I can remember things from 10 years ago. So can you. Scott Paterno was there with him. He's never said Joe didn't say that.
Grooming is a crime
The constitution says "speedy trial". Spanier's took way too long. They had nothing.
The Shame of It.
- Thread starter joeaubie21
- Start date
He was not available to receive a subpoena is my understanding…but who knows…i didn’t even think the media knew he was V2 at the time of the trial but it’s been so long I’m not sure…
Which could have been determined had Jack Raykovitz followed his legal duty.
And yep grooming can be a crime…but it’s very different crime than oral or anal
Sex…
He was given nothing actionable to report. TSM was investigated by the Feds. No charges. Take a read . It'll help you grow in this.
Meaning Amendola?
Ziegler ?
Just be ready to interpret -
Ten years after an illegal grand jury leak set off the media firestorm known as the Penn State sex abuse scandal, the evidence of official misconduct in this case is so pervasive and egregious that Jerry Sandusky deserves to walk out of prison today as a free man.
Since 2017, Big Trial has reviewed thousands of pages of court transcripts and legal proceedings in the case, along with hundreds of pages of confidential documents that are still under a judge's seal.
Taken together, those records tell a clear story -- the case against Sandusky is fatally flawed from top to bottom. A decade later, records show, the actions of many of the principal actors in this case, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the civil investigation at Penn State, are irredeemably tainted by misconduct, incompetence, unethical behavior, conflict of interest, collusion and/or corruption.
In addition, psychologists in the case used scientifically discredited recovered memory therapy to elicit suspect testimony from many of the alleged victims, whose improbable and constantly evolving stories to this day have never been vetted by anyone. Finally, the defendants' own medical records cast doubt on whether Sandusky was physically capable of performing the acts he was accused of.
Based on the evidence that I will present here, there's no longer any reason for any sane person to believe in the findings of both the civil and the criminal investigations conducted at Penn State. A decade later, the prevailing story line in the Penn State sex scandal about the man who's supposed to be the most notorious pedophile in America amounts to an X-rated fractured fairy tale that, when viewed from multiple angles, makes no freaking sense.
There's a looming shadow that's cast over the entire Penn State scandal, and that's the egregious conduct of an overzealous prosecutor on a rampage, former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, who was the lead prosecutor at Penn State.
Amelia Kittredge, the counsel for the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board who ran the investigation that resulted in Fina losing his license to practice law, memorably described Fina to the state's highest court as "someone who cannot or will not separate right from wrong."
A decade later, Fina's fingerprints are all over this travesty of a case, particularly when it comes to illegal grand jury leaks. But when we're talking about bad actors in the Sandusky case, Fina's got plenty of company.
The tragedy of all this is if the state gets its wish, Sandusky, who at 77, still professes his innocence, may die in prison before the truth about the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State is finally known.
Much of the material published below will be familiar to Big Trial readers, as it has been presented piecemeal over the past five years in some 60 blog posts published on this website.
The stories were written by myself as well as author Mark Pendergrast, who excerpted on bigtrial.net several chapters from his 2017 book, The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.
It was ten years ago this month, on Nov. 4, 2011, that the premature leak of the pending grand jury indictment of Sandusky to reporter Sara Ganim set off the media firestorm that would railroad Sandusky into spending what amounts to a life sentence in jail.
Just five days after that leak, without doing any fact-finding, Penn State's panicked board of trustees hastily fired Joe Paterno, the winningest football coach in America, as well as longtime Penn State President Graham Spanier.
With the tenth anniversary of the Penn State case upon us, rather than examine its own malpractice and negligence, the news media has chosen to regurgitate a completely discredited story line that's built around a big lie.
To counter the prevailing narrative, I've decided to publish in one spot large chunks of the evidence that clearly shows Sandusky was railroaded.
As outlined below, the level of official misconduct in this case is so extreme that it rises to the level of egregious. That's the term the state Supreme Court used in 1992 when it freed former Lower Merion High School Principal Jay Smith from prison, where he had been on death row for six years, after his conviction for the murders of English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children, whose bodies were never discovered.
In the Jay Smith case, the state Supreme Court found that prosecutors in the state attorney general's office committed egregious misconduct when they hid exculpatory evidence that would have benefitted the defendant. The hidden evidence included two grains of sand found between the toes on Reinert's body that indicated she may have died at the Jersey Shore, as opposed to the the prosecution's theory of the case, which was that Smith had killed Reinert in his basement.
In freeing Smith, the state Supreme Court barred a retrial on the grounds that it would amount to unconstitutional double jeopardy.
In the Sandusky case, the state attorney general's office outdid its previous standards for corruption by knowingly writing a false and inflammatory grand jury presentment, deliberately leaking that false presentment to the media, and then basically manufacturing the trial testimony that was used to convict Sandusky. To finish the job, the judges in this case trampled on Sandusky's constitutional rights at every turn, while turning a blind eye to overwhelming evidence of official misconduct.
Stated simply, the Sandusky case is a cluster f--k from start to finish that can't be undone.
The Rape In The Showers
Let's start at the beginning, with the headline charge in the grand jury presentment that has permanently convicted Sandusky in the minds of an entire nation, as well as the jury pool in Centre County. The headline charge that was also responsible for the firing of Paterno and Spanier.
“Remember that little boy in the shower,” then-Gov. Tom Corbett told the university’s board of trustees on Nov. 9, 2011, just before they decided, in a mad rush to judgment, to fire Paterno and Spanier without even taking a formal vote.
According to that grand jury presentment, a decade earlier, at 9:30 p.m. on March 1, 2002, a then-28-year-old Penn State graduate assistant walked into the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus.
[The prosecutors subsequently claimed they had gotten the date of the shower story wrong, and moved the date of that alleged incident back 13 months to Feb. 9, 2001.]
The graduate assistant, subsequently identified as assistant Penn State football coach Mike McQueary, heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" emanating from the showers, sounds that he "believed" to be evidence of "sexual activity."
According to the grand jury presentment, McQueary looked into the showers and saw "a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky."
According to the grand jury presentment, the "distraught" graduate assistant called his father for advice, and then he left he Lasch Building and went straight home.
"The next morning," according to the grand jury presentment, McQueary "went to [Coach Joe] Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
The rape in the showers, as well as the implication that McQueary promptly told Paterno about "what he had seen" -- as in that rape in the showers -- are both works of fiction written by overzealous prosecutors in the state attorney general's office.
How do we know this? From the words of the sole witness himself, in emails first disclosed by blogger Ray Blehar.
On Nov. 10, 2011, six days after the grand jury presentment was leaked, McQueary emailed deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach to tell her that the grand jury report the AG had just published was factually incorrect.
"I feel my words are slightly twisted and not totally portrayed correctly in the presentment," McQueary wrote. "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion. It was a sexual act and or way over the line in my opinion whatever it was."
In a second email that day to Eshbach, McQueary complained about "being misrepresented" in the media. To which Eshbach replied, "I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and it is hard not to respond. But you can't."
During a defamation suit that McQueary subsequently filed against Penn State, Eshbach was sworn in as a witness and asked to explain what she meant by telling McQueary not to talk.
"My advice to Mr. McQueary not to make a statement was based on the strengthening of my -- and saving of my case," Eshbach testified. "I did not want him [McQueary] making statements to the press at that time that could at some time be used against him in cross-examination. He [McQueary] was perfectly free to make a statement, but I asked him not to."
Less than a month after the grand jury presentment, Paterno issued a statement disclosing that when he went before the grand jury, he testified, "It was obvious that the witness [McQueary] was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report."
To further confirm this, on Dec. 16, 2011, McQueary testified under cross-examination that "I have never used the word anal or rape in this -- since day one."
Besides Paterno, McQueary told his story about "whatever it was" that he had allegedly witnessed within hours of the alleged incident in the Penn State showers to his father, John McQueary, and his father's friend, Dr. Jonathan Dranov, who, as a doctor, was a mandated reporter when it comes to allegations of sex abuse.
Approximately 10 days later, McQueary told Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior Vice President for finance and business Gary Schultz about what he had allegedly seen in the showers.
All five men -- Paterno, McQueary's father, Dr. Dranov, Curley and Schutz -- have testified under oath that Mike McQueary never told them that he witnessed anything sexual going on in the showers. Instead, Paterno, Curley and Schultz characterized what McQueary told them about as "horseplay."
On Nov. 23, 2010, recounting what was then a nearly decade-old incident in the showers, McQueary wrote out a statement to police that said whatever he witnessed took place during a brief time period that lasted between 30 and 45 seconds.
During that time, McQueary wrote to the cops, he glanced into a mirror once, which gave him a reflected view of the showers, and then he glanced directly into the showers.
McQueary told a grand jury in 2010 that the two “glances” he took each lasted “maybe one or two seconds.”
But the story McQueary told kept changing.
On Nov. 8, 2011, after the grand jury presentment became public, McQueary emailed a friend and claimed that instead of leaving the locker room and doing nothing to stop an alleged rape of a child in progress, "I did stop it, not physically, but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room."
In that email that was subsequently published in Thee Morning Call of Allentown, PA, on Nov. 15, 2011, McQueary also claimed that he told the police about the rape in the showers. But the next day, representatives from both the Penn State campus police and the State College police publicly stated that they had no record of McQueary ever reporting any sex crime to them.
In subsequent retellings of the shower story, McQueary claimed that when he left the locker room, he slammed his locker door, which he said, made Sandusky look up and stop the abuse. McQueary also claimed that as he was leaving the shower room, he took another glance in the showers a second time, to make sure that Sandusky and the boy remained apart.
At the Sandusky trial in 2012, McQueary testified that when he first glanced in the showers eleven years earlier, this time he said that glance lasted between one and five seconds, and that he saw Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall.
On the witness stand, McQueary claimed that he now recalled a "very slow, slow, subtle movement" of Sandusky's crotch against the boy's buttocks.
The identity of the victim, the boy in the showers, Deputy Attorney General Joe McGettigan told the jury at the Sandusky trial, was "known only to God." But jurors didn't buy that story, and despite convicting Sandusky on 45 other counts, they acquitted Sandusky on the charge of abusing the unknown boy in the showers.
[According to author Mark Pendergrast, McGettigan was lying when he said they didn't know the identity of the boy in the showers. He's a former Marine named Allan Myers, who was 14, and not 10 at the time of the alleged shower incident. Myers initially told the state police and a private investigator that Sandusky was a father figure and mentor who had never abused him, and that they were horsing around that day in the shower, snapping some towels, when McQueary walked in.
That was before Myers decided to drastically change his story and cash in, to the tune of a $6.9 million civil settlement. During Sandusky's bid for a new trial, Myers was sworn in as a witness in 2016 and asked which story he told was the truth. He responded by saying he couldn't remember 34 times.]
The Previously Undisclosed Federal Investigation At Penn State
The Penn State sex scandal was the subject of a criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office, and a supposedly independent civil investigation conducted at the cost of $8 million by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.
The investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office resulted in the indictment of Sandusky for the alleged rape of the boy in the showers, as well as for allegedly abusing seven other minors.
On June 22, 2012, a Centre County jury found Sandusky guilty of 45 out of 48 counts of sex abuse, and sentenced him to 30 to 60 years in jail.
The state attorney general's office also initially charged Spanier, Curley and Schultz with failing to report allegations of child abuse to authorities, along with allegedly committing perjury during grand jury testimony.
The Freeh Report concluded that there was an official cover up of Sandusky's sex crimes at Penn State. And that during that cover up, the Freeh Report claimed, Spanier, Curley and Schultz had displayed a "total and consistent disregard" for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's alleged victims, as well as a "striking lack of empathy."
In publishing their 267-page report, the authors of the Freeh Report claimed they operated "with total independence," and that "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report."
The media has dutifully reported on the two investigations done by the state attorney general's office, and former FBI Director Freeh, as well as their findings about a rape in the showers, followed by an official cover-up on the part of Penn State's top officials.
But there has been a total news blackout in the mainstream media on the third investigation done at Penn State. It was done by the federal government in 2012, which resulted in a 110-page report that initially was stamped confidential, but was finally declassified in 2017.
The federal investigation was conducted by former NCIS Special Agent and veteran cold case investigator John Snedden, then on assignment for the U.S. Federal Investigative Services.
Against the backdrop of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Snedden's job was to determine whether former Penn State President Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed amid allegations that he had orchestrated an official cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes.
With national security at stake, Snedden conducted a five-month investigation on the Penn State campus in 2012. And what did he find?
That the rape in the showers story told by McQueary made no sense, and that McQueary, who told so many different versions of that story -- according to author Mark Pendergrast, a total of five different accounts -- wasn't a credible witness.
Snedden also concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime in the showers to cover up. It was the exact opposite of the conclusions reached by the state attorney general's office, and the Freeh Report.
As a result, the feds cleared Spanier, and renewed his high level security clearance.
Why didn't Snedden buy the rape in the showers story?
Back in 2001, Snedden told Big Trial, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen. If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something about it.
"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.
If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"
Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, instead of going home and doing nothing about a child rape in progress, why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building?
As Snedden says, the story makes no sense. It was also egregious prosecutorial misconduct for the state attorney general's office to fictionalize and sensationalize such a flimsy, decade-old story, and then hang an entire grand jury presentment on it.
Evidence of Corruption, Collusion & Illegal Grand Jury Leaks
While the Freeh Group investigation claimed to operate with "total independence," there's a confidential record that meticulously documents ample evidence of routine collusion between the criminal investigation of Penn State conducted by the state attorney general's office, and the supposedly independent investigation conducted by the Freeh Group.
And that evidence comes from a seemingly unimpeachable source, former FBI Special Agent Kathleen McChesney, who was credited with starting the investigation that led to the capture of serial killer Ted Bundy.
In "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," McChesney revealed on camera how the federal investigation of the serial killer got started. A woman called and said, "I'm concerned about my boyfriend -- his name is Ted Bundy."
The girlfriend proceeded to detail Bundy's suspicious behavior that included following women around at night, hiding a knife in his car and keeping a bag of women's underwear in his apartment.
McChesney, who was on the task force that ultimately arrested Bundy, rose to become the only female FBI agent appointed to be the bureau's executive assistant director. Her credibility was such that in 2002, in the wake of the widespread sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic clergy, the U.S. Conference of Bishops hired McChesney to establish and lead its Office of Child and Youth Protection.
McChesney is also the author of a 2011 book, "Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way."
But in the Sandusky case, the decorated former FBI special agent is now known for another book she wrote -- an unpublished, confidential 79-page diary written in 2011 and 2012, back when McChesney was a private investigator working for her old boss, former FBI Director Freeh, while investigating Penn State.
In her diary, McChesney records multiple contemporaneous instances of then Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group.
It's clear from the McChesney diary that multiple grand jury documents were also regularly leaked to the Freeh Group, as was a 1998 police report on an earlier alleged shower incident that was investigated and found to be unfounded, resulting in a report that was supposed to have been expunged in 1999.
While the Freeh Group claimed in their report that they operated with "total independence" and "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report," the McChesney diary tells a different story.
Namely, that in conducting their supposedly independent investigation, the Freeh Group was regularly colluding with and working seemingly under the direction of the state attorney general's office, and particularly under the direction of deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
According to McChesney, members of the Freeh Group "don't want to interfere with their investigations," and that she and her colleagues were being "extremely cautious & running certain interviews by them."
McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group even "asked Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the A.G.'s office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for disadvantaged youths.
According to McChesney, Fina was actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses.
For example, McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, an investigator for Penn State Police who probed the earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy that turned out to be unfounded; he also wrote the police report that was supposed to be expunged.
After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."
According to the McChesney diary, Fina also routinely kept the Freeh Group up to date on what was going on with the grand jury investigation, telling Freeh's investigators secrets that the defendants and their lawyers weren't privy to.
For example, the night before former Penn State President Spanier, Curley and Schultz were going to be arrested, Gregory Paw, another Freeh investigator, sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest.
The subject of Paw's email: "CLOSE HOLD -- Important."
"PLEASE HOLD VERY CLOSE," Paw wrote his colleagues at the Freeh Group. "[Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina called tonight to tell me that Spanier is to be arrested tomorrow, and Curley and Schultz re-arrested, on charges of obstruction of justice and related charges . . . Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
When I asked Freeh, through a spokesperson, whether he as a private citizen during the Penn State investigation, was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, Freeh declined comment.
Other emails contained in documents under seal show that while investigating Penn State, Freeh may have had a conflict of interest. According to the emails, Freeh, whose investigators had telephone conferences with every Friday with NCAA officials, saw the Penn State investigation as a way to land the NCAA as a permanent client.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA. It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
It took seven years but Freeh's efforts finally paid off. In August, 2019, the NCAA hired five employees of the Freeh Group to staff its new Complex Case Unit.
The McChesney diary was the basis for a motion for a new trial filed with the state Superior Court in 2020 by Sandusky's appeal lawyers. In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers requested an evidentiary hearing where McChesney would have been summoned to testify under subpoena and asked to authenticate the diary.
But a year later, on May 13, 2021, the state Superior Court denied that motion, ruling that Sandusky's lawyers did not file their appeal in a timely fashion.
Instead, the state Superior Court blasted Sandusky's appeal lawyers, saying that they "dithered for one-half a year" before bringing the newly discovered evidence to the court's attention.
Evidence of Jury Tampering
The Freeh Group's investigation at Penn State involved interviewing hundreds of people, including a Penn State faculty member before she was chosen as a juror in the Sandusky case.
And when it came time for defense lawyers to question the juror, she misrepresented what she had told the Freeh Group.
The juror was identified by Freeh's investigators as Laura Pauley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, who did not respond to a request for comment. During jury selection on June 6, 2012, Pauley was asked by Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, what she told Freeh's investigators.
"It was focused more on how the board of trustees interacts with the president," Pauley told Amendola, as well as "how faculty are interacting with the president and the board of trustees . . ."
But an April 19, 2011 confidential summary of that interview shows that the juror had already made up her mind about the guilt of Sandusky, by reading her local newspaper. According to the report of the interview, Pauley had also already decided that Penn State's top administrators were guilty of a cover up.
In her interview with Freeh's investigators, Pauley stated that she was "an avid reader of the Centre Daily Times" and that she believed that the leadership at Penn State just "kicks the issue down the road."
"The PSU culture can best be described as people who do not want to resolve issues and want to avoid confrontation," she told Freeh's investigators.
Pauley, a tenured professor who served on the Faculty Advisory Committee for three years, told Freeh's investigators that Penn State President Graham Spanier was "very controlling," and that "she feels that [former Penn State Athletic Director Tim] Curley and [former Penn State vice president Gary] Schultz are responsible for the scandal."
"She stated that she senses Curley and Schultz treated it [the scandal] the 'Penn State' way and were just moving on and hoping it would fade away."
While Pauley was being questioned by Amendola, Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote, "at no time during this colloquy, or any other time, did the prosecution disclose that it was working in collaboration with the Freeh Group which interviewed the witness."
Had Amendola known what Pauley told Freeh's investigators, he would have sought to have her stricken from the jury. He would have also asked the judge to find out whether any other jurors had met with Freeh's investigators.
At Sandusky's trial, while Amendola was questioning Pauley about what she told Freeh's investigators, Deputy Attorney Frank Fina sat silently at the prosecution table and said nothing.
Since the McChesney's diary documents how the Freeh Group routinely kept the attorney general's office abreast of the Freeh investigation, it's possible that Fina knew all about the Freeh Group's interview with Pauley.
It's also possible that Fina may have even been given his own copy of that interview with the juror.
The Corruption Of Frank Fina
On Feb. 19, 2020, the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania voted to suspend for a year and a day the law license of former deputy attorney general Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, for his "reprehensible" and "inexcusable" misconduct during the grand jury investigation of three Penn State officials that he accused of orchestrating a cover up.
Fina, the disciplinary board found, was guilty of purposely "misleading" a grand jury judge into thinking that Fina wasn't going to press Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel, into breaking the attorney-client privilege behind closed doors and betraying three top Penn State officials who were her former clients -- Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
Fina got Baldwin to cooperate by threatening her with an indictment for obstruction of justice. So Baldwin went into the grand jury and testified against her clients, without even notifying them of her betrayal.
After deliberately misleading the judge back in October 2012, Fina then "proceeded to question [Baldwin] extensively about the very subjects he represented to Judge [Barry] Feudale he would avoid," the disciplinary board concluded.
"These actions are reprehensible" and "inexcusable," the disciplinary board wrote.
Even worse, the disciplinary board found that Fina's alleged defense of his behavior before the board was "without substance." What Fina did, the disciplinary board said, was to tear down all the safeguards built into the criminal justice system by turning defense attorney Baldwin "into a witness for the prosecution against her clients."
"Unlike other lawyers, the prosecutor is more than a zealous advocate for a client," the state Supreme Court wrote. "The prosecutor bears as well the high and non-delegable duty of ensuring a fair process for the defendant and of comporting himself or herself always in a manner consistent with a position of public trust."
"To state it plain, instead of Baldwin serving as a shield for her former clients, her testimony was elicited and used by Fina as a sword against them, to devastating effect," the court wrote. In addition, when he was brought up on charges of misconduct, the disciplinary board concluded, Fina "failed to acknowledge he had a special responsibility to ensure justice and utterly failed to acknowledge the ramifications of his conduct."
The board found that "deflecting responsibility and displaying a lack of sincere remorse constitute aggravating factors."
Clearly, Fina was a man who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. Even if it meant breaking the law.
There was more fall-out from Fina's actions.
In 2013, then state Attorney General Katharine Kane ousted Judge Feudale from his duties as supervising grand jury judge in Harrisburg, citing his close relationship with Fina and lack of objectivity.
On Feb. 21, 2020, the state Supreme Court publicly censured Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice herself, for her "unfathomable" and "incompetent" actions in betraying her own clients.
In censuring Baldwin, the court noted her "lack of remorse for her actions," saying she "cast blame for her problems on everyone involved," but never herself.
The Corruption Of the Trial Judge In The Sandusky Case
The trial of Sandusky was presided over by the Honorable John Cleland, who oversaw a rush to judgment that resulted in Sandusky going from indictment to conviction at trial in just seven months.
How did the judge pull that off? By trampling on Sandusky's constitutional rights.
Before the trial started, Sandusky's defense lawyers tried to get the trial postponed so they could wade through 12,000 pages of grand jury transcripts he had just received only 10 days before the start of trial.
Amendola, Sanduksy's trial lawyer, begged for a continuance, telling the judge that he needed time to read the files and find out what Sandusky's accusers were saying about him; he also needed time to subpoena witnesses.
"We can't prepare . . . I felt like Custer at Little Bighorn for God's sake," Amendola testified during an appeals hearing. But Judge Cleland turned him down.
[Besides being unprepared, Joe Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, was painfully inept, as detailed on this blog by author Mark Pendergrast.]
Jerry Sandusky had a constitutional right to a fair trial. But in order to save Penn State football, which was being threatened with the death penalty by the NCAA, Sandusky had to be convicted and sitting in jail before the start of the 2012 college football season to wrap up the Penn State scandal in a nice, neat bow.
Putting Sandusky in jail for life fit right into the deal that PSU had struck with the NCAA, which was to voluntarily admit guilt and take their lumps, which included a $60 million fine. But the payoff for Penn State was that the Nittany Lions would escape the death penalty that the NCAA had threatened to impose on the football program in Happy Valley.
Jerry Sandusky also had a constitutional right to confront his accusers, but Judge Cleland took care of that as well.
The night before the preliminary hearing in the case, the only pretrial opportunity where Sandusky's lawyers would have had the right to confront his accusers -- the eight young men who claimed that Sandusky had abused them -- Judge Cleland convened an unusual off-the-record meeting of prosecutors, a magistrate, and defense lawyers at the Hilton Garden Inn at State College.
At the meeting, with prosecutors nodding in agreement, the judge talked Amendola into waiving the preliminary hearing so that Sandusky could remain out on bail for his trial. On their end of the deal, the state attorney general's office, which had previously requested bail of $1 million for Sandusky, agreed to lower that amount to $250,000.
The A.G. had also had threatened to file more charges against Sandusky, but according to the deal worked out by the judge during the off-the-record session at the Hilton Garden Inn, no more charges would be forthcoming.
So Amendola caved and took the deal. The grand result of Sandusky's lawyers waiving the preliminary hearing was that the Pennsylvania railroad that Sandusky was riding on would stay on schedule.
During the appeal process, after Judge Cleland's actions were disclosed regarding the Hilton Garden Inn conference, the judge had to turn over notes that he had taken during the off-the-record session. Cleland then voluntarily recused himself from continuing to preside over the appeals in the Sandusky case.
While the Sandusky case was headed to trial at breakneck speed, some people in the know were aware that the Honorable Judge Cleland wasn't going to budge on the scheduled trial date.
In the McChesney diary, on May 10, 2012, the former FBI agent noted in a conference call with Gregory Paw and Omar McNeil, two of Freeh's investigators, that Paw is going to talk to Fina, and that the "judge [is] holding firm on date of trial."
In an affidavit, Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, stated that McChesney didn't get that information from him.
"An obvious question arises as to whether or not the trial judge was communicating with a member of the Freeh Group, attorneys for the attorney general's office, or anyone else concerning the trial date," Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote.
In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers sought to question Judge Cleland at an evidentiary hearing "to determine whether, and to what extent, collusion between the office of the attorney general, the Freeh investigation and the NCAA had an impact on the trial."
But the court denied that appeal.
Gullible Judges Deny A New Trial For Sandusky
During the appeals of Sandusky's conviction, his lawyers accused deputy attorney generals Fina and Eshbach of breaking state law by repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets.
But on Oct. 18, 2017, Jefferson County Presiding Judge John Henry Foradora issued a 59-page opinion where he cleared Fina and Eshbach of leaking, while denying Sandusky a new trial sought under the Post Conviction Relief Act.
In his opinion, Judge Foradora concluded that Fina and Eshbach weren't the leakers who were feeding reporter Sara Ganim intel about the impending grand jury presentment.
Why? Because Fina said so.
The judge bought Fina's alibi that he and Eshbach had supposedly set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers. But apparently the two prosecutors were about as successful as O.J. Simpson was in his hunt for the real killers.
Fina had asked his old buddy, Judge Barry Feudale, the supervising judge of the grand jury, to investigate the leak, Judge Foradora wrote. So, Judge Foradora decided, after hearing testimony from Fina, that it couldn't be Fina or Eshbach who were doing the leaking at the A.G.'s office.
At the PCRA hearing, "the testimony, then did not support the idea that the prosecution leaked grand jury information for any reason, let alone for the purpose of generating more victims," the judge wrote.
"If anything it supports the opposite conclusion, because while someone might be skeptical about the validity of Eshbach and Fina's internal 'trap'" to catch the real leakers, the judge wrote. "It is a fact of human nature that one engaged in or aware of misconduct he does not wish to have exposed does not ask an outside source to investigate it."
Unless the judge in question is an old pal. As in wink, wink.
One of the allegations of a leak raised by Sandusky's lawyers involved an incident related by the prosecution's official whistle blower in the Sandusky case, Mike McQueary.
At the 2017 trial of former PSU President Graham Spanier, McQueary was asked by a prosecutor how he found out that Sandusky was going to be arrested.
During the bye week of the 2011 Penn State football season, McQueary said, "I was on my way to Boston for recruiting and I was going from the F terminal over to the B terminals over in Philadelphia Airport."
That's when "the AGs called," McQueary said, referring specifically to Eshbach. According to McQueary, Eshbach told him "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."
But rather than believe McQueary, Judge Foradora decided to trust Fina and Eshbach.
In denying Sandusky a new trial, Judge Foradora foolishly staked his entire 59-page opinion on the credibility and integrity of Frank Fina, which is now in tatters.
On Feb. 5, 2019, the state Superior Court, in a 70-page written by another gullible judge, the Honorable Judge Carolyn Nichols compounded this lunacy by denying Sandusky's appeal of Judge Foradora's opinion not to grant a new trial.
Once again, Judge Nichols and another court bought Fina and Eschbach's explanation that they had set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers, and didn't do any leaking themselves.
Recovered Memory Therapy
According to Mark Pendergrast, therapists in the Sandusky case used scientifically-discredited recovered memory therapy on six of Sandusky's eight accusers at trial, and on several other alleged victims who wound up getting civil settlements.
Pendergrast focused on the work of therapist Mike Gillum, who for three years, in weekly and sometimes daily skull sessions, basically brainwashed Aaron Fisher, Victim No. 1, into recalling memories of abuse, after he had originally denied he had been abused.
In a book Gillum co-wrote with Fisher, Silent No More, the therapist, who was convinced from the get-go that Sandusky was a serial abuser, stated that he sought to “peel back the layers of the onion” of Fisher's brain to recover memories of abuse that Gillum already knew were there.
During these weekly and sometimes daily sessions, Fisher didn't have to say anything. According to Silent No More, Gillum would guess what happened and Fisher only had to nod his head or say Yes.
“I was very blunt with him when I asked questions but gave him the ability to answer with a yes or a no, that relieved him of a lot of burden,” Gillum wrote. In the same book, Aaron Fisher recalled: “Mike just kept saying that Jerry was the exact profile of a predator. When it finally sank in, I felt angry.”
The grand result of Gillum's work --- Fisher cashed in for $7.5 million.
Another alleged victim who initially denied he had been abused, Dustin Struble, Victim No. 7, dramatically changed his story after he also underwent recovered memory therapy.
Like many of the other alleged victims in this case, Struble's story kept evolving. Struble told the grand jury that Sandusky had never touched his privates or touched him in the shower, which Struble said he and Sandusky shared with other coaches and players.
But at Sandusky's trial, Struble changed his story to say that Sandusky put his hands down the boy's pants when they were riding in Sandusky's car. And this time when he told the story about showering with Sandusky, Struble claimed that Sandusky was alone with him in the shower. And that Sandusky grabbed the boy and pushed his own naked front against the boy's backside, then he touched the boy's nipples and blew on his stomach.
When asked why his account had changed, Struble testified, "That doorway that I had closed has since been reopening more. More things have been coming back and things have changed since that grand jury testimony. Through counseling and different things, I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside than I did at that point."
Struble's new story won him a civil settlement of $3,250,000.
A prominent critic of recovered memory therapy is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world’s foremost experts on the malleability of human memory. Loftus, who testified at a hearing on behalf of Sandusky’s unsuccessful bid for a new trial, has given lectures on how memory works to the Secret Service and FBI; she also has a contract to work for the CIA
On May 11, 2017, testifying by phone, Loftus told Judge Foradora, “There is no credible scientific support for this idea of massive repression."
Nor is there any credible support, she added, for the idea that “you need psychotherapy to dig it out, and you can reliably recover these memories . . . in order to heal yourself.”
In many jurisdictions, Loftus told the judge, cases involving repressed memories have been thrown out of court.
Human memory “doesn’t work like a recording device” that can simply be played back at a later date, Loftus told the judge. Memories evolve over time and can be distorted or contaminated with suggestive and leading questioning. Her experiments have also shown that people can be talked into believing things that aren’t true.
“You can plant entirely false memories in the minds of people for events that never happened,” she explained to the judge. And once those false memories are planted, she said, people will relate those memories as if they were true, “complete with high levels of detail and emotion.”
But at the Sandusky trial, repressed memories were consistently presented as fact. Prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury before calling his witnesses that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization,” because “they don’t want to remember.” That’s why the investigation was slow,” McGettigan told the jury, because “the doors of people’s minds” were closed.
After a jury found Sandusky guilty, then Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly held a press conference outside the courthouse where she said of the alleged victims, “It was incredibly difficult for some of them to unearth long-buried memories of the shocking abuse they suffered at the hands of this defendant.”
During the appeal hearing over Sandusky's conviction, memory expert Loftus told Judge Foradora, “It seems pretty evident that there were drastic changes in the testimony of some of the [Sandusky] accusers.”
One reason for those changes, she testified, was the “highly suggestive” way police and psychotherapists interviewed them.
But rather than listen to Loftus, and the science, Judge Foradora chose to believe the recovered memories of the victims, which was the basis for the state attorney general's X-rated fractured fairy tale.
Victims' Stories Totally Unvetted
At Penn State, the university paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims without investigating anything.
The average cost of the settlements was $3.3 million, more than double the average settlements paid out by the Catholic Church in abuse cases in Los Angeles and San Diego.
In 2013, the extravagant payouts prompted the university’s insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company [PMA], to sue Penn State and the various “John Doe” claimants. The lawsuit ended three years later in a confidential settlement that lawyers in the case told Big Trial they were prohibited from discussing.
One of those lawyers is Eric Anderson of Pittsburgh, an expert witness who testified on behalf of the insurance carrier.
“It appears as though Penn State made little effort, if any, to verify the credibility of the claims of the individuals,” Anderson wrote on October 5, 2015. In his report, Anderson decried “the absence of documentation” in the claims, saying in many cases there was “no signed affidavit, statement or other means of personal verification of the information which I reviewed."
“I do not know why so many of the cases were settled for such high sums of money,” Anderson wrote.
In paying out the $118 million, the university did not undertake any of the usual methods to vet the stories of the accusers, such as having them questioned by private investigators, deposed by lawyers, personally examined by forensic psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.
Instead, the university just wrote checks.
How The Alleged Victims Were Recruited
On May 1, 2009, deputy state attorney general Eshbach wrote a formal request to initiate a grand jury probe of Sandusky. Nineteen months later, the state attorney general's investigation of Sandusky the alleged serial pedophile, had produced only one alleged victim, the brainwashed Aaron Fisher.
To make matters worse, the first grand jury that heard Fisher testify didn't believe him, so they issued no indictment.
But in November 2010, the A.G. got a tip about the shower incident that Mike McQueary had supposedly witnessed a decade earlier, a breakthrough that suddenly energized the Sandusky investigation.
On March 10, 2011, the state attorney general convened a second grand jury. They were aided by reporter Sara Ganim, who on March 31, 2011, wrote the first story about the secret grand jury probe of Sandusky that revealed for the first time the allegation that Sandusky was a serial sexual abuser of children.
The Ganim story basically functioned as a want add for the A.G.'s office to recruit more sex abuse victims.
The state police and the attorney general's office promptly created a seven-member joint task force and sent them out knocking on the doors of hundreds of young men who were alums of Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for disadvantaged youths, hunting for alleged victims.
But the joint task force didn't have much success.
As one frustrated investigator emailed on June 3, 2011, as recounted by author Mark Pendergrast in his book, “We have recently been interviewing kids who don’t believe the allegations as published and believe Sandusky is a great role model for them and others to emulate.”
On Jan. 4, 2012, Anthony Sassano, a narcotics agent from the state attorney general's office who led the Sandusky investigation, testified that the special task force interviewed 250 men who were former members of the Second Mile charity, but found only one man who claimed to be a victim of abuse.
Ask yourself a simple question. If Jerry Sandusky was allegedly the most notorious pedophile in America who's been on rampage in a small town of 42,000 for nearly four decades, why does the state have to create a special joint task force to go out knocking on doors, and hunting down victims?
Shouldn't they be lined up around the block?
But then the grand jury presentment hit the media. On Nov. 10, 2011, Business Insider ran a story predicting that Penn State wound wind up paying Sandusky's accusers a total of $100 million.
Suddenly, every plaintiff’s lawyer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had been alerted about a possible jackpot at Penn State. All they had to do to hit the lottery was to round up some guys who were willing to claim they were abused.
In seeking a lottery payoff, these alleged victims wouldn't even have to give up their real names. The media, for sure, could be counted on to keep their identities secret. While they were vilifying and destroying Jerry Sandusky's name and reputation every day.
After Sandusky was convicted, the floodgates opened, and 41 men filed civil claims for damages. Thirty-six of them would eventually get paid.
And it didn't require any heavy lifting.
Penn State had hired Kenneth Feinberg, dubbed “The Master of Disaster,” to oversee the settlement process with victims. Feinberg specialized in a global approach to settlements, rather than duke it out in court with one individual claim after another.
At Penn State, Feinberg prepared a form for alleged victims that merely required their lawyers to make their allegations, as part of what was billed as a “claims resolution process."
The claims as submitted in more than 120 pages of confidential records that the press or public has never seen, are entirely devoid of evidence.
None of the initial claims were authenticated by signed affidavits, there were no reports of forensic evidence or witness testimony, or corroboration of any kind. Except when a few of the victims who were pals got each other to vouch for their stories.
The stories of the alleged victims, which were often improbable, and featured constantly changing details, remain completely unvetted to this day.
Jack Rossiter, a former FBI agent of 30 years, investigated more than 150 cases of alleged sex abuse as a private detective employed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia between 2003 and 2007.
As far as the Penn State case was concerned, Rossiter told Big Trial he was surprised to hear that apparently not one of the 36 alleged victims ever told anyone about the attacks when they allegedly occurred -- a period that spanned nearly four decades.
Got that? Over four decades, in at least 500 alleged sex crimes involving 36 innocent victims, there was not one contemporaneous report of abuse.
If a pedophile was running loose for that long in small town, Rossiter said, "You would think someone would pick it up. Either at school or the parents or a close friend."
On top of that, in a scandal involving national publicity, like the Sandusky case, Rossiter said, if you were a gate keeper at Penn State, you'd have to be on guard against criminals and drug addicts coming forward to seek a pay day.
"With national headlines and all these people lining up, you'd have to be more skeptical" of the claims," Rossiter said.
But Penn State never even ran background checks to see if any of the alleged victims had criminal records. When Big Trial checked, we found that 12 of the 36 alleged victims who got paid did indeed have criminal records, including arrests for tampering with and fabricating physical evidence, identity theft, criminal conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property, theft by deception, robbery and terroristic threats.
The way the system is supposed to work, somebody at Penn State should have investigated the stories told by the alleged victims.
"That's what you do, you investigate," Rossiter emphasized. "The key is to find corroboration for the victim's story, to see if their stories hold up."
But Penn State didn't do any of that. Instead, they just wrote checks.
Why? Because the trustees had already decided that they would pay any price to save their beloved Nittany Lions.
As for Jerry Sandusky, and his constitutional rights, nobody gave a damn.
The Defendant's Medical Records
In their civil claims of abuse, the 36 alleged victims portray Sandusky as a sexually insatiable predator with the virility of a male porn star in his 20s. According to the claims, Sandusky was constantly on the prowl for forced sex with boys, and never had any problems achieving an erection.
Sandusky’s medical records, however, from 2006 to 2008, depict a man in his 60s suffering from all kinds of ailments and conditions, including atrophied testicles and chronic prostatitis.
A doctor who reviewed Sandusky’s medical records, but asked to remain anonymous, told Big Trial in an email, “This guy couldn’t get an erection no matter how he tried. Even Cialis/Viagra would probably not work.”
The doctor added that because the medical issue was never raised at trial, Sandusky should have sued his lawyers for malpractice.
Doctors described Sandusky as having an “androgen deficient state,” meaning he had levels of male sex hormones so low it was unhealthy. Sandusky’s medical records state that he was undergoing “testosterone replacement therapy for significant low levels of both free and total testosterone.”
Sandusky's medical records reveal that he was being treated with antibiotics for chronic prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate commonly caused by bacterial infection that results in frequent and painful urination. Prostatitis can also cause sexual problems such as low libido, erectile dysfunction, and painful ejaculations.
Sandusky’s chronic prostatitis began in 2005 and continued through 2008, his medical records state. Doctors described Sandusky as being “light-headed” and suffering “dizziness” from using Flomax, which he began taking in 2006, because he was having trouble urinating.
In addition to his urological problems, Sandusky’s medical records list many ailments that raise the question of whether Sandusky was healthy and energetic enough to be out having rampant, promiscuous sex with all those boys.
Sandusky’s ailments include cysts on one of his kidneys, a small aneurysm in his brain, a 2006 hernia operation, bleeding hemorrhoids, chest pains, headaches, drowsiness, elevated blood pressure, and sleep apnea.
He was on thyroid medication when he went to the doctors and told them he began “falling apart” in 2005. By 2008, his doctors wrote, Sandusky reported he was falling asleep at the wheel and gotten involved in two car accidents.
The medical records also describe a distinctive feature of Sandusky’s anatomy that none of his accusers have ever mentioned.
On February 2, 2006, Dr. Frank B. Mahon at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, who was treating the 62-year-old Sandusky for chronic prostatitis, wrote that Sandusky had “small” testicles of “perhaps 2 cm” or centimeters each, which equals .787 of an inch. The average size of adult testicles are between two and three inches.
On December 18, 2008, another doctor at the Hershey Medical Center wrote that the 6-foot-1 210-pound former coach, nearly 65, had “marked testicular atrophy with very little palpable testicular tissue.”
In stark contrast to the way he is portrayed in the claims against him, a couple of law enforcement types who have observed Sandusky in close quarters describe him as an anomaly in the hyper-macho world of football coaches, saying he comes across as asexual.
There may be genetic reasons for that. Sandusky’s medical records state that as a boy, he had “delayed development of secondary sexual characteristics” that required shots, but they don’t say what kind of shots. Sandusky told his doctors he was “unable to have children” because his “sperm counts were low.”
Sandusky's medical records state that he suffered from hypothyroidism, [underactive thyroid] as well as hypogonadism, meaning his body didn’t produce enough testosterone to maintain good health.
The medical records, which date from 2006 to 2008, cover the same time period during which a couple of key trial accusers, Aaron Fisher and Sabastian Paden, claimed they were being raped hundreds of times by Sandusky.
Fisher settled his civil case against Penn State for $7.5 million. Paden, whose lawyers won in court access to all the confidential records in the Penn State case that are still under a judge's seal, got the biggest pay out of all the alleged victims, $20 million.
Totaling up the allegations made in 36 civil claims that were paid, the alleged victims stated that they had been raped or sexually abused by Sandusky at a minimum of least 520 to 620 times.
At his trial, Sandusky’s lawyers never used his medical records in his defense, probably because they didn’t have time to even read boxes of grand jury testimony, or serve subpoenas on witnesses.
In prison, Sandusky’s appeals lawyer said, he remains on a half-dozen medications, including continuing testosterone replacement therapy, and Terazosin for continuing prostate infections.
There’s another angle to the story of Sandusky’s medical records -- there are 36 alleged victims who got paid after claiming they were raped and abused hundreds of times by Sandusky, including nine alleged victims who claim that Sandusky had engaged with them in high-risk and apparently unprotected anal sex.
Yet not one of these alleged victim has ever asked to see Sandusky’s medical records, to find out whether he had HIV or any venereal disease. Nor has any victim ever sought to have Sandusky tested for any diseases.
That's the kind of evidence that would aid a criminal case. In a civil case, if Sandusky was found to have infected his victims with disease, it would have raised the damages.
But in the Penn State case, none of the alleged victims ever pursued the disclosure of any of Sandusky’s medical records.
You have to ask why.
And whether the answer is because it never really happened.
Jerry Sandusky is a relic from another time. He's an only child who was the son of Polish immigrants. His father, Art Sandusky, a trolley conductor, was the coach of a local baseball team who ran a recreation center that took in troubled kids and hired disabled people as employees.
At the recreation center, the motto hung on the wall by Sandusky's father said, "Don't give up on a bad boy, because he might turn out to be a great young man." Jerry Sandusky, a devout Methodist who grew up in that rec center, adopted his father's mission, and was out to save the world one troubled kid at a time.
At the rec center, it was a common practice for men and boys to shower together. When Sandusky first got in trouble in 1998, for taking a shower with 11 year-old Zachary Konstas, after a complaint from the boy's mother, the incident wound up being investigated by authorities that included an official from the Centre County Children and Youth Services, a detective from the Penn State police, an investigator from the state Department of Public Welfare, the boy's therapist, as well as a psychologist hired by the county.
The authorities concluded that there was no evidence of abuse or of any sexual conduct whatsoever, so the mother's alleged claim was officially deemed unfounded. As recounted in The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment, by author Mark Pendergrast, the psychiatrist who questioned young Zach Konstas for an hour concluded:
"The behavior exhibited by Mr. Sandusky is directly consistent with what can be seen as an expected daily routine of being a football coach. This evaluator spoke to various coaches from high school and college football teams and asked about their locker room behavior. Through verbal reports from these coaches it is not unusual for them to shower with players. This appears to be a widespread, acceptable situation and it appears that Mr. Sandusky followed through with patterning that he has probably done without thought for many years."
The problem in the Sandusky case is that the customs of an earlier time, as in a communal shower for men and boys, are being viewed through a modern lens.
Since he couldn't have kids of his own, Jerry and his wife Dottie adopted six children, five girls and a boy. Only one of those adopted kids, Matt Sandusky, who took his adoptive dad's name, would ultimately claim to be abused.
According to author Mark Pendergrast, after Matt sat next to his adoptive mother on the first day of the Sandusky trial and heard the alleged victim spout accusations of abuse that were the result of recovered memory therapy, Matt came home and told one of his siblings, "This is ridiculous. Anyone can make accusations without evidence, and get paid. I could, you could, anyone could . . . but I actually have morals."
Three days later, Matt famously flipped. After first telling authorities he hadn't been abused, Matt gave a statement to the police that said that after he went to a psychiatrist, he had recalled memories of past abuse. His flip earned him an appearance on Oprah, and a civil settlement of $325,000.
The other five of Sandusky's adopted kids, however, told Pendergrast that they'd never been abused, and that they didn't believe that Matt had ever been abused either.
I'll leave the last words to the man who's been in prison for the past ten years as a result of egregious official misconduct and a decade of media malpractice.
"I am an innocent person, wrongly convicted by sinister ways of deception, dishonesty and disregard," Sandusky wrote from prison.
"I did not commit the heinous crimes I was accused of doing. Oral and anal sex never entered my mind, nor did I ever engage in them with anybody. This includes my wife, who has been my only sexual partner and loyally stands with me today."
He was asked by Sandusky’s attorney where he was during the trial. His only answer was “somewhere in Central PA”.
Ziegler has recently done an interview with Sandusky’s co-counsel during the trial, Karl Rominger. Rominger stated that Joe Amendola made a deal with the prosecution in which neither side would call Myers to the stand.
So many comments on the insanity of the co counsel stating this in an interview with Ziegler of all people
Grooming is a pattern. They had no evidence to report the crime of grooming.
Correct, it actually wasn’t even until several months after the trial that the media (Sara Ganim) reported that a young man claimed to be V2 but did not testify at trial.
John Ziegler, still in the infancy of his quest to discover the truth, called Ganim out for writing such a confusing article, and lamented that news that should have been a huge deal was basically ignored.
It was serious enough for PSU to rescind Jerry’s guest privileges.
However, knowing that JR thought that having Jerry simply wear swim trunks in the shower would be a reasonable compromise, and knowing the Feds found nothing is enough reasonable doubt to absolve CSSP of any wrongdoing.
I’m not sure if Raykovitz had a legal duty to do anything, but I agree it’s ridiculous to expect an untrained football coach to determine an incident to be reportable as potential grooming when so many trained professionals who worked closely with Sandusky for years saw nothing wrong.
Are you Ziegler or just in love with him?Correct, it actually wasn’t even until several months after the trial that the media (Sara Ganim) reported that a young man claimed to be V2 but did not testify at trial.
John Ziegler, still in the infancy of his quest to discover the truth, called Ganim out for writing such a confusing article, and lamented that news that should have been a huge deal was basically ignored.
JR was a mandatory reporter. But to me, he probably did do the right thing. Nothing happened that night. Everything CSS did was focused on preventing a future repeat of ‘98.
There never should have been a PSU scandal. That’s somebody else’s narrative and I think it’s above Tom Corbett!s pay grade.
Saying "nothing happened that night" is far from a fact
It shouldn't have been a Penn State scandal but when you stay stuff like that you only make people push harder that it was and Penn State fans are in denial.
So how does CNN publish a lie from Ganim?
Scott know this?
"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.
What Shawn Sinisi Told Agent Sassano Of The A.G.'s Office
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.
Another Bogus Ganim Scoop
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.
Let it go folks.
It only stays alive because you keep it alive.
You could produce the Holy Grail of evidence to exonerate JoePa and it wouldn't matter, he was already tried and hung in the court of public opinion and nothing is gonna change that.
Feel good about how you feel about it and stop worrying about what others think, whether full or devoid of knowledge.
It only stays alive because you keep it alive.
You could produce the Holy Grail of evidence to exonerate JoePa and it wouldn't matter, he was already tried and hung in the court of public opinion and nothing is gonna change that.
Feel good about how you feel about it and stop worrying about what others think, whether full or devoid of knowledge.
I don’t know about Jerry. But I know what AM told his attorney. And from the notes and emails, I also know that CSS did not treat the matter as you would if there had been a victim. They were set up!
Raykovitz! Raykovitz! Raykovitz!
Maybe -
When Dawn Daniels began to think Jerry Sandusky might have abused her son, she alerted Aaron’s high school. Then, after her son made some extremely vague allegations, Daniels took Aaron Fisher to Children & Youth Services, where intake case worker Jessica Dershem interviewed the teenager. Aaron did not reveal any overt sexual abuse. He only stated that Sandusky had cracked his back by hugging him with both of them fully clothed. Dershem then referred Fisher to Mike Gillum . .
Disappointed with the insufficient details, Dershem called her supervisor, Gerry Rosamilia and complained that she had an uncooperative fifteen-year-old in her office who was not disclosing sex abuse. She later said that she “sensed he was holding back.” Rosamilia told her to send him to Mike Gillum, a psychologist who had a contract with Clinton County, and who conveniently occupied an office upstairs in the same building.
When Gillum came down to the CYS office to get Aaron Fisher, he got this first impression:
“He had on a pair of raggedy jeans and some beat-up sneakers. His blond hair was scruffy and on the longer side, and he just looked disheveled, but it wasn’t the way he was dressed that stunned me. He was so extremely anxious, and moving around a lot, pacing the floor, in a really tight area in the lobby outside Jessica’s office, but looking down at the floor. His agitation was so high that he was wringing his hands.”
That was how Gillum described Aaron Fisher in Silent No More, a 2012 book written by Aaron Fisher, Fisher's mother, and Gillum, although the book is mostly written in Gillum's voice.
Fisher was obviously feeling pressured. He later recalled in Silent No More: “The truth is, I only agreed to go to his office because I wanted Jessica to stop asking me questions, and she said that Mike was the alternative, since I wasn’t answering her.”
Mike Gillum escorted Fisher into his office, where he began to reassure and disarm his young client, building the foundation for a trusting relationship that might enable future disclosure of sex abuse. Gillum rescheduled his other clients and spent the day focusing entirely on Aaron Fisher. Gillum wrote up a report for Jessica Dershem based on this initial confidential counseling session.
Fisher never told his mother exactly what was supposed to have happened to him. "Even now, these years later, he hasn't told me any details,” Daniels wrote in Silent No More. “Knowing what little I know, I can only imagine. And it makes me shudder."
At first, Fisher was equally uncommunicative with Mike Gillum, but Gillum immediately assumed that he really had been sexually abused. "I really think I know what you must be going through even though you won't tell me," he said. "You know...if someone touched you in your private parts, well, that's really embarrassing and hard to talk about because you're probably very scared.... It's my job and purpose to protect you and help you."
Gillum apparently believed that memories too painful to recall lay buried in the unconscious, causing mental illness of all kinds -- among them, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. His duty as a counselor was to entice clients whom he suspected had been subjected to abuse to reveal this abuse or to raise buried memories to the surface, where healing could begin.
Fisher’s agitated behavior during his first meeting was a red flag and a certain indicator of child sexual abuse in Gillum’s mind. “He looked at me straight in the eye, and you could see the pain in his eyes, you could see how uncomfortable he was, he was physically shaking at times, his voice was cracking.”
Later, in 2014, when I interviewed Mike Gillum in his office, he denied that Fisher had repressed memories, though Gillum admitted that he believed in the Freudian theory and had helped other adult clients recall previously “repressed” abuse memories.
The Courage to Heal, the "bible" of those who believe in repressed memories of sexual abuse, was prominently displayed on his bookshelf. In Fisher’s case, however, he said that it was more a matter of “peeling back the onion,” and that “Aaron did what a lot of people do during abuse. He would dissociate with his body. Aaron would freeze up and stare into space so that he wasn’t even there. Many rape victims report the same thing. They kind of pretend it’s not happening.”
I was impressed by Gillum’s sincerity during our interview. He certainly had no intention of encouraging false allegations. He truly wanted to help his clients, and he clearly had helped many of them who really had been abused. Yet it was also clear that his presumptions and methods, especially in the case of Aaron Fisher and other alleged Sandusky victims, might lead to well-rehearsed but illusory memories.
Like many other repressed memory therapists I have interviewed, Gillum emphasized that he took care not to lead his clients, even though that was precisely what he was doing. “You have to be careful not to put words in their mouth,” he said. “You try to take your time to get through the layers of information.”
Before he began seeing Mike Gillum, Fisher did not think of himself as a victim of sexual abuse. In Silent No More, Gillum wrote, “It didn’t even hit him that he was a victim until he was fifteen.”
Fisher verified this, writing, “It really wasn’t until I was fifteen and started seeing Mike that I realized the horror." Although Fisher showed signs of mental distress that got more serious over the course of his therapy, Gillum did not question himself or his therapeutic approach. Instead, he blamed it all on the supposed abuse and the uncertainty over whether the allegations were going to result in an arrest.
Gillum explained in Silent No More how he cued and prodded reluctant clients such as Aaron Fisher.
"If I'm lucky, they just acknowledge spontaneously without too much prodding," he wrote. But otherwise, he asked many Yes or No questions. "It's like that old kids' game of Hide the Button, where the kids say yes when you get closer and no when you're just on a cold trail."
This is classically bad technique for interviewing those suspected of being abused. It is highly suggestive, and it is often clear from the inflection of voice or body language (leaning forward expectantly, etc.) what answer is appropriate. And when No isn't acceptable, the interrogator just keeps asking until he or she gets a Yes.
"Although they give me information," Gillum said, "they don't feel held accountable because I'm guessing, but my guesses are educated." Gillum compared delving into the unconscious to “peeling back the layers of an onion,” and he knew what he would find at its rotten heart.
To Gillum, Aaron Fisher seemed immature, scared, and not very bright. "Aaron was beginning to open up, not in words, but his body language relaxed some. Though I knew he was fifteen, I couldn't get over how young he looked -- and his mental function and maturity appeared to be that of a twelve-year-old as well."
Finally, Gillum got him to answer Yes to his more and more specific questions. "He finally admitted that the man had touched his genitals and kissed him on the mouth, and he was painfully uncomfortable as he told me."
Gillum kept at it for three hours that first day with Aaron Fisher. "The whole time I was with him, I wasn't really taking notes, even during that first session. I wrote my notes up afterward. I did write down some trigger words, though."
After two hours, Gillum claimed that Fisher "told me that oral sex had occurred. Even then he didn't tell me on his own; I asked him and he said it had.... 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." In a later interview, however, Gillum said that it took him six months to get Fisher to say that he was subjected to oral sex.
Fisher confirmed that he said very little. "As long as I told him that something happened, I didn't need to go into any detail. I just needed to tell him if something sexual happened, like touching or oral sex, and he would ask me so all I had to do was say yes or no…. Mike just kept saying that Jerry was the exact profile of a predator. When it finally sank in, I felt angry," Fisher wrote in Silent No More.
This was the beginning of the process of turning Jerry Sandusky into a monster in Aaron Fisher's mind, a process all too familiar to those who know about repressed memory therapy. Indeed, one of the books about the process, by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters, is called Making Monsters.
Three years later, Mike Gillum would join the board of an organization called “Let Go Let Peace Come In,” whose website is filled with repressed memory references and assumptions, and he would go on to counsel four other alleged Sandusky victims. But until then, Gillum spent the next three years reinforcing Fisher’s abuse narrative.
At that point, the theory of repression had been denounced as a fiction by memory scientists for nearly two decades. Nevertheless, Michael Gillum was convinced that Fisher had buried memories that must be exhumed, like peeling back the layers of an onion, and he explained it all to him, though he apparently avoided using the term “repressed memories.” Instead, he talked about “compartmentalizing” memories.
After this tutelage, Fisher asserted 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."
And for once Aaron Fisher had someone who believed him no matter what. Once Fisher entered therapy with Gillum, nothing he said would be doubted or scrutinized for its historical truth. The chair in Gillum’s office would become Fisher’s sanctuary. For an adolescent who had a widespread reputation among classmates, neighbors, and teachers for deceit, this was a welcome change.
“Aaron would consistently lie and scam,” his history teacher Scott Baker told an investigator. Another teacher, Ryan Veltri, said that “Aaron was untruthful, conniving, and would blame other kids to save himself.” Next-door neighbor Joshua Fravel claimed that Aaron Fisher was “a conniver and always made up stories. He lied about everything. He would say just about anything if it got him what he wanted.”
Even after Sandusky’s conviction for multiple counts of abuse, many people in his hometown continued to disbelieve Fisher. “There are…people in my community [who] said I was a liar,” he complained in 2014. “They never apologized and still say I’m a liar.” Fisher said that the hardest thing for him was not the alleged abuse by Sandusky, but “the failure of almost everyone in his community to believe him,” as he told a reporter.
Gillum saw himself as Fisher's savior and protector. "At the end of that day I promised Aaron that I would be with him throughout this whole ordeal. I said I would see him through from beginning to end and meet with him every day if that's what it would take to make him whole again." Indeed, as Fisher said, "I saw Mike every day for weeks, and I called his cell whenever I needed him. I still see him every week, and he's still always at the other end of the phone."
Again, this is classically bad therapy, encouraging an over-dependence on the therapist. I have written about this kind of therapy at length in my books about memory, most recently in Memory Warp, to be published in October, 2017. The therapist becomes the most important person in the client's life, and the client will go to great lengths to please the therapist. The relationship develops into an unhealthy pattern where, in order to continue to elicit sympathy and attention, the client must produce more and worse memories of abuse.
From then on, Gillum was the main driver behind the abuse allegations. When Aaron first spoke to the police, on Dec. 12, 2008, Gillum was upset because they wouldn't let him sit in on the interview. At that point, he had been seeing Fisher every day for three weeks. "I had prepared Aaron as best I could for this interview," he explained. "Aaron was scared and didn't want to tell his story, but we had talked about it extensively and he knew this was something he had to do."
Gillum was absolutely certain that Jerry Sandusky was a sexual predator who had abused his client, and that it was his job to pressure Fisher into giving a detailed account of the abuse. Gillum never talked to Sandusky, but that probably would not have made any difference.
It clearly never occurred to Gillum that he might be pressuring a troubled, vulnerable young teenager into making false allegations. Jessica Dershem, the CYS caseworker who was present during this first police interview, told Gillum that during the interview, "Aaron was reticent.” Still, he was now talking about fondling and kissing on the mouth, which he had not alleged initially. Fisher denied that oral sex had occurred. "They could have asked him the proper questions in the right way to ascertain the extent of the abuse," Gillum complained.
Fisher’s statements about what occurred between himself and Jerry Sandusky were to change dramatically from November of 2008 until June of 2011. Indeed, his own conception of his experiences would be altered permanently as well. When first interrogated, he told the authorities that Sandusky cracked his back. His clothes were always on. He denied that Sandusky ever went below his waistline, even though he was asked multiple times throughout the interview. He told them that nothing else occurred.
By December 12, 2008, Fisher had been questioned three times by authorities (the school, child protective services, and the police), yet he told them that nothing had happened that could be considered criminal. He told the state troopers that Sandusky had never touched his genitals, and when asked if oral sex occurred, he denied it. But he was never going to be questioned by the authorities alone again. Michael Gillum would be constantly by his side.
Jerry Sandusky was first called in for questioning on Jan. 15, 2009. As Gillum observed in these two paragraphs from Silent No More, Sandusky denied that he had sexually abused Aaron Fisher, though he admitted hugging and “horseplay:"
[Sandusky] admitted that he cracked Aaron's back; he hugged him and kissed his forehead in the way that you would a son or grandson. He said there was horseplay, for sure...but the notion that anything sexual occurred was ridiculous. He not only denied the fondling and kissing Aaron on the mouth, but he dismissed it categorically. [He] assume[d] a sympathetic bent to Aaron, saying that the charges were all trumped up and that Aaron was angry at him, although he didn't know why, since he'd done so much for the boy.
He was disheartened that Aaron was making these false claims since they had enjoyed such a great relationship. Sandusky suggested that perhaps Aaron was angry and sullen because he, Sandusky, had started doing things and going places with other boys and maybe Aaron was jealous. All in all, Sandusky acted as though he was totally mystified by the entire situation.... Basically, he just said that Aaron was a screwed-up kid, and rather than act angry the way other perpetrators do when faced with these kinds of allegations, he... seem[ed] almost sorry for Aaron and this fantasy he had evidently created.
According to Jessica Dershem’s notes from that meeting, Sandusky admitted that Fisher would sometimes lie on top of him and that he would rub and crack his back, with his hands underneath his shirt. When asked whether the back rubs extended to Fisher’s buttocks, Sandusky said, “I can’t honestly answer if my hands were below his pants.” If Sandusky were a child molester who had cleverly hidden his guilt for years, this kind of painful attempt at honesty seems remarkably inept. “He admitted to everything except the sexual contact,” Dershem recalled later. “To me, that meant it was all true.” Her logic is difficult to follow.
Nonetheless, the wheels had been set in motion. Gillum observed with satisfaction, "I was now permitted to sit in on all the interviews, though I still wasn't allowed to speak for Aaron." He could, however, influence him. "The more time we had, the better," Gillum thought. "Maybe as time went by, Aaron would be more forthcoming.... They needed more details and information [and hopefully] Aaron would not only have revealed more details to me but would be more comfortable revealing them to someone else as well."
Seven months went by. After daily and weekly therapy sessions, Fisher had finally answered again with a “yes” to a suggestive question from Gillum about oral sex. As Fisher explained it, “As long as I told him that something happened, I didn’t need to go into any detail. I just needed to tell him if something sexual happened, like touching or oral sex, and he would ask me so all I had to do was say yes or no. He was real straightforward. When I said yes, that oral sex happened, Mike just said that I didn’t have to talk about it more right now, but at some point, when I was ready, I could talk to him more.”
To review, then -- by the beginning of 2009, Aaron Fisher had made rather vague allegations that Jerry Sandusky had molested him, after his mother got the idea that the molestation must have happened and alerted the school principal, who took it from there. Fisher's disclosures came in the form of answering "Yes" or "No" to leading questions. He had supposedly told Gillum that he and Sandusky had engaged in oral sex, but then he denied it to the police. Fisher was emotionally overwrought and was indeed the "screwed-up kid" that Sandusky perceived him to be.
When Trooper Cavanaugh submitted a report to the Clinton County District Attorney Michael Salisbury, he noted that most of the allegations took place in Centre County, so (with probable relief) he sent it over to Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira. But Madeira was married to the sister of one of Sandusky’s adopted children, so he recused himself, asking the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General to take the case. There, it was assigned to Senior Deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach, who had considerable experience with child sex abuse cases, particularly during her time as an assistant district attorney in York County.
With Eshbach’s direction, on March 19, 2009, police officer Timothy Lear interviewed Aaron for another hour with Gillum by his side. "He was nodding his head yes or no as Lear asked him pointed questions about the nature of the sexual abuse,” Gillum wrote. “We needed verbal answers for the record, and it was hard to keep asking him to state his answers out loud. Aaron gave one- or two-word answers about where he was touched and what happened to him, and when it got to the more graphic details of oral sex, Aaron was still reluctant to state any details. He just kept nodding to indicate that abuse -- and particularly, that oral sex -- had happened."
So apparently Fisher was now at least nodding affirmatively that oral sex had occurred. Still, Gillum was frustrated at "this extremely fragile fifteen-year-old boy whom I can barely get to talk to me about the details of the sexual abuse." He assumed that Fisher was reticent because "he's not only traumatized but also scared to death that Sandusky is going to kill him, even by going so far as to hire a hit man."
This assumption by Gillum, which he transmitted to Fisher, is part of the process of the demonization of Jerry Sandusky, turning him into a Monster, and is quite similar to the paranoia that therapists purveyed to clients about mythic satanic ritual abuse cults that were supposedly out to kill their clients.
Nonetheless, something in Aaron Fisher still rebelled against the effort to incriminate his former friend. Mike Gillum noted that Fisher was stunned when he realized that the stories he had told in therapy might harm Sandusky. When Officer Lear boasted to Fisher that he “would put the cuffs on anybody,” Fisher’s “eyes got real wide and he became very quiet.” He answered Officer Lear mostly by nods. At last they prompted Fisher to give one- or two-word answers. “He looked down at the floor as if he was ashamed.”
Of course, his shame could have derived from revealing oral sex acts, but it could also have derived from his uncertainty about whether he was telling the truth. Gillum reported that Fisher “asked me very detailed questions about if Sandusky went to prison, how long he would be there. He worried that something bad would happen to Sandusky and said that all he wanted was to get away from him. He wasn’t looking to punish him.”
The prosecutor, Jonelle Eshbach, meanwhile was pressuring Gillum to get Fisher to come up with details. "She hoped he would become more comfortable and discuss in greater depth the details that were relevant to the case. She made it very clear that the standard of evidence required by the attorney general's office before they could even begin to prosecute the crimes inflicted on Aaron had to be far more comprehensive."
Gillum reassured her that Fisher was likely to comply. "With most child victims of sexual abuse, their information comes in layers." This is in fact usually true of false allegations, not real ones. A growing and malleable sex abuse narrative, influenced by therapy, is often a warning sign that false memories are being developed.
The other thing that repressed memory therapy often does is to make subjects worse rather than better. "Once I started therapy with Mike and began to tell him everything," Fisher said, "the nightmares actually got a lot worse.... They were nightmares about what happened to me all those times Jerry was doing things to me and making me do things to him."
Instead, it is possible that these nightmares were fantasies induced by therapy and then the nightmares themselves were taken as "proof" that the abuse had taken place. This is exactly what many repressed memory therapists did with clients -- warning them that they would have nightmares about abuse that would then prove that the abuse occurred, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"I went from nightmares about Jerry abusing me to nightmares about Jerry having people come after me and kill me and my family and take things from me," Fisher wrote in Silent No More. "They were so graphic in detail that even after I woke up I could recite everything that happened and everything that was said.... Those nightmares were my reality."
Aaron Fisher was becoming a much more disturbed young man. The counseling process, in which he vividly imagined how Jerry Sandusky might have abused him, was blurring his already weak boundaries between reality and fantasy. Nightmares became more frequent and more vivid after therapy began. He became suicidal. He was hospitalized three times for anxiety or “conversion disorder” under Gillum’s care, which Gillum described as “deep psychic pain from deep in your unconscious.”
Mike Gillum thought that Fisher’s fears of being killed by a hit man hired by Jerry Sandusky were appropriate, and he validated them.
“In no way at all did I think he was paranoid,” Gillum recalled. “I did not and would not discount or dismiss Aaron’s fears; I knew he was entitled to have them.” Fisher was generally so fearful that he made a report to his high school in October 2010 that a man from Second Mile wearing a dark suit and worn pants had approached him.
Asked about this report during the trial he said he had been “startled and confused,” and that throughout that entire school year “I did nothing but watch the entrances of the school to make sure somebody wasn’t going to come into the school and talk to me and throw me into an anxiety attack.”
An investigation indicated that no such mysterious man had approached him. In the same month, Fisher drove into a tree, fracturing his skull. His mother wondered whether the evil Jerry Sandusky had somehow sabotaged the car. Fisher later recounted how he unsuccessfully attempted suicide, slicing his forearms with a razor and trying to hang himself in his closet.
Despite Fisher falling apart, the daily therapy began to pay off in other ways. "Eventually," said Gillum, "Aaron told me in no uncertain words that it was after that second summer at camp, when he was twelve, that the intensity of the sexual acts escalated to oral sex, which Aaron was forced to perform as well as receive."
Gillum was teaching Fisher that he had dissociated during his theoretical abuse, which was one of the reasons he hadn’t remembered it. “With Sandusky’s help,” Gillum wrote, “Aaron managed to disassociate himself from the grim reality of abuse, as victims do.” Fisher parroted the same jargon about dissociation that Gillum had taught him: “I spaced. I took myself out of my body and away from him and out of that basement room.” This stereotypical language could have been taken verbatim from many classic repressed memory accounts.
After Timothy Lear was suspended from the force for assaulting his ex-girl friend, Trooper Scott Rossman became the new interrogator, asking Fisher things such as, "Did he ever try to put his dick in your butt? I mean his penis in your anus?"
Rossman also began to search for other potential victims, with encouragement from Gillum, who was sure there must be others. "He wanted details about my school and when Jerry was there and what were the names of other kids and where did they live and what did they look like," Fisher said.
"Later I found out that Trooper Rossman and some agents in the attorney general's office went out scouring neighborhoods, just like cops do in the movies. They worked a fifty-mile perimeter." Eventually, the police would also begin to question other Second Mile children, particularly those named in Sandusky's 2000 book, Touched.
Two grand juries investigated charges of child abuse against Jerry Sandusky, at which Aaron Fisher was the star witness. Grand juries are little-understood affairs. They resemble trials in that they have jurors (23 of them in Pennsylvania, hence the name “grand jury,” versus the 12 jurors in a normal trial) who listen to sworn testimony.
But unlike regular trials, grand juries are held in secret, for the purpose of determining whether there is enough evidence to pursue a criminal indictment. In a grand jury, the prosecutor presents a case, but there is no defense lawyer present, and no cross-examination is allowed. Nor are transcripts ever made public.
Grand juries meet for three or four days per month and can last up to two years. Each panel of jurors can hear evidence in several different cases. In Sandusky’s case, the 30th Pennsylvania grand jury met to consider the allegations from June 2009 until early 2011. Then the 33rd Pennsylvania grand jury, with a different jury pool, took it up again in March 2011.
At his first grand jury interrogation, which convened in June 2009, "Mike prepped me and told me what to expect," Fisher recalled. "Mike had permission to sit in the courtroom with me." But when asked about the alleged molestation, Fisher just started to cry. He blurted out “No!” when Jonelle Eshbach, the Assistant Attorney General, asked whether oral sex had occurred. He broke down weeping. Due to his disturbed emotional state, a recess was called so that Fisher could receive medication and a pep talk from Gillum.
After the break, Fisher performed more satisfactorily, providing Eshbach with the anticipated answer of “Yes,” but continuing to weep. It is certainly possible that Fisher was so emotional and conflicted that he initially denied that abuse had occurred because he actually knew, despite all the therapy, that abuse had not occurred.
After the first grand jury session, "Aaron continued to come in for therapy at least once a week...and we held several phone calls in between sessions,” Gilllum recalled. “I had an open arrangement with Aaron and Dawn to the effect that if either of them needed me for whatever reason, they could call at any time -- day or night."
The grand jury refused to indict Sandusky. "The first grand jury said that Aaron had trouble responding clearly and didn't elaborate as much as he could have or should have.... Jonelle would say something like, 'He then would touch you in a sexual way,' and Aaron would answer yes or no. In the second [session of the] grand jury, the jurors wanted Aaron to narrate the story in his own words. They wanted all the gory details."
Gillum was frustrated, suggesting that he could testify instead of Aaron under the "Angel Act," also known as the "Tender Years Exception to the hearsay rule." In that case, "I could have testified as though I was the child if I deemed that the child was too fragile and the court concurred." Instead, "Jonelle and I gave him [Aaron] some more coaching and emphasized that he had to state exactly what happened. Jonelle explained that she didn't want anyone on the jury to say that she had been leading the witness."
Of course, leading the witness is exactly what they were already doing with the "coaching" sessions, with the months of therapy, with the assumption and insistence that he had been abused, and with Eshbach’s leading questions. By the time he testified again to the grand jury, reconvened on Nov. 16, 2009, Aaron Fisher’s testimony and memory had been irrevocably contaminated.
"Once Aaron took the stand, Jonelle... pushed him a lot harder that second time." To Fisher’s credit, he managed through tears to be more of his own advocate and narrator, until he literally collapsed." He began to perspire, went pale and sank to the floor. Then he vomited.
"The second grand jury [actually the same pool of jurors in the 30th Pennsylvania grand jury, meeting again] still did not feel that Aaron's testimony was strong enough to make a case for an arrest." Time dragged on. Fisher continued therapy and continued to get worse, becoming severely depressed and experiencing panic attacks and excruciating abdominal pain by August 2010. He also began to talk about suicide. "He was truly beginning to come apart,” Gillum observed.
All of this should be familiar to those who have studied the impact of repressed memory therapy. As one woman told Bass and Davis in The Courage to Heal, “Breaking through my own denial, and trying to fit the new reality into the shattered framework of the old, was enough to catapult me into total crisis. I felt my whole foundation had been stolen from me. If this could have happened and I could have forgotten it, then every assumption I had about life and my place in it was thrown up for question.” Another revealed, “I just lost it completely. I wasn't eating. I wasn't sleeping…. I had terrible nightmares about my father. I was having all kinds of fantasies …. Physically, I was a mess. I had crabs. I hadn't bathed in a month. I was afraid of the shower.”
Similarly, in her book Repressed Memories, Renee Fredrickson told the story of her client, Carolyn. “Her anger and grief were enormous. For months she suffered emotionally, physically, and spiritually. She had crying jags, eating binges, suicidal feelings, and bouts of depression.”
Fredrickson unquestioningly assumed that all of these were symptoms of abuse. “I never felt like my problems were connected to my past,” Carolyn told her. “To be honest, they still don't seem related.” Another patient exclaimed during a session: “But I feel like I'm just making this up!” Fredrickson ignored her concern. “I urged her to continue, explaining that truth or fantasy is not of concern at the beginning of memory retrieval work.” Thus, it was common for many who underwent repressed memory therapy to fall apart in the same way that Aaron Fisher did. The repressed memory therapists always interpreted these symptoms as the result of the abuse, when in fact they were caused by the therapy itself.
On April 11, 2011, a new Grand Jury met to hear Aaron Fisher’s testimony. This time, as Fisher recalled in his book, "the new grand jury allowed me to read my testimony, since I had given it twice before.” According to Mike Gillum, Fisher just read aloud his previous testimony, even though it had been deemed to be too vague and uncertain, one-word answers in response to leading questions. Gillum denied that he helped Fisher write the testimony that he read aloud.
At this point, "the nightmares were picking up speed again, but this time I was also sleep walking," Fisher wrote in Silent No More. He would yell, "Get away!" and "Leave me alone!" By this time, as he himself observed, "My monster was real." Jerry Sandusky's transformation into a Monster was complete.
Near the end of August 2011, however, Aaron Fisher got cold feet. During a meeting with Gillum, the prosecutors, and the police, Fisher said, "I'm out. That's it. I'm not going to be your witness anymore." Gillum interpreted this as Fisher expressing frustration that Sandusky had not yet been arrested, which may have been the case, but it also could have been Fisher’s frustration at having been pushed and pushed to create stories that he knew deep down were not true. Even Gillum seemed to recognize this on some level. "If not for my pushing him along, he [Aaron] might have backed out a long time before this, and to this day I still question myself about how much I pushed him," he wrote.
But Gillum did convince Fisher to testify, and on Nov. 5, 2011, Jerry Sandusky was arrested. "I never thought the arrest would happen," Fisher said, "and when it did, something didn't feel right about it." The arrest came just before Fisher's eighteenth birthday. At this point, he had been under Gillum's influence for three years.
By this time, the police had succeeded in locating five other Second Mile boys who were willing to say that Sandusky had molested them, along with the anonymous "boy in the shower" of the McQueary incident (they did not know that this boy was Allan Myers, who came forward soon thereafter to defend Sandusky), and a hypothetical hearsay victim based on testimony of a Penn State janitor (who said another janitor, Jim Calhoun, who was now suffering from dementia, had witnessed the abuse). By the time of the trial, they had come up with two more alleged victims.
When Aaron Fisher testified during the 2012 trial, the inconsistencies of his allegations were exposed. He couldn’t remember what he had said about the abuse and couldn’t keep it straight. “I don’t remember dates of when I told people anything. All I know is that it happened to me. I honest – I don’t even want to be here.”
That could be explained easily if he had recovered memories that were unconnected to reality. If a witness’s testimony is not based on real events, naturally he doesn’t have anything to connect it to. For example, Fisher offered four guesses about when oral sex occurred.
One: It stopped a month before or after his birthday on November 9, 2007. Two: It started in the summer of 2007 and continued until September of 2008. Three: It started November of 2007 and continued until the summer of 2008. Four: It only started during 2008, going into 2009 [impossible, since he made his allegation in the fall of 2008].
Indeed, Fisher’s testimony over the course of the investigation was erratic. In June of 2009, Fisher told Scott Rossman that he had performed oral sex on Sandusky many times, and that Sandusky had ejaculated, keeping his eyes closed. A week later he said it only happened once. Yet in November 2009 he said he had never performed oral sex on Sandusky.
When reminded of his previous testimony, he complied by then saying it did happen. During the trial, when he was confronted with the fact that his testimony had changed frequently and asked why that was, Fisher told the jury that he had “white lied” to save himself embarrassment, because he was scared, because he was under stress and didn’t know what to do.
In his testimony, Fisher also said that after he began to stay overnight at the Sandusky household, “I acted out. I started wetting the bed. I got into fights with people.” But in fact, according to one of Fisher’s childhood friends and his father, Fisher had wet the bed repeatedly on sleepovers before he ever met Sandusky.
But none of these issues -- Fisher’s bed-wetting, his confusion regarding dates or places, or his changing story about oral sex – provided sufficient reason to disbelieve his story. A reporter attending the trial described Fisher’s testimony: “The sobs from the witness stand were loud and prolonged, the cracking voice of Victim No. 1 in the Jerry Sandusky child sexual molestation trial gasping for breath as he detailed repeated acts of oral sex with the former Penn State defensive coordinator.”
The testimony had a profound effect on the audience, including the jury. “The sighs and sniffs echoed around a rapt Centre County Courtroom as jurors looked on, a couple noticeably disturbed. A few grimaced at the retelling and shook their heads.” The reporter’s dramatic story continued:
The witness then breathed heavily. He followed with a deep sniff of his nose, then hung his head and openly wept. "He…" More sobs. "He put…" There was another prolonged sigh. An attempt at a breath. A loud cry. "He put his mouth on my privates," the witness said through a broken voice, seemingly just trying to spit it out. "I spaced. I didn't know what to do with all the thoughts running through my head. I just blacked out. I didn't want it to happen. I was froze."
In fact, in the trial transcript at that point, when Fisher talked about oral sex, he used tell-tale languge to indicate that these were recovered memories. Gillum had probably explained that Fisher couldn’t really recall the oral sex clearly because he “spaced,” he “blacked out,” he was “frozen.” Perhaps Gillum had explained that Fisher had dissociated, blanking it all from his memory. Fisher continued: “He blew on my stomach, and then it, it just happened. I don’t – don’t even know.” Indeed, it is possible that he truly didn’t know.
Fisher said that he had stayed overnight in the Sandusky household about 100 times between 2005 and 2008. His mother “kind of let me do my own thing.” In fact, “in some ways she encouraged it.”
He said that he had been repeatedly molested in the basement, yet he willingly continued to return for additional rounds of abuse for three years. The only explanation he gave for not confiding in his mother was that he was afraid she might not believe him and that he was embarrassed and scared. He frequently used the line, “I couldn’t.” During his alleged abuse, he couldn’t move. He was “froze.” He couldn’t talk. Understandably, the jury accepted this highly emotional testimony and found Jerry Sandusky guilty of all the charges concerning Aaron Fisher.
Not a Corbett fan or defender but I'd rather be accused of that then believing Sandusky is innocent in a desperate attempt to convince others Joe was God
Never said anything regarding Jerry’s innocence. I’m simply arguing that the shower incident was blown up because someone wanted it to be.
Blown up doesn't mean not real and that nothing happened. You legit said "Nothing happened that night" which is completely false. Something happened.
Good people were involved. They treated it like a human resource problem to be solved. Jerry showering alone with a boy in their facilities was a lawsuit waiting to happen. They took reasonable steps to prevent that going forward and they told the head of the program responsible for both Jerry and the kid.
If Curley thought there was a victim involved, he would have taken his name when Jerry offered it.
Both teams knew about him before the trial.Correct, it actually wasn’t even until several months after the trial that the media (Sara Ganim) reported that a young man claimed to be V2 but did not testify at trial.
John Ziegler, still in the infancy of his quest to discover the truth, called Ganim out for writing such a confusing article, and lamented that news that should have been a huge deal was basically ignored.
Which they did not enforce as Sandusky continued to bring kids in and abused another kid 6 months later.
Since Curley told him nothing actionable
No, it only absolves TSM. MM told Joe, Curley and Schultz about CSA and Curley did not tell Raykovitz that.
Raykovitz wasn't told anything actionable. Paterno told two interviewers that MM told him it was CSA. Even a football coach knows that should go to the police.
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