did you ever do anything to find out the identity of the boy in the shower with Jerry?

"I did not," Curley said. "I didn't feel like someone who is in danger," he said about the alleged victim.

But when the subject returned again to Curley's talks with Paterno, Curley responded, "I don't recall the specific conversation I had with Joe."

Curley downplayed the problems with Sandusky.

"I thought Jerry had a boundary issue," Curley said about Sandusky's habit of showering with young boys.

And what happened when Curley talked with Sandusky about that boundary issue, the prosecutor asked. Did Sandusky admit guilt?

"No, he didn't," Curley said.

Well, what did he say?

"I don't recall the specifics of the conversation," Curley replied.

The prosecutor reviewed for the jury's benefit Curley's guilty plea on one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. In the guilty plea, Curley admitted that he "prevented or interfered with" the reporting of a case of suspected sex abuse, namely the boy that Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Sandusky.

"You know other kids got hurt" after the McQueary incident, the prosecutor asked Curley.

"That's what I understand," Curley said.

On cross-examination, Spanier's lawyer, Samuel W. Silver, asked Curley about his guilty plea. The defense lawyer specifically wanted to know who was it that Curley prevented or interfered with to keep that person from reporting a suspected case of child sex abuse.

Faced with the chance to finger Spanier, Curley blamed only himself.

"I pleaded guilty because I thought I should have done more," Curley told Silver. "At the end of the day, I felt I should have done more."

Silver, seemingly delighted with that answer, ended his cross-examination after only a couple of minutes.

"I appreciate your candor," Silver told the witness. The prosecutors, however, appeared to have a different opinion of Curley's performance while they glared at him.

The day in Dauphin County Court began with the prosecution calling a couple of witnesses who worked as assistants to Gary Schultz, and used to do his filing.

Joan Cobel recalled how Schultz told her about a manilla folder he was starting with Jerry Sandusky's name on it.

"Don't look at it," Cobel recalled Schultz advising her about the Sandusky file, which was kept under lock and key.

"He never used that tone of voice before," Cobel conspiratorially told the prosecutor.

Lisa Powers, a former spokesperson for PSU and a speechwriter for Spanier, told the jury how she "kept feeling that something wasn't right" about the Sandusky rumors that reporters were asking her about. She recalled that when she asked another Penn State official about what was really going on with Sandusky, she was told, "The less you know the better."

The implication was that a big sex scandal was brewing at Penn State. Whether the jury buys all this hokum is another matter.

The prosecution, which rested its case today after only two days of testimony, seemed to be playing up the drama in the absence of hard factual evidence against Spanier.

Deputy Attorney General Laura Ditka, Iron Mike's niece, got Powers to tell the jury how Spanier insisted on posting statements from lawyers defending both Curley and Schultz on the university's website after the sex scandal broke.

Then Ditka got Powers to admit that while the university was posting those defenses of Curley and Schultz, it didn't run a statement expressing sympathy for Sandusky's alleged victims.

Ditka also managed to give a speech, in the form of a question, asking Powers if Spanier told her "they did nothing to locate that child that was in that shower with Jerry Sandusky."

To hammer home the plight of the alleged victims in the scandal, the prosecution put "John Doe" on the stand, a 28-year-old known previously at the Sandusky trial as "Victim No. 5."

Judge John Boccabella seemed to cooperate with the theatrics. John Doe was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. And when he came out to testify, the judge had extra deputies posted around the courtroom, to make sure that no spectator used their cellphone to take photos or video of the celebrity witness.

Conditions during the short Spanier trial have bordered on the draconian. The judge typically wants spectators seated in his courtroom by 8:30 a.m. Anybody who shows up late can't get in. Anybody who leaves the courtroom can't come back. Nobody can talk. And anybody caught using a cell phone not only in the courtroom, but anywhere on the fifth floor of the courthouse, faces a contempt of court rap that carries a penalty of six months in jail.

John Doe told the jury how he had begun attending Second Mile activities when he was 9 or 10, at the suggestion of a teacher, who thought it would improve his English.

The prosecution introduced photos of the boy.

"That was taken in Jerry and Dottie's house," John Doe told the jury about one shot of him posing with Jerry.

The whole point of John Doe's trip to the witness stand was to tell the jury that John Doe was sexually abused in the Penn State showers later in the same year that McQueary made his famous visit there.

The prosecution's final witness was Gary Schultz. He dutifully told the jury about how he had just pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, because he prevented or interfered with the reporting of a possible sex crime against a minor.

Once again, Schultz was referring to the boy Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Jerry Sandusky.

Schultz, the university's former vice president for finance and business, had a better memory than Curley. He recalled how he gave Spanier three updates about the 1998 accusation against Sandusky, made by the mother of an 11-year-old, who had objected to Sandusky giving her son a bear hug in the shower.

When McQueary came forward in 2001 to make his accusations, Schultz said his mind immediately flashed back to 1998. And he "wanted Jerry to get professional help."

Schultz outlined the original plan for coping with the McQueary allegations about the shower incident with Sandusky. The PSU administrators, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, wanted to confront Sandusky, and tell him he wasn't allowed to bring children into Penn State facilities any more. They also wanted to revoke his key to all of Penn State's athletic facilities.

The PSU administrators planed to inform the president of Sandusky's charity, the Second Mile, about what had happened in the showers. And then they were going to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare.

But Curley had second thoughts, thinking it was more "humane" to confront Sandusky first, and then inform the Second Mile, and finally, DPW.

Schultz told the jury how he reluctantly went along with Curley's change of heart. The PSU administrators did confront Sandusky. And they did inform a child psychologist who was the head of the Second Mile charity. But the PSU administrators never reported the shower incident to DPW.

"We should have reported it," Schultz told the jury. "We should have followed the original plan."

The prosecutor asked if PSU had made that report to DPW, would it have spared future victims?

"Who knows," Schultz said. "But it would have been the right thing to do."

On cross-examination, Silver, Spanier's lawyer, pointed out that today on the witness stand, Schultz had described McQueary's description of the shower incident as Sandusky standing behind the boy, with his arms around him.

"That's the first time we've heard that version," Silver said, pointing out to the jury that only after he became a coopering witness did Schultz start singing the prosecution's tune.

As he did with Curley, Silver asked Schultz who he had prevented from filing a report of possible child sexual abuse.

As Curley had done, Schultz blamed himself.

"I had been deficient in not reporting it myself," Schultz said. "I really thought we should report it to DPW."

After the prosecution rested, Spanier's supporters looked happy as they filed out of the courtroom.

 

[LandoComando]

@jerot do you think anyone is reading your copy & paste nonsense?

 

[indynittany]

You probably think OJ was innocent too
Listen you creating this false narrative about it being on the legal system (it's not) to distract from Penn State and Paterno's involvement. You pretend he might be innocent because that's the only thing that nationally restores Joe's legacy. This is all bias from you.

Well, you’ve pretty much made it clear that you think the justice system works like a charm.

Sandusky could be guilty, but C/S/S/P are still innocent and should have never been targeted. The question remains, why?

 

[joeaubie21]

Again, Curley - Schultz

With their recent plea bargains in hand, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz showed up at the Penn State sex abuse trial today to testify against their old boss, former PSU President Graham Spanier. And by day's end, they seemed to have scored more points for the defense then they did for the prosecution.

Curley, the former Penn State athletic director who is battling lung cancer, seemed extremely uncomfortable with his role as a cooperating witness for the prosecution in front of a courtroom packed with many Penn State loyalists, including football icon Franco Harris. On the witness stand, Curley professed an amazing lack of memory about most of the key events in the official Penn State sex abuse story line.

"I can't recall the specifics," Curley said about a meeting he had with former football Coach Joe Paterno to discuss what Mike McQueary heard and saw in his infamous 2001 visit to the Penn State locker room. "I have no recollection of that particular encounter," Curley said about a Sunday morning powwow he and Schultz had at Paterno's house to discuss what McQueary had witnessed in the showers. "I don't recall what his [Paterno's] response was."

About a meeting he and Schultz had with Spanier, Curley said, "We gave Graham a head's up." But he added, "I don't recall what the conversation was."

About another meeting Curley and Schultz had in President Spanier's office, Curley said, "I don't recall any of the conversation."

Well, asked the prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte, wasn't the meeting about what Mike McQueary said he heard and saw in the showers?

"I don't remember the specifics," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he saw Jerry Sandusky doing with that boy in the showers was "sexual in nature," Schulte asked.

"No," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he witnessed in the shower was horseplay, the prosecutor asked.

"I don't recall Mike saying that," Curley said. "I just walked through what Joe [Paterno] told us" about what McQueary told him about his trip to the locker room.

Well, the frustrated prosecutor asked, did you ever do anything to find out the identity of the boy in the shower with Jerry?

"I did not," Curley said. "I didn't feel like someone who is in danger," he said about the alleged victim.

But when the subject returned again to Curley's talks with Paterno, Curley responded, "I don't recall the specific conversation I had with Joe."

Curley downplayed the problems with Sandusky.

"I thought Jerry had a boundary issue," Curley said about Sandusky's habit of showering with young boys.

And what happened when Curley talked with Sandusky about that boundary issue, the prosecutor asked. Did Sandusky admit guilt?

"No, he didn't," Curley said.

Well, what did he say?

"I don't recall the specifics of the conversation," Curley replied.

The prosecutor reviewed for the jury's benefit Curley's guilty plea on one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. In the guilty plea, Curley admitted that he "prevented or interfered with" the reporting of a case of suspected sex abuse, namely the boy that Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Sandusky.

"You know other kids got hurt" after the McQueary incident, the prosecutor asked Curley.

"That's what I understand," Curley said.

On cross-examination, Spanier's lawyer, Samuel W. Silver, asked Curley about his guilty plea. The defense lawyer specifically wanted to know who was it that Curley prevented or interfered with to keep that person from reporting a suspected case of child sex abuse.

Faced with the chance to finger Spanier, Curley blamed only himself.

"I pleaded guilty because I thought I should have done more," Curley told Silver. "At the end of the day, I felt I should have done more."

Silver, seemingly delighted with that answer, ended his cross-examination after only a couple of minutes.

"I appreciate your candor," Silver told the witness. The prosecutors, however, appeared to have a different opinion of Curley's performance while they glared at him.

The day in Dauphin County Court began with the prosecution calling a couple of witnesses who worked as assistants to Gary Schultz, and used to do his filing.

Joan Cobel recalled how Schultz told her about a manilla folder he was starting with Jerry Sandusky's name on it.

"Don't look at it," Cobel recalled Schultz advising her about the Sandusky file, which was kept under lock and key.

"He never used that tone of voice before," Cobel conspiratorially told the prosecutor.

Lisa Powers, a former spokesperson for PSU and a speechwriter for Spanier, told the jury how she "kept feeling that something wasn't right" about the Sandusky rumors that reporters were asking her about. She recalled that when she asked another Penn State official about what was really going on with Sandusky, she was told, "The less you know the better."

The implication was that a big sex scandal was brewing at Penn State. Whether the jury buys all this hokum is another matter.

The prosecution, which rested its case today after only two days of testimony, seemed to be playing up the drama in the absence of hard factual evidence against Spanier.

Deputy Attorney General Laura Ditka, Iron Mike's niece, got Powers to tell the jury how Spanier insisted on posting statements from lawyers defending both Curley and Schultz on the university's website after the sex scandal broke.

Then Ditka got Powers to admit that while the university was posting those defenses of Curley and Schultz, it didn't run a statement expressing sympathy for Sandusky's alleged victims.

Ditka also managed to give a speech, in the form of a question, asking Powers if Spanier told her "they did nothing to locate that child that was in that shower with Jerry Sandusky."

To hammer home the plight of the alleged victims in the scandal, the prosecution put "John Doe" on the stand, a 28-year-old known previously at the Sandusky trial as "Victim No. 5."

Judge John Boccabella seemed to cooperate with the theatrics. John Doe was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. And when he came out to testify, the judge had extra deputies posted around the courtroom, to make sure that no spectator used their cellphone to take photos or video of the celebrity witness.

Conditions during the short Spanier trial have bordered on the draconian. The judge typically wants spectators seated in his courtroom by 8:30 a.m. Anybody who shows up late can't get in. Anybody who leaves the courtroom can't come back. Nobody can talk. And anybody caught using a cell phone not only in the courtroom, but anywhere on the fifth floor of the courthouse, faces a contempt of court rap that carries a penalty of six months in jail.

John Doe told the jury how he had begun attending Second Mile activities when he was 9 or 10, at the suggestion of a teacher, who thought it would improve his English.

The prosecution introduced photos of the boy.

"That was taken in Jerry and Dottie's house," John Doe told the jury about one shot of him posing with Jerry.

The whole point of John Doe's trip to the witness stand was to tell the jury that John Doe was sexually abused in the Penn State showers later in the same year that McQueary made his famous visit there.

The prosecution's final witness was Gary Schultz. He dutifully told the jury about how he had just pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, because he prevented or interfered with the reporting of a possible sex crime against a minor.

Once again, Schultz was referring to the boy Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Jerry Sandusky.

Schultz, the university's former vice president for finance and business, had a better memory than Curley. He recalled how he gave Spanier three updates about the 1998 accusation against Sandusky, made by the mother of an 11-year-old, who had objected to Sandusky giving her son a bear hug in the shower.

When McQueary came forward in 2001 to make his accusations, Schultz said his mind immediately flashed back to 1998. And he "wanted Jerry to get professional help."

Schultz outlined the original plan for coping with the McQueary allegations about the shower incident with Sandusky. The PSU administrators, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, wanted to confront Sandusky, and tell him he wasn't allowed to bring children into Penn State facilities any more. They also wanted to revoke his key to all of Penn State's athletic facilities.

The PSU administrators planed to inform the president of Sandusky's charity, the Second Mile, about what had happened in the showers. And then they were going to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare.

But Curley had second thoughts, thinking it was more "humane" to confront Sandusky first, and then inform the Second Mile, and finally, DPW.

Schultz told the jury how he reluctantly went along with Curley's change of heart. The PSU administrators did confront Sandusky. And they did inform a child psychologist who was the head of the Second Mile charity. But the PSU administrators never reported the shower incident to DPW.

"We should have reported it," Schultz told the jury. "We should have followed the original plan."

The prosecutor asked if PSU had made that report to DPW, would it have spared future victims?

"Who knows," Schultz said. "But it would have been the right thing to do."

On cross-examination, Silver, Spanier's lawyer, pointed out that today on the witness stand, Schultz had described McQueary's description of the shower incident as Sandusky standing behind the boy, with his arms around him.

"That's the first time we've heard that version," Silver said, pointing out to the jury that only after he became a coopering witness did Schultz start singing the prosecution's tune.

As he did with Curley, Silver asked Schultz who he had prevented from filing a report of possible child sexual abuse.

As Curley had done, Schultz blamed himself.

"I had been deficient in not reporting it myself," Schultz said. "I really thought we should report it to DPW."

After the prosecution rested, Spanier's supporters looked happy as they filed out of the courtroom.

What is your problem?

 

[LandoComando]

Well, you’ve pretty much made it clear that you think the justice system works like a charm.

Sandusky could be guilty, but C/S/S/P are still innocent and should have never been targeted. The question remains, why?

Explain why in your mind they shouldn't have been targeted?

 

[joeaubie21]

Again, Curley - Schultz

With their recent plea bargains in hand, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz showed up at the Penn State sex abuse trial today to testify against their old boss, former PSU President Graham Spanier. And by day's end, they seemed to have scored more points for the defense then they did for the prosecution.

Curley, the former Penn State athletic director who is battling lung cancer, seemed extremely uncomfortable with his role as a cooperating witness for the prosecution in front of a courtroom packed with many Penn State loyalists, including football icon Franco Harris. On the witness stand, Curley professed an amazing lack of memory about most of the key events in the official Penn State sex abuse story line.

"I can't recall the specifics," Curley said about a meeting he had with former football Coach Joe Paterno to discuss what Mike McQueary heard and saw in his infamous 2001 visit to the Penn State locker room. "I have no recollection of that particular encounter," Curley said about a Sunday morning powwow he and Schultz had at Paterno's house to discuss what McQueary had witnessed in the showers. "I don't recall what his [Paterno's] response was."

About a meeting he and Schultz had with Spanier, Curley said, "We gave Graham a head's up." But he added, "I don't recall what the conversation was."

About another meeting Curley and Schultz had in President Spanier's office, Curley said, "I don't recall any of the conversation."

Well, asked the prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte, wasn't the meeting about what Mike McQueary said he heard and saw in the showers?

"I don't remember the specifics," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he saw Jerry Sandusky doing with that boy in the showers was "sexual in nature," Schulte asked.

"No," Curley said.

Did McQueary say what he witnessed in the shower was horseplay, the prosecutor asked.

"I don't recall Mike saying that," Curley said. "I just walked through what Joe [Paterno] told us" about what McQueary told him about his trip to the locker room.

Well, the frustrated prosecutor asked, did you ever do anything to find out the identity of the boy in the shower with Jerry?

"I did not," Curley said. "I didn't feel like someone who is in danger," he said about the alleged victim.

But when the subject returned again to Curley's talks with Paterno, Curley responded, "I don't recall the specific conversation I had with Joe."

Curley downplayed the problems with Sandusky.

"I thought Jerry had a boundary issue," Curley said about Sandusky's habit of showering with young boys.

And what happened when Curley talked with Sandusky about that boundary issue, the prosecutor asked. Did Sandusky admit guilt?

"No, he didn't," Curley said.

Well, what did he say?

"I don't recall the specifics of the conversation," Curley replied.

The prosecutor reviewed for the jury's benefit Curley's guilty plea on one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. In the guilty plea, Curley admitted that he "prevented or interfered with" the reporting of a case of suspected sex abuse, namely the boy that Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Sandusky.

"You know other kids got hurt" after the McQueary incident, the prosecutor asked Curley.

"That's what I understand," Curley said.

On cross-examination, Spanier's lawyer, Samuel W. Silver, asked Curley about his guilty plea. The defense lawyer specifically wanted to know who was it that Curley prevented or interfered with to keep that person from reporting a suspected case of child sex abuse.

Faced with the chance to finger Spanier, Curley blamed only himself.

"I pleaded guilty because I thought I should have done more," Curley told Silver. "At the end of the day, I felt I should have done more."

Silver, seemingly delighted with that answer, ended his cross-examination after only a couple of minutes.

"I appreciate your candor," Silver told the witness. The prosecutors, however, appeared to have a different opinion of Curley's performance while they glared at him.

The day in Dauphin County Court began with the prosecution calling a couple of witnesses who worked as assistants to Gary Schultz, and used to do his filing.

Joan Cobel recalled how Schultz told her about a manilla folder he was starting with Jerry Sandusky's name on it.

"Don't look at it," Cobel recalled Schultz advising her about the Sandusky file, which was kept under lock and key.

"He never used that tone of voice before," Cobel conspiratorially told the prosecutor.

Lisa Powers, a former spokesperson for PSU and a speechwriter for Spanier, told the jury how she "kept feeling that something wasn't right" about the Sandusky rumors that reporters were asking her about. She recalled that when she asked another Penn State official about what was really going on with Sandusky, she was told, "The less you know the better."

The implication was that a big sex scandal was brewing at Penn State. Whether the jury buys all this hokum is another matter.

The prosecution, which rested its case today after only two days of testimony, seemed to be playing up the drama in the absence of hard factual evidence against Spanier.

Deputy Attorney General Laura Ditka, Iron Mike's niece, got Powers to tell the jury how Spanier insisted on posting statements from lawyers defending both Curley and Schultz on the university's website after the sex scandal broke.

Then Ditka got Powers to admit that while the university was posting those defenses of Curley and Schultz, it didn't run a statement expressing sympathy for Sandusky's alleged victims.

Ditka also managed to give a speech, in the form of a question, asking Powers if Spanier told her "they did nothing to locate that child that was in that shower with Jerry Sandusky."

To hammer home the plight of the alleged victims in the scandal, the prosecution put "John Doe" on the stand, a 28-year-old known previously at the Sandusky trial as "Victim No. 5."

Judge John Boccabella seemed to cooperate with the theatrics. John Doe was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. And when he came out to testify, the judge had extra deputies posted around the courtroom, to make sure that no spectator used their cellphone to take photos or video of the celebrity witness.

Conditions during the short Spanier trial have bordered on the draconian. The judge typically wants spectators seated in his courtroom by 8:30 a.m. Anybody who shows up late can't get in. Anybody who leaves the courtroom can't come back. Nobody can talk. And anybody caught using a cell phone not only in the courtroom, but anywhere on the fifth floor of the courthouse, faces a contempt of court rap that carries a penalty of six months in jail.

John Doe told the jury how he had begun attending Second Mile activities when he was 9 or 10, at the suggestion of a teacher, who thought it would improve his English.

The prosecution introduced photos of the boy.

"That was taken in Jerry and Dottie's house," John Doe told the jury about one shot of him posing with Jerry.

The whole point of John Doe's trip to the witness stand was to tell the jury that John Doe was sexually abused in the Penn State showers later in the same year that McQueary made his famous visit there.

The prosecution's final witness was Gary Schultz. He dutifully told the jury about how he had just pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, because he prevented or interfered with the reporting of a possible sex crime against a minor.

Once again, Schultz was referring to the boy Mike McQueary saw in the showers with Jerry Sandusky.

Schultz, the university's former vice president for finance and business, had a better memory than Curley. He recalled how he gave Spanier three updates about the 1998 accusation against Sandusky, made by the mother of an 11-year-old, who had objected to Sandusky giving her son a bear hug in the shower.

When McQueary came forward in 2001 to make his accusations, Schultz said his mind immediately flashed back to 1998. And he "wanted Jerry to get professional help."

Schultz outlined the original plan for coping with the McQueary allegations about the shower incident with Sandusky. The PSU administrators, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, wanted to confront Sandusky, and tell him he wasn't allowed to bring children into Penn State facilities any more. They also wanted to revoke his key to all of Penn State's athletic facilities.

The PSU administrators planed to inform the president of Sandusky's charity, the Second Mile, about what had happened in the showers. And then they were going to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare.

But Curley had second thoughts, thinking it was more "humane" to confront Sandusky first, and then inform the Second Mile, and finally, DPW.

Schultz told the jury how he reluctantly went along with Curley's change of heart. The PSU administrators did confront Sandusky. And they did inform a child psychologist who was the head of the Second Mile charity. But the PSU administrators never reported the shower incident to DPW.

"We should have reported it," Schultz told the jury. "We should have followed the original plan."

The prosecutor asked if PSU had made that report to DPW, would it have spared future victims?

"Who knows," Schultz said. "But it would have been the right thing to do."

On cross-examination, Silver, Spanier's lawyer, pointed out that today on the witness stand, Schultz had described McQueary's description of the shower incident as Sandusky standing behind the boy, with his arms around him.

"That's the first time we've heard that version," Silver said, pointing out to the jury that only after he became a coopering witness did Schultz start singing the prosecution's tune.

As he did with Curley, Silver asked Schultz who he had prevented from filing a report of possible child sexual abuse.

As Curley had done, Schultz blamed himself.

"I had been deficient in not reporting it myself," Schultz said. "I really thought we should report it to DPW."

After the prosecution rested, Spanier's supporters looked happy as they filed out of the courtroom.

Once again, there was no "Penn State Sex Scandal".

 

[Lexipsu]

Lando. I must say…and I mean this sincerely. You are a special person.

Truly "special "

 

[indynittany]

Explain why in your mind they shouldn't have been targeted?

A. Nothing criminal was reported to them.
B. Curley told JR of the incident. Sandusky was employed by TSM and the boy was a TSM kid. JR was a mandatory reporter.
C. The boy stated in writing that he was not abused that night or ever.
D. C/S/S were trying to prevent a future he said/he said scenario. They never told MM not to tell anyone what he saw. They never tried to secure the silence of the boy.

 

[WHCANole]

A. Nothing criminal was reported to them.

False. Joe Paterno's testimony confirms that he and Curley and Schultz were told of CSA.

B. Curley told JR of the incident. Sandusky was employed by TSM and the boy was a TSM kid. JR was a mandatory reporter.

Curley told nothing actionable to JR and his being a mandatory reporter was of no relevance as a result.

C. The boy stated in writing that he was not abused that night or ever.

Victim 2's identity has not been proven. Also, the person you mention AM DID say Jerry abused him and received payment from PSU for such.

D. C/S/S were trying to prevent a future he said/he said scenario. They never told MM not to tell anyone what he saw. They never tried to secure the silence of the boy.

CSS knew they had a duty to report MM's story to police. Spanier mentions that when he says they (CSS) could be vulnerable for not reporting after Curley proposed not doing so after he talked it over with Joe Paterno.

 

[WHCANole]

Once again, there was no "Penn State Sex Scandal".

Why did CSS go to jail then.

 

[indynittany]

...CSS knew they had a duty to report MM's story to police. Spanier mentions that when he says they (CSS) could be vulnerable for not reporting after Curley proposed not doing so after he talked it over with Joe Paterno.

Learn the English language, please?

Spanier said: "The ONLY downside for us is IF our message is not heard and acted upon, and we THEN become vulnerable for not having reported it."

That means there was one scenario that could leave them vulnerable, and that scenario was dependent upon Sandusky ignoring the message he was being sent. IOW, a subsequent incident needed to occur. If/then.

If a boy had been abused that night, what difference would it make whether or not Sandusky did it again? Wouldn't they have already been vulnerable? Wouldn't the risk that AM would report the incident himself be ever present?

You keep insisting on getting this all wrong. Another incident like '98, where a concerned mother got involved, could have left PSU vulnerable to a civil suit, even if it was just a he said/he said scenario. IOW, even if Jerry was innocent, even if Jerry was tried criminally and acquitted, the mother could have sued PSU in civil court and probably won. Or, more likely, exacted a nice payoff to keep it out of the courts.

Prevention was what this was about. That's all.

 

[WHCANole]

Learn the English language, please?

Take your own advice. I'll help you

Spanier said: "The ONLY downside for us NOT REPORTING IT NOW is IF our message is not heard and acted upon AND JERRY GETS CAUGHT AGAIN, and we THEN become vulnerable for not having reported it. NOW"

Fixed it for you. He was talking about being vulnerable for not reporting it NOW not in the future. Since Jerry was not reported in 2001 (thanks to them) they felt safe.

That means there was one scenario that could leave them vulnerable, and that scenario was dependent upon Sandusky ignoring the message he was being sent. IOW, a subsequent incident needed to occur. If/then.

Indicating they should be reporting it NOW otherwise in no other scenario would they be vulnerable.

I'll ask you this. Have you ever held a leadership position over a fairly large organization? If so, and you received a report of a repeat incident like Spanier did, why in God's name would not simply report it and let the police talk to MM. Then you have ZERO vulnerability. Why have vulnerability when a phone call will remove it? That's where your theory blows up.

Unless, of course you had prior knowledge and a psychologist report from 3 years prior and did nothing about it. You would have stopped Jerry but then (2001) but surely lost your job for not taking proper action in 1998. So, they covered it up.

If a boy had been abused that night, what difference would it make whether or not Sandusky did it again?

It would depend where he did it and whether previous behavior (2001 and 1998) could be discovered and linked back to PSU. They were gambling (as Laura Ditka pointed out at Spanier's trial) that if he did it again it would not be traceable to them. They kicked the can down the road and paid with jail time.

Wouldn't they have already been vulnerable?

They were vulnerable in 2001 because of their failure to act in 1998 when they were told Sandusky was a likely pedophile. Therefore, reporting it in 2001 would have cost them their jobs.

Wouldn't the risk that AM would report the incident himself be ever present?

AM is not Victim 2 nor would anyone have believed him in 2001. Like Aaron Fisher.

You keep insisting on getting this all wrong. Another incident like '98, where a concerned mother got involved, could have left PSU vulnerable to a civil suit, even if it was just a he said/he said scenario.

But as Corbett pointed out, it's fantastically hard to prosecute a popular pillar of the community with only a single he said/she said incident. See Michael Jackson. But in 2001 it was not he said/she said, it was a third party adult witness. Very different and much more explosive for PSU as we saw later. No parent was involved in 2001.

IOW, even if Jerry was innocent, even if Jerry was tried criminally and acquitted, the mother could have sued PSU in civil court and probably won.

Not on one incident as in 1998. This is why Gricar wouldn't press charges. He was elected and Jerry was beloved so a conviction would be very hard even though he had probable cause to charge. PSU Detectives certainly thought so. But in 2001, it was different. MM SAW CSA and reported it. Having his testimony THEN in 2001 would have resulted in charges. CSS knew that too.

Or, more likely, exacted a nice payoff to keep it out of the courts.

In 2001 yes, but unlike 1998, no parent was involved with Victim 2 and probably didn't know.

Prevention was what this was about. That's all.

Coverup. Plain for all to see.

 

[jerot]

I am curious to hear how you would have handled the situation.

Just read the facts.




What if that infamous locker room incident that Mike McQueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


Yesterday, on veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."

So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


I kid you not.

There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.

 

[joeaubie21]

Just read the facts.




What if that infamous locker room incident that Mike McQueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


Yesterday, on veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."

So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


I kid you not.

There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.

There was no Penn State Sex Scandal. Show us where there was

 

[LandoComando]

A. Nothing criminal was reported to them.
B. Curley told JR of the incident. Sandusky was employed by TSM and the boy was a TSM kid. JR was a mandatory reporter.
C. The boy stated in writing that he was not abused that night or ever.
D. C/S/S were trying to prevent a future he said/he said scenario. They never told MM not to tell anyone what he saw. They never tried to secure the silence of the boy.

Almost none of that is true except C which no one should believe if you know anything about psychology--and absolutely nothing on the list prohibits a trial.

 

[joeaubie21]

Has everyone put HandonhisCommando on ignore yet?

 

[LandoComando]

Has everyone put HandonhisCommando on ignore yet?

You haven't

 

[jerot]

An agent of TSM, an organization for troubled youth, was allowed to have unsupervised one on one contact with TSM participants.

I think it's safe to say they did something wrong.

Second mile stuff is debateable, based on note info.


Most of the notes in the released files appear to be FBI interviews conducted in 2012 with Second Mile board members in both the State College office and other regional offices. The interviews described how Second Mile board members reacted to the Sandusky revelations dating back to as early as 2010 and 2011.

"Not a single person admitted to knowing about Sandusky's crimes prior to the presentment," Snedden said. Two people claim to know about "missing donor money," but nothing else is said about that subject in the rest of the released files.

The documents released by the feds are heavily redacted, but there are many references to Second Mile board members circling the wagons. References were made in the documents to false allegations being made by a "disgruntled mother" and a "disgruntled kid."

The documents are more noticeable for what they don't say. Such as in the issue of jurisdiction involving the Sandusky investigation. If, for example, in their investigation of The Second Mile, if the feds any found any evidence of a federal crime, such as Sandusky crossing state lines with sex abuse victims, "They would have taken it [the investigation] away from the state for prosecution," Snedden said.

"But they [the feds] didn't do any of that," Snedden said after reviewing the documents. "There's no indication they did that."

Instead, the attorney general pursued the Sandusky investigation, and the feds pursued The Second File.

"Sadly, neither focused on political vindictiveness and corruption, which is exactly what happened here," Snedden said.

Snedden has his own experience with a previous secret federal investigation into the Penn State scandal. In 2012, working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, Snedden did a background investigation of former Penn State President Graham Spanier, to see if Spanier's high level security clearance should be renewed by the government.

As part of that investigation, Snedden investigated whether Spanier had orchestrated a coverup of Sandusky's crimes. Snedden's investigation concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime to cover up. As far as Snedden was concerned, Mike McQueary, the guy who witnessed a naked Sandusky allegedly abusing a boy in the Penn State showers, was not a credible witness.

Spanier's clearance was renewed as the result of an 110-page report that Snedden wrote back in 2012, a report that was declassified earlier this year.

In the investigation of The Second Mile, the released files include copies of FBI interviews with eight witnesses whose identities are redacted. The interviews are recorded on FBI "302s," the number of the form that interview summaries were typed on by FBI agents.

"I see a lot of interviews with a lot of different people, a wide range of positions in the Second Mile hierarchy," Snedden said. "And I don't see any people admitting to knowing anything concrete about Sandusky."

In the interviews, there are quotes from woman who "had always heard positive things about the organization. She had never heard anything bad about TSM founder Jerry Sandusky."

Another woman interviewed by the FBI described Sandusky's "nondescript entrance and presence" at a March 25, 2011 "Celebration of Excellence" event in Hershey.

"Sandusky was not acknowledged during the event formally by TSM," the woman told the FBI.

"On March 31, 2011, the Patriot News published an article about the grand jury investigation" of Sandusky," the woman told the FBI. "The article was everywhere and everyone was talking about it."

"She didn't recall seeing any evidence of financial improprieties or anything otherwise questionable," the FBI 302 stated. "She did not personally observe any misuse of donations."

"The general mood of the room was that of denial," the woman told the FBI. "Everyone appeared to be in support of Sandusky and TSM."

In another 302, an unidentified witness said, "He did not observe any inappropriate behavior." On the same form, someone, possibly Sandusky himself stated the complainant "was a disgruntled kid, not associated with TSM. He was not aware at the time that the allegation was sexual in nature"

Another 302 notes that one board member was "shocked after reading the indictment." In addition, "four or five board members in particular were upset that they were never notified. The exchange was heated."

In the 302s, there was discussion of an earlier 1998 allegation that Sandusky had abused another youth in the shower, but "the allegations were considered 'unfounded.'"

There is also discussion in the 302s about an alleged allegation involving the Clinton County Children and Youth Services[CYS].

"CYS did have a safety plan in the event a child was a victim of sexual abuse," the 302 stated. "They did not need to enact their safety plan for SANDUSKY's case because the allegation was not founded and all actions taken by CYS were 'by the book.' "

Bagwell said he has filed multiple FOI requests as part of his Penn State Sunshine Fund. Bagwell, a former newspaper reporter who is now a web developer, said he filed his requests because he was seeking primary source documents from the Sandusky investigation.

"What frustrated me about everything since the very beginning was a complete and utter lack of transparency," Bagwell said.

In his court battle with the U.S. Attorney's office, Bagwell said, the feds indicated that there were some 300,000 pages of documents related to The Second Mile investigation. The feds only released 1,000 pages and "withheld tends of thousands more for reasons not apparent at this time," Bagwell said.

Bagwell, himself a former journalist, said the press coverage of the scandal has been "abysmal, reactionary and sensationalistic," as well as "factually incorrect." Bagwell said he hopes the newly released documents will have a calming effect on Penn State Nation.

"Penn Staters are still screaming for an investigation for years of The Second Mile," Bagwell said. "Well, it turns out there was an investigation."

"My overall view is that everything here [in the documents] seems to support the idea that The Second Mile didn't knowingly do anything wrong," Bagwell said. "The Penn Staters who are clamoring for heads at The Second Mile to roll, I don't think that's an outcome that's appropriate at this point in time."

 

[WHCANole]

You haven't

He won't put me on it either.

 

[joewp]

^^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^
The Penn state bot striking a deal that basically prevented inquiry into the 2M seemed to be an obvious cya move for scared bot members who were happy to make Joe a public enemy to save their own hide.

Exactly, no investigation of the 2M and the Board Members who were supposed to have oversight.

 

[WHCANole]

Exactly, no investigation of the 2M and the Board Members who were supposed to have oversight.

You are wrong. TSM was investigated by the Feds. Check out this link.

 

[jerot]

Second mile stuff is debateable, based on note info.


Most of the notes in the released files appear to be FBI interviews conducted in 2012 with Second Mile board members in both the State College office and other regional offices. The interviews described how Second Mile board members reacted to the Sandusky revelations dating back to as early as 2010 and 2011.

"Not a single person admitted to knowing about Sandusky's crimes prior to the presentment," Snedden said. Two people claim to know about "missing donor money," but nothing else is said about that subject in the rest of the released files.

The documents released by the feds are heavily redacted, but there are many references to Second Mile board members circling the wagons. References were made in the documents to false allegations being made by a "disgruntled mother" and a "disgruntled kid."

The documents are more noticeable for what they don't say. Such as in the issue of jurisdiction involving the Sandusky investigation. If, for example, in their investigation of The Second Mile, if the feds any found any evidence of a federal crime, such as Sandusky crossing state lines with sex abuse victims, "They would have taken it [the investigation] away from the state for prosecution," Snedden said.

"But they [the feds] didn't do any of that," Snedden said after reviewing the documents. "There's no indication they did that."

Instead, the attorney general pursued the Sandusky investigation, and the feds pursued The Second File.

"Sadly, neither focused on political vindictiveness and corruption, which is exactly what happened here," Snedden said.

Snedden has his own experience with a previous secret federal investigation into the Penn State scandal. In 2012, working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, Snedden did a background investigation of former Penn State President Graham Spanier, to see if Spanier's high level security clearance should be renewed by the government.

As part of that investigation, Snedden investigated whether Spanier had orchestrated a coverup of Sandusky's crimes. Snedden's investigation concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime to cover up. As far as Snedden was concerned, Mike McQueary, the guy who witnessed a naked Sandusky allegedly abusing a boy in the Penn State showers, was not a credible witness.

Spanier's clearance was renewed as the result of an 110-page report that Snedden wrote back in 2012, a report that was declassified earlier this year.

In the investigation of The Second Mile, the released files include copies of FBI interviews with eight witnesses whose identities are redacted. The interviews are recorded on FBI "302s," the number of the form that interview summaries were typed on by FBI agents.

"I see a lot of interviews with a lot of different people, a wide range of positions in the Second Mile hierarchy," Snedden said. "And I don't see any people admitting to knowing anything concrete about Sandusky."

In the interviews, there are quotes from woman who "had always heard positive things about the organization. She had never heard anything bad about TSM founder Jerry Sandusky."

Another woman interviewed by the FBI described Sandusky's "nondescript entrance and presence" at a March 25, 2011 "Celebration of Excellence" event in Hershey.

"Sandusky was not acknowledged during the event formally by TSM," the woman told the FBI.

"On March 31, 2011, the Patriot News published an article about the grand jury investigation" of Sandusky," the woman told the FBI. "The article was everywhere and everyone was talking about it."

"She didn't recall seeing any evidence of financial improprieties or anything otherwise questionable," the FBI 302 stated. "She did not personally observe any misuse of donations."

"The general mood of the room was that of denial," the woman told the FBI. "Everyone appeared to be in support of Sandusky and TSM."

In another 302, an unidentified witness said, "He did not observe any inappropriate behavior." On the same form, someone, possibly Sandusky himself stated the complainant "was a disgruntled kid, not associated with TSM. He was not aware at the time that the allegation was sexual in nature"

Another 302 notes that one board member was "shocked after reading the indictment." In addition, "four or five board members in particular were upset that they were never notified. The exchange was heated."

In the 302s, there was discussion of an earlier 1998 allegation that Sandusky had abused another youth in the shower, but "the allegations were considered 'unfounded.'"

There is also discussion in the 302s about an alleged allegation involving the Clinton County Children and Youth Services[CYS].

"CYS did have a safety plan in the event a child was a victim of sexual abuse," the 302 stated. "They did not need to enact their safety plan for SANDUSKY's case because the allegation was not founded and all actions taken by CYS were 'by the book.' "

Bagwell said he has filed multiple FOI requests as part of his Penn State Sunshine Fund. Bagwell, a former newspaper reporter who is now a web developer, said he filed his requests because he was seeking primary source documents from the Sandusky investigation.

"What frustrated me about everything since the very beginning was a complete and utter lack of transparency," Bagwell said.

In his court battle with the U.S. Attorney's office, Bagwell said, the feds indicated that there were some 300,000 pages of documents related to The Second Mile investigation. The feds only released 1,000 pages and "withheld tends of thousands more for reasons not apparent at this time," Bagwell said.

Bagwell, himself a former journalist, said the press coverage of the scandal has been "abysmal, reactionary and sensationalistic," as well as "factually incorrect." Bagwell said he hopes the newly released documents will have a calming effect on Penn State Nation.

"Penn Staters are still screaming for an investigation for years of The Second Mile," Bagwell said. "Well, it turns out there was an investigation."

"My overall view is that everything here [in the documents] seems to support the idea that The Second Mile didn't knowingly do anything wrong," Bagwell said. "The Penn Staters who are clamoring for heads at The Second Mile to roll, I don't think that's an outcome that's appropriate at this point in time."

Let Pendergrast explain-

"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 psychologist also concluded that since no one else had previously accused Sandusky of abuse, and that the psychologist knew of no case where a then 52-year-old man had suddenly become a pedophile.

As reported by Pendergrast, according to state law, the unfounded report of abuse should have been expunged by the state Department of Welfare, which it was. But the Penn State Police failed to expunge the report. And 13 years later, the report was suddenly relevant after the state attorney general issued a grand jury presentment about a second alleged shower incident where Sandusky allegedly raped a 10-year-old boy, as supposedly witnessed by former Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary.

The second shower incident, however, was investigated for the federal government by Snedden, who determined that the alleged facts made no sense, and that McQueary was not a credible witness.

McChesney's diary doesn't state how the Freeh team came up with the 1998 police report, but three lines later, McChesney writes: "Records - IT: Team working with Atty general, will receive in stages."

Besides working closely with the Attorney General's office, Freeh's investigators were also staying in constant contact with the NCAA.

McChesney wrote that during the investigation, fellow investigator McNeill "has standing telcall on Fridays with NCAA & Big 10." During those phone calls, the NCAA "will provide questions for" the Freeh Group," McChesney wrote, and that "NCAA high level execs will decide on enforcement actions."

The FBI was also involved in the Penn State probe, McChesney wrote. She speculated about the need to have somebody "handle, organize, channel data" for the attorney general's office. GP, she wrote, presumably, Greg Paw, discussed "Piggyback on AG investigation re: docs."

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 also listed in her diary the initials of numerous Penn State officials who got subpoenaed for the 2011 grand jury investigation. She also records that "AG got 2nd mile records from subpoena," referring to The Second Mile, the charity for at risk youth started by Sandusky.

She also noted that the AG interviewed Ruth Jackson, the wife of Kenny Jackson, a former Penn State assistant football coach, as well as another man who had "been to the grand jury - and possibly friends with JS," as in Jerry Sandusky.

McChesney described the "AG's strategies: may go to new coach to read riot act to [Penn State Associate Athletic Director Fran] Ganter et al."

On March 7, 2012, she wrote "No smoking gun to indicate coverup." She also wrote that the Freeh Group continued to be in "close communications with AG and USA," as in the U. S. Attorney.

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 [Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the AG's office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile.

On March 30, 2012, McChesney noted that Sandusky's trial was rescheduled to June 5th of that year. Meanwhile, Greg Paw related to McChesney what he learned during a call with Frank Fina, that Fina was "relooking at [Penn State President Graham] Spanier," and that Fina was "not happy with University & cooperation but happy to have 2001 email."

McChesney was referring to an email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, where President Spanier and two other top administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities. The officials discussed simply telling Sandusky to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for at-risk youth, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.

In the email chain, Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”
In her diary, McChesney seemed to know what's going on with the supposedly secret grand jury proceedings being conducted by the state attorney general's office. She wrote that "40+ more people before grand jury." She also knew that the grand jury judge was "not happy with" Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin," specifically "what she [Baldwin] said about representing the university."

In the grand jury proceedings, Baldwin asserted that she had represented the university, and not Spanier, Athletic Director Curley, and Penn State Vice-President Gary Schultz. Apparently, the grand jury judge had a problem with that, McChesney wrote.

Baldwin's grand jury testimony was described by McChesney as "inconsistent statements." McChesney also noted that "we are getting" copies "of the transcripts." On April 2, 2012, McChesney recorded being notified by fellow investigator McNeill that "AG documents received re: Curley and Schultz."

McChesney's diary also portrayed Fina as not only leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group, but also being actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses. McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify 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."
In her diary, McChesney continued to log grand jury secrets that not even the defendants in the Penn State case were aware of.

On April 16, 2012, McChesney recorded "next week more grand jury," and that Spanier would be charged. She added that Spanier's lawyer didn't "seem to suspect" that Spanier was going to be arrested. She also recorded that Spanier's lawyer "wants access to his emails," but that Fina did not want Spanier "to see 2001 email chain."

She wrote that the grand jury was meeting on April 25th, and that an indictment of Spanier might come as soon as two days later. She also recorded that Fina "wants to question [people]; then it turns into perjury," which McChesney noted was "not fair to the witness."

McChesney also wrote that Paw was scheduling meetings with lawyers for Schultz and Curley. "Have not seen emails," she wrote, without saying whom she was referring to.

As part of their investigation, the Freeh Group was also looking at former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. The Freeh Group contacted the state attorney general's office for help but the AG's office advised them that they had "nothing further on Paterno [other] than what" the Freeh Group already had.

On April 19, 2012, Paw "spoke with Fina," and was advised that the deputy attorney general "does not want Spanier or other [defendants] to see documents; next 24 hours are important for case & offered to re-visit over weekend re: sharing documents."

McChesney further recorded that "attys and AG's office staffs are talking & still looking to charge Spanier." Paw, she wrote, was scheduled to meet with Spanier's lawyer tomorrow, and that "Fina said the 4 of them [including Wendell Courtney] are really in the mix." McChesney was presumably referring to Spanier, Curley, Schultz and Courtney, then a Penn State counsel.

The emails from the trio of Penn State administrators, McChesney wrote, would be "released in a [grand jury] presentment and charging documents."

The night before Spanier was arrested, Paw sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest. The email was contained in other confidential records connected to the Freeh investigation, records that the Penn State board of trustees has repeatedly refused to release.

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."
Other members of the state attorney general's office were helpful to Freeh's investigators. McChesney wrote that investigator Sasssano divulged that he brought in the son of Penn State trustee Steve Garban because "he had info re [Jerry Sandusky] in shower." The AG's office also interviewed interim Penn State football coach Tom Bradley about his predecessor, Joe Paterno and the 1998 shower incident.

"Bradley was more open & closer to the truth," McChesney wrote, "but still holding back."

On April 26, 2012, McChesney noted in her diary that "police investigators have interviewed 44 janitors, 200+ victims." On May 1, 2012, she wrote that Fina told them that "Spanier brings everyone in on Saturday." Fina also told the Freeh Group that he found out from Joan Coble, Schultz's administrative assistant, and her successor, Kim Belcher, that "there was a Sandusky file," and that it supposedly "was sacrosanct and secret."

McChesney recorded that Fina told the Freeh Group that one of Schultz's administrative assistants "got a call on her way to work on Monday from Schultz." She was told she had to surrender keys, presumably to the locked file. "She's emotional," McChesney wrote. " She may have been sleeping w Schultz."

 

[WHCANole]

There was no Penn State Sex Scandal. Show us where there was

Take a read . It'll help you grow in this.

 

[86Engineer]

Take a read . It'll help you grow in this.

manufactured, to fool the stupid people....looks like it worked

 

[YYZ86]

Put him on ignore. Complete waste of time. He has no clue.

 

[WHCANole]

manufactured, to fool the stupid people....looks like it worked

No this was manufactured to fool stupid Joe Bots AND get their money.

Have you sent him any? 🤣The Dynamics of Happy Valley

 

[WHCANole]

Put him on ignore. Complete waste of time. He has no clue.

I'm like catnip to them. They cannot stand the blasphemy against their idol.

 

[jerot]

Please provide the video because I think there is significant doubt otherwise

Dunno, just look at the who -

Mindboggling.

Reading the trial transcript for June 13, 2012, where I found Dustin Stuble (“Victim 7”) explaining why his testimony had changed from what he said under oath at the grand jury the previous year. “Through counseling and through talking about different events, through talking about things in my past, different things triggered different memories and have had more things come back, and it’s changed a lot about what I can remember today and what I could remember before, because I had everything negative blocked out.”
Aha! I thought. It is obvious that he was in repressed memory therapy. I was right, as Struble himself told me later, and it turned out that repressed memories lay at the core of the case against Sandusky, while other memory issues lay at the heart of the infamous shower scene that got Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier fired.


I write about how human memory works in comprehensive fashion in my new 444-page publication, Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die., as well as in the 399-page book, The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment. They are “sister” publications that help to inform one another, so I urge people to read both of these books. But I realize that a summary would be helpful before readers delve into the books.
Memory is reconstructive. Our brains do not keep individual memories in one place, ready to be called forth by pulling out the proper mental file or hitting the right mental computer key. Instead, our memories are stored all over our brains, and they must be reconstructed. They are subject to contamination, confusion, change, and outright fabrication. With the proper influence, people can come to envision and believe in emotionally stressful events that never occurred.
Usually, our memories serve us relatively well, however. We tend to remember most clearly the best and worst events. We recall the nice things so that we can seek them out again, and we remember the upsetting events so that we can avoid them in the future. Some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves being unable to forget severe trauma, but continuing to recall it all too well. So it is not a matter of “repressing” or “dissociating.”


The most dramatic illustration of how destructive false memories can be created occurred during the heyday of the repressed memory epidemic of the late 1980s and 1990s, when many psychotherapists blatantly led their clients to believe that they had suffered years of childhood sexual abuse but had repressed the memories. In many cases, people came to envision being in mythical satanic ritual abuse cults, where they killed and consumed babies and other grotesque fantasies.
Most people think that the repressed memory epidemic is over, but it is not. A majority of Americans and psychotherapists still believe in the myth of repressed memories (or dissociated memories, as they are often called), and, according to a recent survey of a large cross-section of Americans, about 8 percent of those going to therapy in this decade came to believe that they had suffered child abuse that they had completely forgotten, then recalled in the course of therapy.
Thus, it is not surprising that the theory of repressed memory – the idea that people often totally forget abuse though some mental defense mechanism and then remember it later – lies behind some of the Sandusky accusations. I was able to directly interview only one such alleged victim, Dustin Struble, who acknowledged his repressed memories, but there is evidence for memory distortion and/or repressed memories in many others as well. I will go through them here relatively briefly.
Let me emphasize, however, that there were other factors contributing to one of the most amazing and disturbing miscarriages of justice of the 21st century. These factors include a media blitz (and blackout of any dissent or inconvenient facts), police trawling and bias, prosecutorial misconduct, a flawed judicial process, illegal leaks, and greed.
I will summarize each of the ten alleged trial victims, some of whom clearly had recovered “repressed memories” of abuse. I’ll take them in the order in which they were numbered, plus Matt Sandusky, who did not testify, but whose story is central to the case.
Aaron Fisher, Victim 1: As a 15-year-old, Aaron Fisher initially said that Jerry Sandusky had hugged him to crack his back, with their clothes on. Over the next three years, with the urging of psychotherapist Mike Gillum, Fisher eventually came to “remember” multiple instances of oral sex. Gillum apparently believed that memories too painful to recall lie buried in the unconscious, causing mental illness of all kinds—among them, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. “They (abuse victims) just want to numb themselves and push away the unpleasant memories,” Gillum wrote in the book, Silent No More. He sought to “peel back the layers of the onion” of the brain to get to abuse memories. Nor did Aaron Fisher have to tell him anything. 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.”
Fisher explained that “I was good at pushing it (memories of abuse) all away . . . Once the weekends [with Jerry] were over, I managed to lock it all deep inside my mind somehow. That was how I dealt with it until next time. Mike has explained a lot to me since this all happened. He said that what I was doing is called compartmentalizing. . . . I was in such denial about everything.” Without the three years of therapy with Mike Gillum, it is unlikely that Aaron Fisher would ever have accused Jerry Sandusky of sexual abuse, and the case would never have gone forward.
Allan Myers (“Victim 2”) was the teenager in the shower in February 2001, when Mike McQueary heard slapping sounds that he interpreted as sexual. In fact, they were the sounds of Myers and Sandusky slap boxing or snapping towels at one another. McQueary did not see Sandusky and the boy together in the shower – he only caught a glimpse of the boy in a mirror. He changed his memory nearly ten years later when the police told him that Sandusky was a serial molester. McQueary, like many people, did not require therapy to distort his memory. Influenced by current attitudes, he came to envision that he had witnessed something he had not actually seen. This is one of the well-known hazards of eyewitness testimony, as experimental psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and others have demonstrated.
We do not know whether Allan Myers was ever in therapy to help retrieve abuse memories. He received several million dollars as one of the alleged Sandusky victims, but he did not testify at the trial, and he has never actually accused Sandusky of molesting him in any kind of detail. Initially, he provided a very strong defense of Sandusky, saying that he had never abused him, before becoming a client of civil attorney Andrew Shubin, who sent most of his Sandusky clients to therapy, quite likely to help retrieve repressed abuse memories. As reporter Sara Ganim wrote in November 2011, Shubin “teamed up with psychologists, social workers and a national child sex abuse organization so that these people [alleged victims] can seek mental help along with possible legal recourse.”
Jason Simcisko (“Victim 3”) told the police that nothing inappropriate had happened with Jerry Sandusky, when he was first interviewed. When the policemen asked if Sandusky had helped him rinse off in the shower, perhaps lifting him up to the showerhead, Simcisko replied, according to the police report: “There might have been something like that. I don’t exactly remember, but it sounds familiar.” This was the beginning of the process of manipulating his memory. At the end of the interview, the police report noted that Simcisko “agreed to call if he recalled anything further.”
By the time of the trial. Simcisko had remembered Sandusky touching his penis numerous times. He explained why he hadn’t revealed this earlier: “Everything that’s coming out now is because I thought about it more. I tried to block this out of my brain for years.” We don’t know for sure whether Simcisko was in psychotherapy or not, but Andrew Shubin was his lawyer.
Brett Houtz (“Victim 4”) did not make any abuse allegations to either his lawyer or the police during initial contact, but he did make allegations during a long subsequent interview with police, during which his lawyer was present. The police inadvertently left the tape recorder on, revealing their grossly leading interview methods, which can sway memory as effectively as psychotherapy. Police investigator Joseph Leiter said, “I know there’s been a rape committed somewhere along the line,” and noted that “it just took repetition and repetition” to get Aaron Fisher to say anything. He said that the police would routinely tell prospective victims: “Listen, this is what we found so far. You fit the pattern of all the other ones. This is the way he operates and the other kids we dealt with have told us that this has happened after this happened. Did that happen to you?” This is a classic illustration of “confirmation bias,” in which the police had already predetermined in their own minds what that truth was. And in this case, Leiter was intent on getting Houtz to say that Sandusky had forced him into oral sex. Eventually, Houtz did just that.
At the end of the interview, the police asked Houtz to try to remember more. “What usually happens is when you start to think about things…it may be 3 o’clock in the morning, tonight, and you go, Oh, my gosh, I remember this or I remember that or whatever.” In that case, Houtz should call them. “Sometimes things come up and you remember more things in detail.”
By the time Houtz testified in devastating fashion at the trial, he was in therapy with Mike Gillum. During the trial, Houtz said, “I have spent, you know, so many years burying this in the back of my mind forever.” It is not clear if he was talking about repressed memories, but it certainly sounds like it. On the other hand, Houtz had a long-standing reputation as a manipulative liar, and his father had initially contacted his lawyer with an obvious eye on money.
Michal Kajak (“Victim 5”) made allegations during his first contact with the police. We have no way of knowing whether Michal Kajak was in repressed memory therapy. By the time he spoke to the police on June 7, 2011, however, the abuse allegations against Sandusky had been publicized by reporter Sara Ganim, who had also contacted Zachary Konstas’s mother, who had, in turn, suggested that the police interview Kajak as a potential victim. We also know that Zach Konstas’s sister had already talked to Kajak about the allegations.
At any rate, Kajak said, according to a police report, that “he did not want to remember this stuff.” Kajak finally said that Sandusky had taken his hand and placed it on Sandusky’s erection for a few seconds during this single shower they took together. His story then was amplified somewhat over time, including a three-year shift in when the abuse allegedly occurred.
It is possible that Kajak, in envisioning the single time he had showered with Sandusky, convinced himself that this had happened. It is also possible that he spoke with his friend Dustin Struble, who was “remembering” his own abuse and might have helped him with his own shower story. Kajak’s allegations do not fit the modus operandi that the police otherwise thought Sandusky used. He was supposed to have “groomed” boys carefully before attempting more overt sexual abuse. The idea that Sandusky would have acted this way during the very first shower must have seemed odd, even to the police.
Zachary Konstas (“Victim 6”) never actually claimed that Sandusky abused him, although under the influence of the investigation and trial, he came to believe that Sandusky had “groomed” him for abuse in a 1998 shower. The day after the shower, Konstas emphatically denied that any abuse had taken place. Over the subsequent years, Konstas expressed his admiration and gratitude to Jerry Sandusky for his role in his life through notes and greeting cards. In 2009, as a twenty-three-year-old, Konstas wrote: “Hey Jerry just want 2 wish u a Happy Fathers Day! Greater things are yet 2 come!” Later that year he wrote: “Happy Thanksgiving bro! I’m glad God has placed U in my life. Ur an awesome friend! Love ya!”
But Zachary Konstas’s perceptions were altered drastically between the fall of 2010 and June 2012. As Allan Myers did, Konstas got a lawyer. Although he never accused Sandusky of sexually abusing him, but he made it sound as though the coach had wanted to, that Sandusky had been “grooming” him for abuse. He also implied that perhaps Sandusky had abused him, but that he, Konstas, had forgotten it. Konstas may have come to believe that he had “repressed” the memories. He had asked his friend, Dustin Struble (“Victim 7”) “if [he] remembered anything more, if counseling was helping,” and Konstas himself was clearly undergoing psychotherapy. At Sandusky’s sentencing hearing, he said, “I have been left with deep, painful wounds that you caused and had been buried in the garden of my heart for many years.”
Konstas’s attorney, Howard Janet, explained in an interview how Konstas and the other alleged victims could “create a bit of a Chinese wall in their minds. They bury these events that were so painful to them deep in their subconscious.”
Zachary Konstas may not have recovered specific memories of abuse, but his reinterpretation of his past, along with implications that he may have repressed the memories, were enough for the jury to find Sandusky guilty of planning to abuse him.
Dustin Struble (“Victim 7”) admitted to me that he was in repressed memory, and his trial testimony makes that obvious as well. He had no abuse memories until the police contacted him, and he considered Sandusky a friend and mentor until then. State Trooper Joseph Leiter interviewed Struble for the first time on February 3, 2011. By that time Struble had been thinking about the way Sandusky used to put his hand on his knee while driving, and now he thought he remembered Sandusky moving his hand slowly up towards his crotch sometimes. And other times, he thought Sandusky may have been trying to slide his hand down his back under his underwear waistband. Yes, he had taken showers with Sandusky, but nothing sexual had taken place there. He’d given him bear hugs at times, but not in the shower. They had wrestled around, but Sandusky had never touched him inappropriately.
At the end of the interview, Leiter was excited that Struble was open to the idea that Sandusky might have abused him, but that wasn’t enough. In ending the interview he “advised Struble that as he recalls events to please contact me and we can set up another interview. Also, if he begins having difficulties with his memories to contact me so that assistance can be found.” Struble entered psychotherapy less than three weeks later.
By the time of the trial, Struble had changed his story, asserting that Sandusky gave him bear hugs, washed his hair in the shower, and then dried him off. He said that Sandusky had put his hand down his pants and touched his penis in the car, that Sandusky had grabbed him in the shower and pushed the front of his body up against the back of Dustin’s body. On the stand, he explained: “That doorway that I had closed has since been re-opening more. More things have been coming back…. Through counseling and different things, I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside than I did at that point.” Struble went on to explain more about how his repressed memories had returned in therapy. He further explained: “The more negative things, I had sort of pushed into the back of my mind, sort of like closing a door, closing—putting stuff in the attic and closing the door to it. That’s what I feel like I did.”
In 2014, I interviewed Struble in his home in State College, PA. In a follow-up email, he wrote: “Actually both of my therapists have suggested that I have repressed memories, and that’s why we have been working on looking back on my life for triggers. My therapist has suggested that I may still have more repressed memories that have yet to be revealed, and this could be a big cause of the depression that I still carry today. We are still currently working on that.”
Phantom Victim (“Victim 8”) is the product of double hearsay testimony that should never have been allowed at the trial. A janitor named Ron Petrosky said that another janitor, Jim Calhoun, had told him in the fall of 2000 that he saw Sandusky giving oral sex to a young boy in a Penn State locker room shower. By the time of the June 2012 trial, Calhoun had Alzheimer’s and could not testify, but the judge allowed Petrosky to do so. Sandusky was found guilty of molesting this unidentified boy.
But in a taped interview on May 15, 2011, Jim Calhoun had told the police that Sandusky was not the man he saw giving oral sex to a young man in the shower. The defense apparently had not listened to the tape and never entered it into evidence in the trial.
Sabastian Paden (“Victim 9”) came forward after the explosive Grand Jury Presentment became public on November 4, 2011, and the Office of the Attorney General publicized a hotline for prospective Sandusky victims. At that point, it was clear to civil lawyers and alleged victims that there was a possible financial windfall to be had.
Paden’s changed attitude towards Sandusky occurred incredibly quickly, after his mother called his school to ask them to contact the police. When the police appeared at his door, Paden denied having been abused. Sometime in October 2011, the high school senior was seated in Beaver Stadium beside Sandusky, enjoying a Penn State football game with a friend. Less than a month later, however, Paden rocked the grand jury with accounts of his former life as a virtual captive in the Sandusky basement, where he claimed to have screamed for help, to no avail, even though the basement was not soundproofed and there was no way to lock him down there. Paden said that he was forced to perform oral sex on numerous occasions, and that Sandusky attempted anal intercourse over sixteen times, with actual penetration at times.
It is unlikely that repressed memory therapy was involved in encouraging Sabastian Paden’s memories, at least at the outset, since his grotesque allegations arose within just a few days of his mother’s initial phone call. It is instead likely that he was either telling the truth or that he was consciously lying, at the urging of his mother and in search of remuneration and sympathetic attention.
Ryan Rittmeyer (“Victim 10”) also responded to the Sandusky hotline after the case exploded in the media. He had been incarcerated twice—for burglary in 2004, at age seventeen, and in September 2007, when he was twenty, for burglary and assault. He and a teenager assaulted an elderly man on the street, punching him in the face and leaving him with permanent injuries. Rittmeyer was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison and was released in 2009. At the time of the trial, he was married, with a pregnant wife. After he called the hotline, Rittmeyer was represented by lawyer Andrew Shubin.
At his first police interview with officer Michael Cranga on November 29, 2011, Rittmeyer said that Jerry Sandusky had groped him in a swimming pool. Then, while driving a silver convertible, Sandusky had allegedly opened his pants to expose his penis and told Rittmeyer to put it in his mouth. When he refused, Sandusky became angry and told him that if didn’t do it, Rittmeyer would never see his family again. “His life went downhill” subsequently, Cranga wrote in his report, which Rittmeyer apparently blamed on this traumatic event.
During his grand jury testimony on December 5, 2011, Rittmeyer changed and amplified his story. Now he said that something sexual occurred almost every time he saw Sandusky throughout 1997, 1998, and part of 1999, once or twice a month. Finally, Rittmeyer said that he eventually complied and gave Sandusky oral sex, and vice versa.
Jerry Sandusky never owned any kind of convertible, nor was it likely that he borrowed or rented one, which would have been quite out of character for him. The Ryan Rittmeyer testimony, filled with inconsistencies as well as a mythical silver convertible, appears even more questionable because the Sanduskys said that they couldn’t even remember him, whereas they readily admitted knowing the other Second Mile accusers. He may have been one of the Second Mile kids who came to their home, but Dottie Sandusky didn’t know his name, and Jerry Sandusky said that if he met him on the street, he would not recognize him.
There was apparently no repressed memory therapy necessary in Rittmeyer’s case, though it is likely that Shubin sent him for subsequent counseling.
Matt Sandusky didn’t testify at trial, so he never received a victim number. The last of the six children to be adopted by Dottie and Jerry Sandusky, at the age of 18, Matt had supported his accused parent during the investigation. In 2011 he had testified in front of the grand jury that his adoptive father had never abused him. But in the middle of the June 2012 trial, apparently after entering psychotherapy, he “flipped,” going to the police to say that Jerry Sandusky had abused him.
Matt told the police that he was working with a therapist and that “memories of his abuse are just now coming back,” according to the NBC announcer who played portions of the leaked interview tape. When the police asked whether Sandusky had sodomized him or forced him into oral sex, Matt answered: “As of this time, I don’t recall that.”
But by the time Matt appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s television show in 2014, he had remembered oral sex. He made it clear to Winfrey that he had not recalled sexual abuse until he was in repressed memory therapy, but this apparently did not make her skeptical in the least. “So based upon what you’re telling me,” Winfrey said to him, “you actually repressed a lot of it.” And Matt replied, “Uh-huh, absolutely. The physical part is the part that, you know, you can erase.”
When she asked him about first coming forward to talk to the police during the trial, he said, “It was a confusing time.” It wasn’t as if he heard Brett Houtz and all his own abuse memories came rushing back. “My child self had protected my adult self,” he explained. “My child self was holding onto what had happened to me—and taken that from me—so I, I didn’t have the memory of—I didn’t have these memories of the sexual abuse—or with him doing all of the things that he did.”
As he listened to the testimony of Brett Houtz and other alleged victims, he felt somehow that “they were telling my story,” but he apparently didn’t remember abuse right away. “They were telling—you know, all of these things start coming back to you, yes, [and] it starts to become very confusing for me and you try and figure out what is real and what you’re making up.”
In summary, then, repressed memories were key to many of the Sandusky accusations, including the first case which was also the only case for the first two years of the investigation. Then, when Mike McQueary’s memory of the 2001 shower morphed into actually seeing abuse, the police began a frantic search for more alleged victims, who were “developed,” as prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach put it, through suggestive, leading interview tactics and civil lawyer and therapist involvement. The jurors did not have the information they needed to evaluate the spoken testimony in its proper context. If they had known how the testimony was nurtured and created, their opinions about the authenticity of the event might have been altered.
Instead, as we know, they found Sandusky guilty. After the verdict, Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly held a triumphant press conference outside the courthouse, during which she referred directly to the importance of repressed memories in the Sandusky case: “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.”

 

[maypole]

I'm like catnip to them. They cannot stand the blasphemy against their idol.

Dear AssNole:
Sandusky is guilty.
Paterno is innocent.

 

[WHCANole]

Dear AssNole:
Sandusky is guilty.
Paterno is innocent.

Dear JoeBot,
Sandusky is Guilty
Spanier is Guilty
Curly is Guilty
Schultz is guilty
Joe is tarnished forever for looking the other way while kids were harmed.