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FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again

He is a nobody. Not knowing who he is has nothing to do with any affiliation I might have with PSU. BS.
This is incorrect. He is a relatively important player in the local state college scene and was featured prominently in one of the (non-JZ) documentaries.
That burden is on you.
Wrong. The burden is always on the accuser.
By providing "documents" I cannot independently verify and are easily faked.
Please give me a specific example of one such document that would satisfy you. Your refusal to do this simple ask is baffling. The only possible explanation is that you are terrified of being proven wrong.
Such a person you describe would not spend hours on a site like this trying to convince a stranger he is something he isn't so you are right there.
That's your opinion and you are obviously wrong since here I am. There are other successful people on this site debate this topic. Why pick on me?
But your fake description of yourself is the reason (you don't realize you are admitting this) that you made up the fake persona.
There is nothing about my persona that is fake.
So, when someone refutes your conspiracy theories you just say "Well, I'm a scientist and I am smarter than you".
I don't believe I have ever said that. When my intelligence is questioned, I will defend myself, however. And I'm quite confident (based on your posting on this board) that I am smarter than you.
You are as much a scientist as the election of 2020 was stolen.
Completely false. The election was NOT stolen and I am definitely a scientist (and am happy to further prove it).
I have told you and I will not shut up while you lie.
If that's your criteria, you can shut up now: I've never lied on this site
Keep dancing Rooster
Keep ****ing ostriches, Ginger.
No one "tells me how to think" but I don't make it up as I go either as you do.
So where do your morals come from? What is the source? Who told you what your morals should be? Did you google it? Did your parents tell you? From a book perhaps? Please share what source you think is better than independent critical thought.
Nope.
Most people (99%) would think that hating children and wishing the human race to be extinct while defending pedophiles and their enablers to be immoral.
I don't care what other people think.
Exceptions would be your gamer buddies.
Not a gamer. Unless you are talking about sports. I do play competitive sports -- but those buddies and I don't usually talk about morality.
No you don't and your cult is hurting the efforts of LE to root out CSA
Wrong. False accusers hurts the efforts of LE to root out CSA.
I see, so as long as he is consistent within his own made-up moral framework to murder people and starve them then he is moral.
Within his own framework, yes.
So, that would also apply to Hitler and Putin who were/are remarkably consistent about the evil they were going to do.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that I have to consider them moral. Just as the Baptist doesn't have to consider beer consumption moral. People can have different morals -- that's OK. It is not for you to tell me (or anyone else) what are morals should be. You chose YOUR morals and abide by them. Everyone's morality is different. Stalin/Hitler etc are hyperbolic examples that make my point.
I know most everyone would call you immoral objectively.
They'd be wrong. If they said "He has different morals than I do" then that might be more accurate.
Yeah, I did. You are sick
Your (ill informed) opinion.
Some people think they are smart and are really dumb. That would be you sport.
LOL. You are way off base, Boots.
I found your profile. In blackface no less.
I have definitely never worn blackface (and would never) so whatever profile you found isn't mine.
I think you are stupid. I would say arrogant but even that requires some intellect. You sure don't have that.
It's stupid that you think I am stupid. And it's not arrogant if you can back it up, which I do every day.
 
Moving on to the investigation, I have faith that Gricar did exactly what he should have done. He investigated it with great energy, brought in a dozen or more people, and tried to entrap JS....he took all of that information and made a decision that is far more enlightening than yours, mine or the dude that keeps posting from Florida.
From The Department of Education review in regard to the 1998 investigation:
Documents reviewed by the Department and the Freeh Group suggest that some elements of the investigation were problematic. Those documents suggest that it was not clear who was in charge of the investigation and suggest that there was no cohesive investigative strategy. Furthermore, the record indicates that an overabundance of deference was vested in a report prepared by a counselor who was contracted to provide services for the Children and Youth Services. This counselor concluded that the boy was not being “groomed for future sexual victimization” by Sandusky, in spite of very serious and specific concerns that were raised by the victim’s psychologist.

It should be noted that there was only one psychologist involved and that was the Victim's. She was not brought in by investigators but by the mother. Seasock was not a psychologist but a counselor.
 
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@PSU2UNC you need to put this a-hnole on ignore. You keep getting caught in his unending trap of "who are you?" when that has nothing to do with the subject. Just place him on ignore and get on with life without this a-hnole.
Nole is just badgering PSU2UNC. He is hoping that PSU2UNC gets frustrated and provides some form of evidence about his identity. Nole craves attention. Ignore him and he’ll crawl back under his rock. Funny how Nole only started posting after the transition on Nov 1st. He needs to be banned.
 
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This is incorrect. He is a relatively important player in the local state college scene and was featured prominently in one of the (non-JZ) documentaries.

Wrong. The burden is always on the accuser.

Please give me a specific example of one such document that would satisfy you. Your refusal to do this simple ask is baffling. The only possible explanation is that you are terrified of being proven wrong.

That's your opinion and you are obviously wrong since here I am. There are other successful people on this site debate this topic. Why pick on me?

There is nothing about my persona that is fake.

I don't believe I have ever said that. When my intelligence is questioned, I will defend myself, however. And I'm quite confident (based on your posting on this board) that I am smarter than you.

Completely false. The election was NOT stolen and I am definitely a scientist (and am happy to further prove it).

If that's your criteria, you can shut up now: I've never lied on this site

Keep ****ing ostriches, Ginger.

So where do your morals come from? What is the source? Who told you what your morals should be? Did you google it? Did your parents tell you? From a book perhaps? Please share what source you think is better than independent critical thought.

Nope.

I don't care what other people think.

Not a gamer. Unless you are talking about sports. I do play competitive sports -- but those buddies and I don't usually talk about morality.

Wrong. False accusers hurts the efforts of LE to root out CSA.

Within his own framework, yes.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that I have to consider them moral. Just as the Baptist doesn't have to consider beer consumption moral. People can have different morals -- that's OK. It is not for you to tell me (or anyone else) what are morals should be. You chose YOUR morals and abide by them. Everyone's morality is different. Stalin/Hitler etc are hyperbolic examples that make my point.

They'd be wrong. If they said "He has different morals than I do" then that might be more accurate.

Your (ill informed) opinion.

LOL. You are way off base, Boots.

I have definitely never worn blackface (and would never) so whatever profile you found isn't mine.

It's stupid that you think I am stupid. And it's not arrogant if you can back it up, which I do every day.
Here's what I think is interesting. Reading each of your back and forth over and over seems like a dream. I bet you two might be more similar in real life and could even be positive acquaintances with trending interests, beliefs, and personality traits. Wouldn't THAT be funny? Two guys having a debate online who might be great friends were the two ever to meet. Additionally, I wonder if the amount of dialogue and facts/points covered in this post alone would be near to or equivalent to that of the transcription of the trial itself! The fact that such debate still exists at present paints clearly how unsettled and unsettling this situation remains for many, many, reasons and many, many people. I say for verity!
 
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This is incorrect. He is a relatively important player in the local state college scene and was featured prominently in one of the (non-JZ) documentaries.
BS
Wrong. The burden is always on the accuser.
Wrong the burden is on the claimant
Please give me a specific example of one such document that would satisfy you. Your refusal to do this simple ask is baffling. The only possible explanation is that you are terrified of being proven wrong.
No you won't give me a document I can independently verify. This is a simple ask. Give me information to prove your claim that I can look up (that you don't control) and verify. Simple.
That's your opinion and you are obviously wrong since here I am.
That you are here proves me right in not believing your false persona.
There are other successful people on this site debate this topic. Why pick on me?
But not as obsessively as you nor as idiotic. This shows me the fraud that you are. Are your feelings hurt?
There is nothing about my persona that is fake.
All of it is.
I don't believe I have ever said that. When my intelligence is questioned, I will defend myself, however. And I'm quite confident (based on your posting on this board) that I am smarter than you.
You say it consistently and no you are not smarter than anyone else who posts here. In many ways you are stupider.
Completely false. The election was NOT stolen and I am definitely a scientist (and am happy to further prove it).
Both are false. Trump lost and you ain't no scientist.
If that's your criteria, you can shut up now: I've never lied on this site
You have lied consistently. I will call you out each time.
Keep ****ing ostriches, Ginger.
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 Obsessed with animal porn.
So where do your morals come from? What is the source? Who told you what your morals should be? Did you google it? Did your parents tell you? From a book perhaps? Please share what source you think is better than independent critical thought.
What I will say is that morals must be objective or they are not morals but personal desires.
Yep
I don't care what other people think.
You obviously care what I think as you keep trying to make me believe your fake persona. You've gone to some lengths to fake it too. I like making you dance.
Not a gamer. Unless you are talking about sports. I do play competitive sports -- but those buddies and I don't usually talk about morality.
Remember I found your profile.
Wrong. False accusers hurts the efforts of LE to root out CSA.
Wrong. Idiots calling victims liars and defending CSA offenders make victims not want to come forward. This is what Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby did. You are just furthering their playbooks.
Within his own framework, yes.
Which is evil. Like you.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that I have to consider them moral. Just as the Baptist doesn't have to consider beer consumption moral. People can have different morals -- that's OK. It is not for you to tell me (or anyone else) what are morals should be. You chose YOUR morals and abide by them. Everyone's morality is different. Stalin/Hitler etc are hyperbolic examples that make my point.
That is ridiculous. Virtually any type of behavior could then be justified. Morals must be objective or they are meaningless. No wonder you defend pedophiles. And now brutal dictators as long as they are "consistent" Hogwash. Anyone hearing you defend types like Stalin and Hitler as "moral" would laugh at you. As I am now.
They'd be wrong. If they said "He has different morals than I do" then that might be more accurate.
No, what is accurate is that you have no morals.
Your (ill informed) opinion.
An opinion most would agree with.
LOL. You are way off base, Boots.
I'm right on target Rooster. LOL
I have definitely never worn blackface (and would never) so whatever profile you found isn't mine.
It's you
It's stupid that you think I am stupid. And it's not arrogant if you can back it up, which I do every day.
You are stupid and you sure don't back up any intellect except within you own delusion.
 
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@PSU2UNC you need to put this a-hnole on ignore. You keep getting caught in his unending trap of "who are you?" when that has nothing to do with the subject. Just place him on ignore and get on with life without this a-hnole.
He's a sick puppy that won't stop until I accept him. Which I won't.
 
Nole is just badgering PSU2UNC. He is hoping that PSU2UNC gets frustrated and provides some form of evidence about his identity. Nole craves attention. Ignore him and he’ll crawl back under his rock. Funny how Nole only started posting after the transition on Nov 1st. He needs to be banned.
Well, you are right about one thing. The past admin would have banned me the minute I questioned the nutty JoeBot narrative. So, I laid low and watched. I do realize that the truth is like hot coals down your back but the new management seems to be a bit more open minded and you need to continue to hear the truth. Until @PSU2UNC provides independently verifiable information about his claims (which he won't because they are lies) then I will call him the liar that he is.
 
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He is a nobody. Not knowing who he is has nothing to do with any affiliation I might have with PSU. BS.

That burden is on you.

By providing "documents" I cannot independently verify and are easily faked.

Such a person you describe would not spend hours on a site like this trying to convince a stranger he is something he isn't so you are right there. But your fake description of yourself is the reason (you don't realize you are admitting this) that you made up the fake persona. So, when someone refutes your conspiracy theories you just say "Well, I'm a scientist and I am smarter than you".

You are as much a scientist as the election of 2020 was stolen.

I have told you and I will not shut up while you lie.

Keep dancing Rooster

No one "tells me how to think" but I don't make it up as I go either as you do.

Liar

Most people (99%) would think that hating children and wishing the human race to be extinct while defending pedophiles and their enablers to be immoral. Exceptions would be your gamer buddies.

No you don't and your cult is hurting the efforts of LE to root out CSA

I see, so as long as he is consistent within his own made-up moral framework to murder people and starve them then he is moral. So, that would also apply to Hitler and Putin who were/are remarkably consistent about the evil they were going to do. I know most everyone would call you immoral objectively.

Yeah, I did. You are sick

Some people think they are smart and are really dumb. That would be you sport.

I found your profile. In blackface no less.

I think you are stupid. I would say arrogant but even that requires some intellect. You sure don't have that.
Just want to say that your follow-up posts are incredibly annoying to read and I'm not even referring to the content - nobody else responds in-line like you do. Why do you insist on doing it? I end up not reading your posts for the most part because I can't stand the format. Either save it all up for the end or respond individually to the points in their own posts. This isn't a chat room.
 
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In 1998, Sandusky admitted to hugging an 11-year-old boy naked in the showers. The boy's mom demanded that Jerry stop interacting with her son, and police were called. No charges filed. But Curley, Spanier, Paterno, etc. were all aware of the incident.

The MM incident was the 2001 incident.

I know you're not one of the Sandusky truthers, but there are such people in this thread.

My views on the matter would be different had the 1998 incident not happened. If the 2001 MM incident were the only one, I could understand the ambiguity on the matter and the failure to take any action. But 1998 was an obvious warning sign that Jerry needed help. Showering naked with young boys and fondling them is not normal behavior. And he was an active assistant coach at the time.

Truthers are everywhere.

Ten years after an illegal grand jury leak set off the media firestorm known as the Penn State sex abuse scandal, the evidence of official misconduct in this case is so pervasive and egregious that Jerry Sandusky deserves to walk out of prison today as a free man.


Since 2017, Big Trial has reviewed thousands of pages of court transcripts and legal proceedings in the case, along with hundreds of pages of confidential documents that are still under a judge's seal.
Taken together, those records tell a clear story -- the case against Sandusky is fatally flawed from top to bottom. A decade later, records show, the actions of many of the principal actors in this case, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the civil investigation at Penn State, are irredeemably tainted by misconduct, incompetence, unethical behavior, conflict of interest, collusion and/or corruption.
In addition, psychologists in the case used scientifically discredited recovered memory therapy to elicit suspect testimony from many of the alleged victims, whose improbable and constantly evolving stories to this day have never been vetted by anyone. Finally, the defendants' own medical records cast doubt on whether Sandusky was physically capable of performing the acts he was accused of.
Based on the evidence that I will present here, there's no longer any reason for any sane person to believe in the findings of both the civil and the criminal investigations conducted at Penn State. A decade later, the prevailing story line in the Penn State sex scandal about the man who's supposed to be the most notorious pedophile in America amounts to an X-rated fractured fairy tale that, when viewed from multiple angles, makes no freaking sense.
There's a looming shadow that's cast over the entire Penn State scandal, and that's the egregious conduct of an overzealous prosecutor on a rampage, former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, who was the lead prosecutor at Penn State.
Amelia Kittredge, the counsel for the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board who ran the investigation that resulted in Fina losing his license to practice law, memorably described Fina to the state's highest court as "someone who cannot or will not separate right from wrong."
A decade later, Fina's fingerprints are all over this travesty of a case, particularly when it comes to illegal grand jury leaks. But when we're talking about bad actors in the Sandusky case, Fina's got plenty of company.
The tragedy of all this is if the state gets its wish, Sandusky, who at 77, still professes his innocence, may die in prison before the truth about the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State is finally known.
Much of the material published below will be familiar to Big Trial readers, as it has been presented piecemeal over the past five years in some 60 blog posts published on this website.
The stories were written by myself as well as author Mark Pendergrast, who excerpted on bigtrial.net several chapters from his 2017 book, The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.


It was ten years ago this month, on Nov. 4, 2011, that the premature leak of the pending grand jury indictment of Sandusky to reporter Sara Ganim set off the media firestorm that would railroad Sandusky into spending what amounts to a life sentence in jail.
Just five days after that leak, without doing any fact-finding, Penn State's panicked board of trustees hastily fired Joe Paterno, the winningest football coach in America, as well as longtime Penn State President Graham Spanier.
With the tenth anniversary of the Penn State case upon us, rather than examine its own malpractice and negligence, the news media has chosen to regurgitate a completely discredited story line that's built around a big lie.


To counter the prevailing narrative, I've decided to publish in one spot large chunks of the evidence that clearly shows Sandusky was railroaded.
As outlined below, the level of official misconduct in this case is so extreme that it rises to the level of egregious. That's the term the state Supreme Court used in 1992 when it freed former Lower Merion High School Principal Jay Smith from prison, where he had been on death row for six years, after his conviction for the murders of English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children, whose bodies were never discovered.
In the Jay Smith case, the state Supreme Court found that prosecutors in the state attorney general's office committed egregious misconduct when they hid exculpatory evidence that would have benefitted the defendant. The hidden evidence included two grains of sand found between the toes on Reinert's body that indicated she may have died at the Jersey Shore, as opposed to the the prosecution's theory of the case, which was that Smith had killed Reinert in his basement.
In freeing Smith, the state Supreme Court barred a retrial on the grounds that it would amount to unconstitutional double jeopardy.
In the Sandusky case, the state attorney general's office outdid its previous standards for corruption by knowingly writing a false and inflammatory grand jury presentment, deliberately leaking that false presentment to the media, and then basically manufacturing the trial testimony that was used to convict Sandusky. To finish the job, the judges in this case trampled on Sandusky's constitutional rights at every turn, while turning a blind eye to overwhelming evidence of official misconduct.
Stated simply, the Sandusky case is a cluster f--k from start to finish that can't be undone.
The Rape In The Showers
Let's start at the beginning, with the headline charge in the grand jury presentment that has permanently convicted Sandusky in the minds of an entire nation, as well as the jury pool in Centre County. The headline charge that was also responsible for the firing of Paterno and Spanier.
“Remember that little boy in the shower,” then-Gov. Tom Corbett told the university’s board of trustees on Nov. 9, 2011, just before they decided, in a mad rush to judgment, to fire Paterno and Spanier without even taking a formal vote.
According to that grand jury presentment, a decade earlier, at 9:30 p.m. on March 1, 2002, a then-28-year-old Penn State graduate assistant walked into the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus.
[The prosecutors subsequently claimed they had gotten the date of the shower story wrong, and moved the date of that alleged incident back 13 months to Feb. 9, 2001.]
The graduate assistant, subsequently identified as assistant Penn State football coach Mike McQueary, heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" emanating from the showers, sounds that he "believed" to be evidence of "sexual activity."
According to the grand jury presentment, McQueary looked into the showers and saw "a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky."
According to the grand jury presentment, the "distraught" graduate assistant called his father for advice, and then he left he Lasch Building and went straight home.
"The next morning," according to the grand jury presentment, McQueary "went to [Coach Joe] Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
The rape in the showers, as well as the implication that McQueary promptly told Paterno about "what he had seen" -- as in that rape in the showers -- are both works of fiction written by overzealous prosecutors in the state attorney general's office.
How do we know this? From the words of the sole witness himself, in emails first disclosed by blogger Ray Blehar.
On Nov. 10, 2011, six days after the grand jury presentment was leaked, McQueary emailed deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach to tell her that the grand jury report the AG had just published was factually incorrect.
"I feel my words are slightly twisted and not totally portrayed correctly in the presentment," McQueary wrote. "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion. It was a sexual act and or way over the line in my opinion whatever it was."
In a second email that day to Eshbach, McQueary complained about "being misrepresented" in the media. To which Eshbach replied, "I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and it is hard not to respond. But you can't."
During a defamation suit that McQueary subsequently filed against Penn State, Eshbach was sworn in as a witness and asked to explain what she meant by telling McQueary not to talk.

"My advice to Mr. McQueary not to make a statement was based on the strengthening of my -- and saving of my case," Eshbach testified. "I did not want him [McQueary] making statements to the press at that time that could at some time be used against him in cross-examination. He [McQueary] was perfectly free to make a statement, but I asked him not to."
Less than a month after the grand jury presentment, Paterno issued a statement disclosing that when he went before the grand jury, he testified, "It was obvious that the witness [McQueary] was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report."
To further confirm this, on Dec. 16, 2011, McQueary testified under cross-examination that "I have never used the word anal or rape in this -- since day one."
Besides Paterno, McQueary told his story about "whatever it was" that he had allegedly witnessed within hours of the alleged incident in the Penn State showers to his father, John McQueary, and his father's friend, Dr. Jonathan Dranov, who, as a doctor, was a mandated reporter when it comes to allegations of sex abuse.
Approximately 10 days later, McQueary told Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior Vice President for finance and business Gary Schultz about what he had allegedly seen in the showers.
All five men -- Paterno, McQueary's father, Dr. Dranov, Curley and Schutz -- have testified under oath that Mike McQueary never told them that he witnessed anything sexual going on in the showers. Instead, Paterno, Curley and Schultz characterized what McQueary told them about as "horseplay."
On Nov. 23, 2010, recounting what was then a nearly decade-old incident in the showers, McQueary wrote out a statement to police that said whatever he witnessed took place during a brief time period that lasted between 30 and 45 seconds.
During that time, McQueary wrote to the cops, he glanced into a mirror once, which gave him a reflected view of the showers, and then he glanced directly into the showers.
McQueary told a grand jury in 2010 that the two “glances” he took each lasted “maybe one or two seconds.”
But the story McQueary told kept changing.
On Nov. 8, 2011, after the grand jury presentment became public, McQueary emailed a friend and claimed that instead of leaving the locker room and doing nothing to stop an alleged rape of a child in progress, "I did stop it, not physically, but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room."
In that email that was subsequently published in Thee Morning Call of Allentown, PA, on Nov. 15, 2011, McQueary also claimed that he told the police about the rape in the showers. But the next day, representatives from both the Penn State campus police and the State College police publicly stated that they had no record of McQueary ever reporting any sex crime to them.
In subsequent retellings of the shower story, McQueary claimed that when he left the locker room, he slammed his locker door, which he said, made Sandusky look up and stop the abuse. McQueary also claimed that as he was leaving the shower room, he took another glance in the showers a second time, to make sure that Sandusky and the boy remained apart.
At the Sandusky trial in 2012, McQueary testified that when he first glanced in the showers eleven years earlier, this time he said that glance lasted between one and five seconds, and that he saw Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall.
On the witness stand, McQueary claimed that he now recalled a "very slow, slow, subtle movement" of Sandusky's crotch against the boy's buttocks.
The identity of the victim, the boy in the showers, Deputy Attorney General Joe McGettigan told the jury at the Sandusky trial, was "known only to God." But jurors didn't buy that story, and despite convicting Sandusky on 45 other counts, they acquitted Sandusky on the charge of abusing the unknown boy in the showers.
[According to author Mark Pendergrast, McGettigan was lying when he said they didn't know the identity of the boy in the showers. He's a former Marine named Allan Myers, who was 14, and not 10 at the time of the alleged shower incident. Myers initially told the state police and a private investigator that Sandusky was a father figure and mentor who had never abused him, and that they were horsing around that day in the shower, snapping some towels, when McQueary walked in.
That was before Myers decided to drastically change his story and cash in, to the tune of a $6.9 million civil settlement. During Sandusky's bid for a new trial, Myers was sworn in as a witness in 2016 and asked which story he told was the truth. He responded by saying he couldn't remember 34 times.]
The Previously Undisclosed Federal Investigation At Penn State
The Penn State sex scandal was the subject of a criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office, and a supposedly independent civil investigation conducted at the cost of $8 million by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.
The investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office resulted in the indictment of Sandusky for the alleged rape of the boy in the showers, as well as for allegedly abusing seven other minors.
On June 22, 2012, a Centre County jury found Sandusky guilty of 45 out of 48 counts of sex abuse, and sentenced him to 30 to 60 years in jail.
The state attorney general's office also initially charged Spanier, Curley and Schultz with failing to report allegations of child abuse to authorities, along with allegedly committing perjury during grand jury testimony.
The Freeh Report concluded that there was an official cover up of Sandusky's sex crimes at Penn State. And that during that cover up, the Freeh Report claimed, Spanier, Curley and Schultz had displayed a "total and consistent disregard" for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's alleged victims, as well as a "striking lack of empathy."
In publishing their 267-page report, the authors of the Freeh Report claimed they operated "with total independence," and that "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report."
The media has dutifully reported on the two investigations done by the state attorney general's office, and former FBI Director Freeh, as well as their findings about a rape in the showers, followed by an official cover-up on the part of Penn State's top officials.
But there has been a total news blackout in the mainstream media on the third investigation done at Penn State. It was done by the federal government in 2012, which resulted in a 110-page report that initially was stamped confidential, but was finally declassified in 2017.
The federal investigation was conducted by former NCIS Special Agent and veteran cold case investigator John Snedden, then on assignment for the U.S. Federal Investigative Services.
Against the backdrop of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Snedden's job was to determine whether former Penn State President Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed amid allegations that he had orchestrated an official cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes.
With national security at stake, Snedden conducted a five-month investigation on the Penn State campus in 2012. And what did he find?
That the rape in the showers story told by McQueary made no sense, and that McQueary, who told so many different versions of that story -- according to author Mark Pendergrast, a total of five different accounts -- wasn't a credible witness.
Snedden also concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime in the showers to cover up. It was the exact opposite of the conclusions reached by the state attorney general's office, and the Freeh Report.
As a result, the feds cleared Spanier, and renewed his high level security clearance.
Why didn't Snedden buy the rape in the showers story?
Back in 2001, Snedden told Big Trial, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen. If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something about it.

"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.

If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"

Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, instead of going home and doing nothing about a child rape in progress, why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building?
As Snedden says, the story makes no sense. It was also egregious prosecutorial misconduct for the state attorney general's office to fictionalize and sensationalize such a flimsy, decade-old story, and then hang an entire grand jury presentment on it.
Evidence of Corruption, Collusion & Illegal Grand Jury Leaks
While the Freeh Group investigation claimed to operate with "total independence," there's a confidential record that meticulously documents ample evidence of routine collusion between the criminal investigation of Penn State conducted by the state attorney general's office, and the supposedly independent investigation conducted by the Freeh Group.
And that evidence comes from a seemingly unimpeachable source, former FBI Special Agent Kathleen McChesney, who was credited with starting the investigation that led to the capture of serial killer Ted Bundy.
In "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," McChesney revealed on camera how the federal investigation of the serial killer got started. A woman called and said, "I'm concerned about my boyfriend -- his name is Ted Bundy."
The girlfriend proceeded to detail Bundy's suspicious behavior that included following women around at night, hiding a knife in his car and keeping a bag of women's underwear in his apartment.
McChesney, who was on the task force that ultimately arrested Bundy, rose to become the only female FBI agent appointed to be the bureau's executive assistant director. Her credibility was such that in 2002, in the wake of the widespread sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic clergy, the U.S. Conference of Bishops hired McChesney to establish and lead its Office of Child and Youth Protection.
McChesney is also the author of a 2011 book, "Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way."
But in the Sandusky case, the decorated former FBI special agent is now known for another book she wrote -- an unpublished, confidential 79-page diary written in 2011 and 2012, back when McChesney was a private investigator working for her old boss, former FBI Director Freeh, while investigating Penn State.
In her diary, McChesney records multiple contemporaneous instances of then Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group.
It's clear from the McChesney diary that multiple grand jury documents were also regularly leaked to the Freeh Group, as was a 1998 police report on an earlier alleged shower incident that was investigated and found to be unfounded, resulting in a report that was supposed to have been expunged in 1999.
While the Freeh Group claimed in their report that they operated with "total independence" and "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report," the McChesney diary tells a different story.
Namely, that in conducting their supposedly independent investigation, the Freeh Group was regularly colluding with and working seemingly under the direction of the state attorney general's office, and particularly under the direction of deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
According to McChesney, members of the Freeh Group "don't want to interfere with their investigations," and that she and her colleagues were being "extremely cautious & running certain interviews by them."
McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group even "asked Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the A.G.'s office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for disadvantaged youths.
According to McChesney, Fina was actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses.
For example, McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, an investigator for Penn State Police who probed the earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy that turned out to be unfounded; he also wrote the police report that was supposed to be expunged.
After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."
According to the McChesney diary, Fina also routinely kept the Freeh Group up to date on what was going on with the grand jury investigation, telling Freeh's investigators secrets that the defendants and their lawyers weren't privy to.
For example, the night before former Penn State President Spanier, Curley and Schultz were going to be arrested, Gregory Paw, another Freeh investigator, sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest.

The subject of Paw's email: "CLOSE HOLD -- Important."
"PLEASE HOLD VERY CLOSE," Paw wrote his colleagues at the Freeh Group. "[Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina called tonight to tell me that Spanier is to be arrested tomorrow, and Curley and Schultz re-arrested, on charges of obstruction of justice and related charges . . . Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
When I asked Freeh, through a spokesperson, whether he as a private citizen during the Penn State investigation, was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, Freeh declined comment.
Other emails contained in documents under seal show that while investigating Penn State, Freeh may have had a conflict of interest. According to the emails, Freeh, whose investigators had telephone conferences with every Friday with NCAA officials, saw the Penn State investigation as a way to land the NCAA as a permanent client.

On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA. It appears we have Emmert's attention now."

In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
It took seven years but Freeh's efforts finally paid off. In August, 2019, the NCAA hired five employees of the Freeh Group to staff its new Complex Case Unit.
The McChesney diary was the basis for a motion for a new trial filed with the state Superior Court in 2020 by Sandusky's appeal lawyers. In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers requested an evidentiary hearing where McChesney would have been summoned to testify under subpoena and asked to authenticate the diary.
But a year later, on May 13, 2021, the state Superior Court denied that motion, ruling that Sandusky's lawyers did not file their appeal in a timely fashion.
Instead, the state Superior Court blasted Sandusky's appeal lawyers, saying that they "dithered for one-half a year" before bringing the newly discovered evidence to the court's attention.
Evidence of Jury Tampering
The Freeh Group's investigation at Penn State involved interviewing hundreds of people, including a Penn State faculty member before she was chosen as a juror in the Sandusky case.
And when it came time for defense lawyers to question the juror, she misrepresented what she had told the Freeh Group.
The juror was identified by Freeh's investigators as Laura Pauley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, who did not respond to a request for comment. During jury selection on June 6, 2012, Pauley was asked by Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, what she told Freeh's investigators.

"It was focused more on how the board of trustees interacts with the president," Pauley told Amendola, as well as "how faculty are interacting with the president and the board of trustees . . ."
But an April 19, 2011 confidential summary of that interview shows that the juror had already made up her mind about the guilt of Sandusky, by reading her local newspaper. According to the report of the interview, Pauley had also already decided that Penn State's top administrators were guilty of a cover up.
In her interview with Freeh's investigators, Pauley stated that she was "an avid reader of the Centre Daily Times" and that she believed that the leadership at Penn State just "kicks the issue down the road."

"The PSU culture can best be described as people who do not want to resolve issues and want to avoid confrontation," she told Freeh's investigators.

Pauley, a tenured professor who served on the Faculty Advisory Committee for three years, told Freeh's investigators that Penn State President Graham Spanier was "very controlling," and that "she feels that [former Penn State Athletic Director Tim] Curley and [former Penn State vice president Gary] Schultz are responsible for the scandal."

"She stated that she senses Curley and Schultz treated it [the scandal] the 'Penn State' way and were just moving on and hoping it would fade away."
While Pauley was being questioned by Amendola, Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote, "at no time during this colloquy, or any other time, did the prosecution disclose that it was working in collaboration with the Freeh Group which interviewed the witness."
Had Amendola known what Pauley told Freeh's investigators, he would have sought to have her stricken from the jury. He would have also asked the judge to find out whether any other jurors had met with Freeh's investigators.

At Sandusky's trial, while Amendola was questioning Pauley about what she told Freeh's investigators, Deputy Attorney Frank Fina sat silently at the prosecution table and said nothing.
Since the McChesney's diary documents how the Freeh Group routinely kept the attorney general's office abreast of the Freeh investigation, it's possible that Fina knew all about the Freeh Group's interview with Pauley.
It's also possible that Fina may have even been given his own copy of that interview with the juror.


On Feb. 19, 2020, the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania voted to suspend for a year and a day the law license of former deputy attorney general Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, for his "reprehensible" and "inexcusable" misconduct during the grand jury investigation of three Penn State officials that he accused of orchestrating a cover up.
Fina, the disciplinary board found, was guilty of purposely "misleading" a grand jury judge into thinking that Fina wasn't going to press Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel, into breaking the attorney-client privilege behind closed doors and betraying three top Penn State officials who were her former clients -- Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
Fina got Baldwin to cooperate by threatening her with an indictment for obstruction of justice. So Baldwin went into the grand jury and testified against her clients, without even notifying them of her betrayal.

After deliberately misleading the judge back in October 2012, Fina then "proceeded to question [Baldwin] extensively about the very subjects he represented to Judge [Barry] Feudale he would avoid," the disciplinary board concluded.
"These actions are reprehensible" and "inexcusable," the disciplinary board wrote.
Even worse, the disciplinary board found that Fina's alleged defense of his behavior before the board was "without substance." What Fina did, the disciplinary board said, was to tear down all the safeguards built into the criminal justice system by turning defense attorney Baldwin "into a witness for the prosecution against her clients."
"Unlike other lawyers, the prosecutor is more than a zealous advocate for a client," the state Supreme Court wrote. "The prosecutor bears as well the high and non-delegable duty of ensuring a fair process for the defendant and of comporting himself or herself always in a manner consistent with a position of public trust."
"To state it plain, instead of Baldwin serving as a shield for her former clients, her testimony was elicited and used by Fina as a sword against them, to devastating effect," the court wrote. In addition, when he was brought up on charges of misconduct, the disciplinary board concluded, Fina "failed to acknowledge he had a special responsibility to ensure justice and utterly failed to acknowledge the ramifications of his conduct."

The board found that "deflecting responsibility and displaying a lack of sincere remorse constitute aggravating factors."
Clearly, Fina was a man who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. Even if it meant breaking the law.
There was more fall-out from Fina's actions.
In 2013, then state Attorney General Katharine Kane ousted Judge Feudale from his duties as supervising grand jury judge in Harrisburg, citing his close relationship with Fina and lack of objectivity.
On Feb. 21, 2020, the state Supreme Court publicly censured Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice herself, for her "unfathomable" and "incompetent" actions in betraying her own clients.
In censuring Baldwin, the court noted her "lack of remorse for her actions," saying she "cast blame for her problems on everyone involved," but never herself.
The Corruption Of the Trial Judge In The Sandusky Case
The trial of Sandusky was presided over by the Honorable John Cleland, who oversaw a rush to judgment that resulted in Sandusky going from indictment to conviction at trial in just seven months.
How did the judge pull that off? By trampling on Sandusky's constitutional rights.

Before the trial started, Sandusky's defense lawyers tried to get the trial postponed so they could wade through 12,000 pages of grand jury transcripts he had just received only 10 days before the start of trial.

Amendola, Sanduksy's trial lawyer, begged for a continuance, telling the judge that he needed time to read the files and find out what Sandusky's accusers were saying about him; he also needed time to subpoena witnesses.

"We can't prepare . . . I felt like Custer at Little Bighorn for God's sake," Amendola testified during an appeals hearing. But Judge Cleland turned him down.
[Besides being unprepared, Joe Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, was painfully inept, as detailed on this blog by author Mark Pendergrast.]

Jerry Sandusky had a constitutional right to a fair trial. But in order to save Penn State football, which was being threatened with the death penalty by the NCAA, Sandusky had to be convicted and sitting in jail before the start of the 2012 college football season to wrap up the Penn State scandal in a nice, neat bow.
Putting Sandusky in jail for life fit right into the deal that PSU had struck with the NCAA, which was to voluntarily admit guilt and take their lumps, which included a $60 million fine. But the payoff for Penn State was that the Nittany Lions would escape the death penalty that the NCAA had threatened to impose on the football program in Happy Valley.

Jerry Sandusky also had a constitutional right to confront his accusers, but Judge Cleland took care of that as well.

The night before the preliminary hearing in the case, the only pretrial opportunity where Sandusky's lawyers would have had the right to confront his accusers -- the eight young men who claimed that Sandusky had abused them -- Judge Cleland convened an unusual off-the-record meeting of prosecutors, a magistrate, and defense lawyers at the Hilton Garden Inn at State College.
At the meeting, with prosecutors nodding in agreement, the judge talked Amendola into waiving the preliminary hearing so that Sandusky could remain out on bail for his trial. On their end of the deal, the state attorney general's office, which had previously requested bail of $1 million for Sandusky, agreed to lower that amount to $250,000.
The A.G. had also had threatened to file more charges against Sandusky, but according to the deal worked out by the judge during the off-the-record session at the Hilton Garden Inn, no more charges would be forthcoming.

So Amendola caved and took the deal. The grand result of Sandusky's lawyers waiving the preliminary hearing was that the Pennsylvania railroad that Sandusky was riding on would stay on schedule.
During the appeal process, after Judge Cleland's actions were disclosed regarding the Hilton Garden Inn conference, the judge had to turn over notes that he had taken during the off-the-record session. Cleland then voluntarily recused himself from continuing to preside over the appeals in the Sandusky case.
While the Sandusky case was headed to trial at breakneck speed, some people in the know were aware that the Honorable Judge Cleland wasn't going to budge on the scheduled trial date.
In the McChesney diary, on May 10, 2012, the former FBI agent noted in a conference call with Gregory Paw and Omar McNeil, two of Freeh's investigators, that Paw is going to talk to Fina, and that the "judge [is] holding firm on date of trial."

In an affidavit, Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, stated that McChesney didn't get that information from him.

"An obvious question arises as to whether or not the trial judge was communicating with a member of the Freeh Group, attorneys for the attorney general's office, or anyone else concerning the trial date," Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote.

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers sought to question Judge Cleland at an evidentiary hearing "to determine whether, and to what extent, collusion between the office of the attorney general, the Freeh investigation and the NCAA had an impact on the trial."
But the court denied that appeal.
Gullible Judges Deny A New Trial For Sandusky
During the appeals of Sandusky's conviction, his lawyers accused deputy attorney generals Fina and Eshbach of breaking state law by repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets.
But on Oct. 18, 2017, Jefferson County Presiding Judge John Henry Foradora issued a 59-page opinion where he cleared Fina and Eshbach of leaking, while denying Sandusky a new trial sought under the Post Conviction Relief Act.
In his opinion, Judge Foradora concluded that Fina and Eshbach weren't the leakers who were feeding reporter Sara Ganim intel about the impending grand jury presentment.
Why? Because Fina said so.

The judge bought Fina's alibi that he and Eshbach had supposedly set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers. But apparently the two prosecutors were about as successful as O.J. Simpson was in his hunt for the real killers.
Fina had asked his old buddy, Judge Barry Feudale, the supervising judge of the grand jury, to investigate the leak, Judge Foradora wrote. So, Judge Foradora decided, after hearing testimony from Fina, that it couldn't be Fina or Eshbach who were doing the leaking at the A.G.'s office.
At the PCRA hearing, "the testimony, then did not support the idea that the prosecution leaked grand jury information for any reason, let alone for the purpose of generating more victims," the judge wrote.
"If anything it supports the opposite conclusion, because while someone might be skeptical about the validity of Eshbach and Fina's internal 'trap'" to catch the real leakers, the judge wrote. "It is a fact of human nature that one engaged in or aware of misconduct he does not wish to have exposed does not ask an outside source to investigate it."
Unless the judge in question is an old pal. As in wink, wink.
One of the allegations of a leak raised by Sandusky's lawyers involved an incident related by the prosecution's official whistle blower in the Sandusky case, Mike McQueary.
At the 2017 trial of former PSU President Graham Spanier, McQueary was asked by a prosecutor how he found out that Sandusky was going to be arrested.
During the bye week of the 2011 Penn State football season, McQueary said, "I was on my way to Boston for recruiting and I was going from the F terminal over to the B terminals over in Philadelphia Airport."
That's when "the AGs called," McQueary said, referring specifically to Eshbach. According to McQueary, Eshbach told him "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."
But rather than believe McQueary, Judge Foradora decided to trust Fina and Eshbach.
In denying Sandusky a new trial, Judge Foradora foolishly staked his entire 59-page opinion on the credibility and integrity of Frank Fina, which is now in tatters.
On Feb. 5, 2019, the state Superior Court, in a 70-page written by another gullible judge, the Honorable Judge Carolyn Nichols compounded this lunacy by denying Sandusky's appeal of Judge Foradora's opinion not to grant a new trial.
Once again, Judge Nichols and another court bought Fina and Eschbach's explanation that they had set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers, and didn't do any leaking themselves.
Recovered Memory Therapy
According to Mark Pendergrast, therapists in the Sandusky case used scientifically-discredited recovered memory therapy on six of Sandusky's eight accusers at trial, and on several other alleged victims who wound up getting civil settlements.
Pendergrast focused on the work of therapist Mike Gillum, who for three years, in weekly and sometimes daily skull sessions, basically brainwashed Aaron Fisher, Victim No. 1, into recalling memories of abuse, after he had originally denied he had been abused.
In a book Gillum co-wrote with Fisher, Silent No More, the therapist, who was convinced from the get-go that Sandusky was a serial abuser, stated that he sought to “peel back the layers of the onion” of Fisher's brain to recover memories of abuse that Gillum already knew were there.
During these weekly and sometimes daily sessions, Fisher didn't have to say anything. According to Silent No More, Gillum would guess what happened and Fisher only had to nod his head or say Yes.
“I was very blunt with him when I asked questions but gave him the ability to answer with a yes or a no, that relieved him of a lot of burden,” Gillum wrote. In the same book, Aaron Fisher recalled: “Mike just kept saying that Jerry was the exact profile of a predator. When it finally sank in, I felt angry.”
The grand result of Gillum's work --- Fisher cashed in for $7.5 million.
Another alleged victim who initially denied he had been abused, Dustin Struble, Victim No. 7, dramatically changed his story after he also underwent recovered memory therapy.
Like many of the other alleged victims in this case, Struble's story kept evolving. Struble told the grand jury that Sandusky had never touched his privates or touched him in the shower, which Struble said he and Sandusky shared with other coaches and players.
But at Sandusky's trial, Struble changed his story to say that Sandusky put his hands down the boy's pants when they were riding in Sandusky's car. And this time when he told the story about showering with Sandusky, Struble claimed that Sandusky was alone with him in the shower. And that Sandusky grabbed the boy and pushed his own naked front against the boy's backside, then he touched the boy's nipples and blew on his stomach.
When asked why his account had changed, Struble testified, "That doorway that I had closed has since been reopening more. More things have been coming back and things have changed since that grand jury testimony. Through counseling and different things, I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside than I did at that point."
Struble's new story won him a civil settlement of $3,250,000.
A prominent critic of recovered memory therapy is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world’s foremost experts on the malleability of human memory. Loftus, who testified at a hearing on behalf of Sandusky’s unsuccessful bid for a new trial, has given lectures on how memory works to the Secret Service and FBI; she also has a contract to work for the CIA
On May 11, 2017, testifying by phone, Loftus told Judge Foradora, “There is no credible scientific support for this idea of massive repression."
Nor is there any credible support, she added, for the idea that “you need psychotherapy to dig it out, and you can reliably recover these memories . . . in order to heal yourself.”
In many jurisdictions, Loftus told the judge, cases involving repressed memories have been thrown out of court.
Human memory “doesn’t work like a recording device” that can simply be played back at a later date, Loftus told the judge. Memories evolve over time and can be distorted or contaminated with suggestive and leading questioning. Her experiments have also shown that people can be talked into believing things that aren’t true.

“You can plant entirely false memories in the minds of people for events that never happened,” she explained to the judge. And once those false memories are planted, she said, people will relate those memories as if they were true, “complete with high levels of detail and emotion.”
But at the Sandusky trial, repressed memories were consistently presented as fact. Prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury before calling his witnesses that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization,” because “they don’t want to remember.” That’s why the investigation was slow,” McGettigan told the jury, because “the doors of people’s minds” were closed.
After a jury found Sandusky guilty, then Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly held a press conference outside the courthouse where she said of the alleged victims, “It was incredibly difficult for some of them to unearth long-buried memories of the shocking abuse they suffered at the hands of this defendant.”
During the appeal hearing over Sandusky's conviction, memory expert Loftus told Judge Foradora, “It seems pretty evident that there were drastic changes in the testimony of some of the [Sandusky] accusers.”
One reason for those changes, she testified, was the “highly suggestive” way police and psychotherapists interviewed them.
But rather than listen to Loftus, and the science, Judge Foradora chose to believe the recovered memories of the victims, which was the basis for the state attorney general's X-rated fractured fairy tale.
Victims' Stories Totally Unvetted
At Penn State, the university paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims without investigating anything.
The average cost of the settlements was $3.3 million, more than double the average settlements paid out by the Catholic Church in abuse cases in Los Angeles and San Diego.
In 2013, the extravagant payouts prompted the university’s insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company [PMA], to sue Penn State and the various “John Doe” claimants. The lawsuit ended three years later in a confidential settlement that lawyers in the case told Big Trial they were prohibited from discussing.
One of those lawyers is Eric Anderson of Pittsburgh, an expert witness who testified on behalf of the insurance carrier.

“It appears as though Penn State made little effort, if any, to verify the credibility of the claims of the individuals,” Anderson wrote on October 5, 2015. In his report, Anderson decried “the absence of documentation” in the claims, saying in many cases there was “no signed affidavit, statement or other means of personal verification of the information which I reviewed."
“I do not know why so many of the cases were settled for such high sums of money,” Anderson wrote.

In paying out the $118 million, the university did not undertake any of the usual methods to vet the stories of the accusers, such as having them questioned by private investigators, deposed by lawyers, personally examined by forensic psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.
Instead, the university just wrote checks.
How The Alleged Victims Were Recruited
On May 1, 2009, deputy state attorney general Eshbach wrote a formal request to initiate a grand jury probe of Sandusky. Nineteen months later, the state attorney general's investigation of Sandusky the alleged serial pedophile, had produced only one alleged victim, the brainwashed Aaron Fisher.
To make matters worse, the first grand jury that heard Fisher testify didn't believe him, so they issued no indictment.
But in November 2010, the A.G. got a tip about the shower incident that Mike McQueary had supposedly witnessed a decade earlier, a breakthrough that suddenly energized the Sandusky investigation.
On March 10, 2011, the state attorney general convened a second grand jury. They were aided by reporter Sara Ganim, who on March 31, 2011, wrote the first story about the secret grand jury probe of Sandusky that revealed for the first time the allegation that Sandusky was a serial sexual abuser of children.
The Ganim story basically functioned as a want add for the A.G.'s office to recruit more sex abuse victims.
The state police and the attorney general's office promptly created a seven-member joint task force and sent them out knocking on the doors of hundreds of young men who were alums of Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for disadvantaged youths, hunting for alleged victims.
But the joint task force didn't have much success.
As one frustrated investigator emailed on June 3, 2011, as recounted by author Mark Pendergrast in his book, “We have recently been interviewing kids who don’t believe the allegations as published and believe Sandusky is a great role model for them and others to emulate.”
On Jan. 4, 2012, Anthony Sassano, a narcotics agent from the state attorney general's office who led the Sandusky investigation, testified that the special task force interviewed 250 men who were former members of the Second Mile charity, but found only one man who claimed to be a victim of abuse.
Ask yourself a simple question. If Jerry Sandusky was allegedly the most notorious pedophile in America who's been on rampage in a small town of 42,000 for nearly four decades, why does the state have to create a special joint task force to go out knocking on doors, and hunting down victims?
Shouldn't they be lined up around the block?
But then the grand jury presentment hit the media. On Nov. 10, 2011, Business Insider ran a story predicting that Penn State wound wind up paying Sandusky's accusers a total of $100 million.
Suddenly, every plaintiff’s lawyer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had been alerted about a possible jackpot at Penn State. All they had to do to hit the lottery was to round up some guys who were willing to claim they were abused.
In seeking a lottery payoff, these alleged victims wouldn't even have to give up their real names. The media, for sure, could be counted on to keep their identities secret. While they were vilifying and destroying Jerry Sandusky's name and reputation every day.
After Sandusky was convicted, the floodgates opened, and 41 men filed civil claims for damages. Thirty-six of them would eventually get paid.

And it didn't require any heavy lifting.


Penn State had hired Kenneth Feinberg, dubbed “The Master of Disaster,” to oversee the settlement process with victims. Feinberg specialized in a global approach to settlements, rather than duke it out in court with one individual claim after another.
At Penn State, Feinberg prepared a form for alleged victims that merely required their lawyers to make their allegations, as part of what was billed as a “claims resolution process."
The claims as submitted in more than 120 pages of confidential records that the press or public has never seen, are entirely devoid of evidence.
None of the initial claims were authenticated by signed affidavits, there were no reports of forensic evidence or witness testimony, or corroboration of any kind. Except when a few of the victims who were pals got each other to vouch for their stories.
The stories of the alleged victims, which were often improbable, and featured constantly changing details, remain completely unvetted to this day.
Jack Rossiter, a former FBI agent of 30 years, investigated more than 150 cases of alleged sex abuse as a private detective employed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia between 2003 and 2007.
As far as the Penn State case was concerned, Rossiter told Big Trial he was surprised to hear that apparently not one of the 36 alleged victims ever told anyone about the attacks when they allegedly occurred -- a period that spanned nearly four decades.
Got that? Over four decades, in at least 500 alleged sex crimes involving 36 innocent victims, there was not one contemporaneous report of abuse.

If a pedophile was running loose for that long in small town, Rossiter said, "You would think someone would pick it up. Either at school or the parents or a close friend."
On top of that, in a scandal involving national publicity, like the Sandusky case, Rossiter said, if you were a gate keeper at Penn State, you'd have to be on guard against criminals and drug addicts coming forward to seek a pay day.
"With national headlines and all these people lining up, you'd have to be more skeptical" of the claims," Rossiter said.
But Penn State never even ran background checks to see if any of the alleged victims had criminal records. When Big Trial checked, we found that 12 of the 36 alleged victims who got paid did indeed have criminal records, including arrests for tampering with and fabricating physical evidence, identity theft, criminal conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property, theft by deception, robbery and terroristic threats.
The way the system is supposed to work, somebody at Penn State should have investigated the stories told by the alleged victims.
"That's what you do, you investigate," Rossiter emphasized. "The key is to find corroboration for the victim's story, to see if their stories hold up."
But Penn State didn't do any of that. Instead, they just wrote checks.
Why? Because the trustees had already decided that they would pay any price to save their beloved Nittany Lions.
As for Jerry Sandusky, and his constitutional rights, nobody gave a damn.
The Defendant's Medical Records
In their civil claims of abuse, the 36 alleged victims portray Sandusky as a sexually insatiable predator with the virility of a male porn star in his 20s. According to the claims, Sandusky was constantly on the prowl for forced sex with boys, and never had any problems achieving an erection.
Sandusky’s medical records, however, from 2006 to 2008, depict a man in his 60s suffering from all kinds of ailments and conditions, including atrophied testicles and chronic prostatitis.

A doctor who reviewed Sandusky’s medical records, but asked to remain anonymous, told Big Trial in an email, “This guy couldn’t get an erection no matter how he tried. Even Cialis/Viagra would probably not work.”
The doctor added that because the medical issue was never raised at trial, Sandusky should have sued his lawyers for malpractice.

Doctors described Sandusky as having an “androgen deficient state,” meaning he had levels of male sex hormones so low it was unhealthy. Sandusky’s medical records state that he was undergoing “testosterone replacement therapy for significant low levels of both free and total testosterone.”
Sandusky's medical records reveal that he was being treated with antibiotics for chronic prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate commonly caused by bacterial infection that results in frequent and painful urination. Prostatitis can also cause sexual problems such as low libido, erectile dysfunction, and painful ejaculations.

Sandusky’s chronic prostatitis began in 2005 and continued through 2008, his medical records state. Doctors described Sandusky as being “light-headed” and suffering “dizziness” from using Flomax, which he began taking in 2006, because he was having trouble urinating.

In addition to his urological problems, Sandusky’s medical records list many ailments that raise the question of whether Sandusky was healthy and energetic enough to be out having rampant, promiscuous sex with all those boys.
Sandusky’s ailments include cysts on one of his kidneys, a small aneurysm in his brain, a 2006 hernia operation, bleeding hemorrhoids, chest pains, headaches, drowsiness, elevated blood pressure, and sleep apnea.
He was on thyroid medication when he went to the doctors and told them he began “falling apart” in 2005. By 2008, his doctors wrote, Sandusky reported he was falling asleep at the wheel and gotten involved in two car accidents.

The medical records also describe a distinctive feature of Sandusky’s anatomy that none of his accusers have ever mentioned.
On February 2, 2006, Dr. Frank B. Mahon at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, who was treating the 62-year-old Sandusky for chronic prostatitis, wrote that Sandusky had “small” testicles of “perhaps 2 cm” or centimeters each, which equals .787 of an inch. The average size of adult testicles are between two and three inches.

On December 18, 2008, another doctor at the Hershey Medical Center wrote that the 6-foot-1 210-pound former coach, nearly 65, had “marked testicular atrophy with very little palpable testicular tissue.”

In stark contrast to the way he is portrayed in the claims against him, a couple of law enforcement types who have observed Sandusky in close quarters describe him as an anomaly in the hyper-macho world of football coaches, saying he comes across as asexual.
There may be genetic reasons for that. Sandusky’s medical records state that as a boy, he had “delayed development of secondary sexual characteristics” that required shots, but they don’t say what kind of shots. Sandusky told his doctors he was “unable to have children” because his “sperm counts were low.”

Sandusky's medical records state that he suffered from hypothyroidism, [underactive thyroid] as well as hypogonadism, meaning his body didn’t produce enough testosterone to maintain good health.

The medical records, which date from 2006 to 2008, cover the same time period during which a couple of key trial accusers, Aaron Fisher and Sabastian Paden, claimed they were being raped hundreds of times by Sandusky.
Fisher settled his civil case against Penn State for $7.5 million. Paden, whose lawyers won in court access to all the confidential records in the Penn State case that are still under a judge's seal, got the biggest pay out of all the alleged victims, $20 million.

Totaling up the allegations made in 36 civil claims that were paid, the alleged victims stated that they had been raped or sexually abused by Sandusky at a minimum of least 520 to 620 times.

At his trial, Sandusky’s lawyers never used his medical records in his defense, probably because they didn’t have time to even read boxes of grand jury testimony, or serve subpoenas on witnesses.

In prison, Sandusky’s appeals lawyer said, he remains on a half-dozen medications, including continuing testosterone replacement therapy, and Terazosin for continuing prostate infections.

There’s another angle to the story of Sandusky’s medical records -- there are 36 alleged victims who got paid after claiming they were raped and abused hundreds of times by Sandusky, including nine alleged victims who claim that Sandusky had engaged with them in high-risk and apparently unprotected anal sex.
Yet not one of these alleged victim has ever asked to see Sandusky’s medical records, to find out whether he had HIV or any venereal disease. Nor has any victim ever sought to have Sandusky tested for any diseases.
That's the kind of evidence that would aid a criminal case. In a civil case, if Sandusky was found to have infected his victims with disease, it would have raised the damages.

But in the Penn State case, none of the alleged victims ever pursued the disclosure of any of Sandusky’s medical records.
You have to ask why.
And whether the answer is because it never really happened.
The Last Word
Jerry Sandusky is a relic from another time. He's an only child who was the son of Polish immigrants. His father, Art Sandusky, a trolley conductor, was the coach of a local baseball team who ran a recreation center that took in troubled kids and hired disabled people as employees.
At the recreation center, the motto hung on the wall by Sandusky's father said, "Don't give up on a bad boy, because he might turn out to be a great young man." Jerry Sandusky, a devout Methodist who grew up in that rec center, adopted his father's mission, and was out to save the world one troubled kid at a time.
At the rec center, it was a common practice for men and boys to shower together. When Sandusky first got in trouble in 1998, for taking a shower with 11 year-old Zachary Konstas, after a complaint from the boy's mother, the incident wound up being investigated by authorities that included an official from the Centre County Children and Youth Services, a detective from the Penn State police, an investigator from the state Department of Public Welfare, the boy's therapist, as well as a psychologist hired by the county.
The authorities concluded that there was no evidence of abuse or of any sexual conduct whatsoever, so the mother's alleged claim was officially deemed unfounded. As recounted in The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment, by author Mark Pendergrast, the psychiatrist who questioned young Zach Konstas for an hour concluded:

"The behavior exhibited by Mr. Sandusky is directly consistent with what can be seen as an expected daily routine of being a football coach. This evaluator spoke to various coaches from high school and college football teams and asked about their locker room behavior. Through verbal reports from these coaches it is not unusual for them to shower with players. This appears to be a widespread, acceptable situation and it appears that Mr. Sandusky followed through with patterning that he has probably done without thought for many years."
The problem in the Sandusky case is that the customs of an earlier time, as in a communal shower for men and boys, are being viewed through a modern lens.
Since he couldn't have kids of his own, Jerry and his wife Dottie adopted six children, five girls and a boy. Only one of those adopted kids, Matt Sandusky, who took his adoptive dad's name, would ultimately claim to be abused.


According to author Mark Pendergrast, after Matt sat next to his adoptive mother on the first day of the Sandusky trial and heard the alleged victim spout accusations of abuse that were the result of recovered memory therapy, Matt came home and told one of his siblings, "This is ridiculous. Anyone can make accusations without evidence, and get paid. I could, you could, anyone could . . . but I actually have morals."
Three days later, Matt famously flipped. After first telling authorities he hadn't been abused, Matt gave a statement to the police that said that after he went to a psychiatrist, he had recalled memories of past abuse. His flip earned him an appearance on Oprah, and a civil settlement of $325,000.


The other five of Sandusky's adopted kids, however, told Pendergrast that they'd never been abused, and that they didn't believe that Matt had ever been abused either.
I'll leave the last words to the man who's been in prison for the past ten years as a result of egregious official misconduct and a decade of media malpractice.
"I am an innocent person, wrongly convicted by sinister ways of deception, dishonesty and disregard," Sandusky wrote from prison.
"I did not commit the heinous crimes I was accused of doing. Oral and anal sex never entered my mind, nor did I ever engage in them with anybody. This includes my wife, who has been my only sexual partner and loyally stands with me today."
 
Just want to say that your follow-up posts are incredibly annoying to read and I'm not even referring to the content - nobody else responds in-line like you do. Why do you insist on doing it? I end up not reading your posts for the most part because I can't stand the format. Either save it all up for the end or respond individually to the points in their own posts. This isn't a chat room.
It’s called narcissism to the extreme
 
Here's what I think is interesting. Reading each of your back and forth over and over seems like a dream. I bet you two might be more similar in real life and could even be positive acquaintances with trending interests, beliefs, and personality traits. Wouldn't THAT be funny? Two guys having a debate online who might be great friends were the two ever to meet.
Seems very, very unlikely.
 
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Until @PSU2UNC provides independently verifiable information about his claims (which he won't because they are lies) then I will call him the liar that he is.
As soon as your provide me with a concrete example of what will finally shut you up, I will be happy to provide it. But you keep dodging this because you know you are wrong and don't want to eat crow.
 
Which part? He is absolutely front and center in "Happy Valley" (the documentary) and was well known around town.
Wrong the burden is on the claimant
The burden is always on the accuser. That's the way your precious court system works.
No you won't give me a document I can independently verify. This is a simple ask. Give me information to prove your claim that I can look up (that you don't control) and verify. Simple.
Simple: give me a few (or at least one) example of such a document. Your refusal to do this is mind boggling.
That you are here proves me right in not believing your false persona.
Nothing about my persona is false so you have proven nothing.
But not as obsessively as you nor as idiotic. This shows me the fraud that you are. Are your feelings hurt?
LOL. The only fraud here is the idea that you have an intellect.
All of it is.
Nope. Not a shred.
You say it consistently and no you are not smarter than anyone else who posts here. In many ways you are stupider.
I don't know everyone who posts here. I'm sure there are some very smart people. But you are not one of those people.
Both are false. Trump lost and you ain't no scientist.
I am definitely a scientist and happy to prove it. Just tell me an example of the documentation you require to STFU.
You have lied consistently. I will call you out each time.
Never lied. You are wasting your time.
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 Obsessed with animal porn.
Nope, obsessed with Letterkenny.
What I will say is that morals must be objective or they are not morals but personal desires.
You are terrible at logic, debate and intellectual constructs.
You obviously care what I think as you keep trying to make me believe your fake persona. You've gone to some lengths to fake it too. I like making you dance.
"Caring what other people think" and "defending yourself against pretty awful allegations" are two different things. I don't care if you "like me", but falsely accusing me of: lying, wearing blackface and stealing valor, is completely acceptable and I won't back down from defending myself.
Remember I found your profile.
I do not have a gaming profile, so whatever you found isn't me.
Wrong. Idiots calling victims liars and defending CSA offenders make victims not want to come forward. This is what Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby did. You are just furthering their playbooks.
I'm defending those other because they are guilty. I only defend the innocent. You surely cannot think that all accusers in every case are telling the truth, can you?
Which is evil. Like you.
Evil is subjective. Some people think sex outside of marriage is evil. They are allowed to think that but no one should force their morals on others.
That is ridiculous. Virtually any type of behavior could then be justified. Morals must be objective or they are meaningless.
You still haven't told me where you got your moral structure. Who told you what your morals should be? It's odd that you won't answer this question.
No wonder you defend pedophiles.
I defend innocent men, not pedophiles.
And now brutal dictators as long as they are "consistent" Hogwash. Anyone hearing you defend types like Stalin and Hitler as "moral" would laugh at you. As I am now.
I'm not saying I think they are moral within my moral construct. You are very bad at this.
No, what is accurate is that you have no morals.
Completely incorrect. What is accurate is that you don't understand what morals are.
An opinion most would agree with.
I don't care what the unwashed masses think.
100% is not. If you think it is, prove it (you cannot).
You are stupid and you sure don't back up any intellect except within you own delusion.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
 
Which part? He is absolutely front and center in "Happy Valley" (the documentary) and was well known around town.
Baloney
The burden is always on the accuser. That's the way your precious court system works.
The burden is always of the one who asserts. That is the way of debate. We aren't in court where you would be declared a fraud.
Simple: give me a few (or at least one) example of such a document. Your refusal to do this is mind boggling.
If I claimed to be an author and you called me a liar. I would give you the titles of my books and invite you to look them up. Then you could independently verify it. It's mind boggling you can't figure that out being the genius you are.
Nothing about my persona is false so you have proven nothing.
All of it is
LOL. The only fraud here is the idea that you have an intellect.
No you are fraud who pretends to have an intellect.
Nope. Not a shred.
Every bit
I don't know everyone who posts here. I'm sure there are some very smart people. But you are not one of those people.
You are by far the dumbest I have seen
I am definitely a scientist and happy to prove it. Just tell me an example of the documentation you require to STFU.
See above. Then stand and deliver
Never lied. You are wasting your time.
Calling out frauds is always a good use of time.
Nope, obsessed with Letterkenny.
Is that a porn show you watch?
You are terrible at logic, debate and intellectual constructs.
I run circles around you.
"Caring what other people think" and "defending yourself against pretty awful allegations" are two different things. I don't care if you "like me", but falsely accusing me of: lying, wearing blackface and stealing valor, is completely acceptable and I won't back down from defending myself.
Which shows your utter stupidity as you remain anonymous! LOL if you can't see the stupidity in that well...but you are rather stupid. What are you worried about? Your anonymous reputation on a cult board? LOLOLOLOLOL
I do not have a gaming profile, so whatever you found isn't me.
You do
I'm defending those other because they are guilty. I only defend the innocent. You surely cannot think that all accusers in every case are telling the truth, can you?
The eight who testified against Sandusky are telling the truth. You are defending the guilty because of your religion.
Evil is subjective. Some people think sex outside of marriage is evil. They are allowed to think that but no one should force their morals on others.
Evil is not subjective but then again we identify your immorality.
You still haven't told me where you got your moral structure. Who told you what your morals should be? It's odd that you won't answer this question.
No, it is none of your business except for you to know that morality and evil are objectively shown. That you say anything goes as long as one is "internally consistent" is sick,
I defend innocent men, not pedophiles.
You defend a pedophile and his enablers who all went to jail
I'm not saying I think they are moral within my moral construct. You are very bad at this.
You are very sick at this. You are saying they (Stalin, Hitler and Putin) "moral framework" is valid. That is insane.
Completely incorrect. What is accurate is that you don't understand what morals are.
What is accurate is you have no morals.
I don't care what the unwashed masses think.
What a clown! LOLOLOLOL And a delusional narcissist as well. Wow!
100% is not. If you think it is, prove it (you cannot).
No one else uses that handle. It's you. Surprised you leave it up there. LOL
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Yeah it is funny you think you are smart.
 
Just want to say that your follow-up posts are incredibly annoying to read and I'm not even referring to the content - nobody else responds in-line like you do. Why do you insist on doing it? I end up not reading your posts for the most part because I can't stand the format. Either save it all up for the end or respond individually to the points in their own posts. This isn't a chat room.
Why do you read them then. And what about @PSU2UNC? He does exactly the same thing. Do you read his posts?
 
This is a well researched article and highlights how sexual assaults were often not well prosecuted/investigated/adjudicated, especially by small town police departments, in previous decades.

I would also point out that there is relatively little documentation and interviews with individuals about events that happened decades before are going to have issues with accuracy.

However, I take objection to them trying to link this to PSU or to Paterno. This has almost nothing to do with PSU and almost nothing to do with Paterno.

Even one of the victims was clear that they didn't want to be interviewed if they were going to try to smear PSU.

" "Is this going to be some kind of exposé about Penn State?" she asked skeptically."

I strongly disagree with their assertion that Paterno was "involved in the case" other than to the extent that he needed to be aware the legal status of his players.

Joe did everything right, including instructing his players to tell the truth even if it meant testifying against their teammate. He also advised them not to talk to the media, which I think is good policy in cases like this.

And everything that happened after his conviction REALLY had nothing to do with Penn State.

Irv Pankey also comes across very well -- Success with Honor personified.

But this is yet another ESPN hit piece -- looking for clicks at the expense of the Paterno name.




Strangely, Jerry Sandusky was convicted in 2012 of sexually assaulting multiple boys both during and after his career as an assistant coach for Penn State’s football team. The scandal led to the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno and the criminal convictions of three top university officials, including President Graham Spanier. Penn State paid more than $100 million to Sandusky’s victims and its reputation was tarnished.

Gerald Arthur Sandusky, better known as Jerry, started at defensive end for Penn State’s football team from 1963-65 and worked as an assistant coach under Paterno from 1969-99. In his twenty-three years as defensive coordinator, he was largely credited with making Penn State football into “Linebacker U.”

In 1977, Sandusky founded a Centre County-based charity for youth from troubled families called The Second Mile. It was recognized by President George H.W. Bush as among his “Thousand Points of Light” highlighting volunteerism in America, and by 2011 the charity worked with more than 100,000 young people across Pennsylvania and had an annual budget of $2.4 million. However, when a Pennsylvania grand jury indicted Sandusky in 2011 after a two-year investigation, prosecutors said Sandusky used The Second Mile to groom his victims.

Sandusky-1.jpg
Pennsylvania State Police and Attorney General’s Office officials took former football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky to his arraignment hearing. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
In June 2012, Sandusky was convicted on 45 of 48counts related to serial sex abuse of children and sentenced to 30 years to 60 years in state prison. His appeals to date have failed, and he is currently serving his sentence at the state prison at Laurel Highlands in Somerset County. In the years since the scandal broke, Penn State has paid more than $109 million to thirty-five people who claim to have been victims of Sandusky dating as far back as 1971. Penn State has also paid out many millions of dollars more in fines and attorneys’ fees, among other costs.

Allegations against Sandusky were raised several times over the years before a Clinton County case in 2008 resulted in the grand jury investigation that ultimately led to his downfall. The most explosive charge in terms of public reaction was a 2001 incident in which graduate assistant Mike McQueary said he walked in on Sandusky and a boy showering in the football building, heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds,” and believed he was witnessing sexual activity, according to the grand jury presentment in the case.

McQueary told Paterno the next day a version of what he had seen, and Paterno in turn notified Athletic Director Tim Curley, his supervisor. Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz interviewed McQueary a week later. They later outlined the allegation to Spanier, who said the incident was characterized to him as horseplay. Curley and Schultz were charged at the time of Sandusky’s indictment for failing to report child abuse and perjury.

Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football history, expressed regret and said he would retire at the end of the 2011 football season, but the Penn State Board of Trustees fired him on the night of November 9, 2011. Spanier resigned as president but remained a tenured faculty member. Curley and Schultz had already resigned.

Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer soon after he was fired and died in January 2012; the Attorney General’s office stated that he had cooperated fully and found it had no grounds to charge him. Spanier insisted he was innocent of any crime, but was charged in November 2012 with several counts, including perjury and child endangerment. He stood trial in 2017 and, through appeals, most of the charges against him, as well as Curley and Schultz, were dismissed. The Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court later ruled that Cynthia Baldwin, the University’s legal counsel, had violated the rights of the three Penn State administrators by testifying against them, which made it impossible to prosecute them on charges of obstruction of justice, related conspiracy, and perjury.

Vigil.jpg
A student-organized candlelight vigil against child sexual abuse was held held outside Old Main. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
Curley and Schultz each later pleaded guilty to a single count of child endangerment and served brief jail terms.Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor count of child endangerment and acquitted of conspiracy and a second count of child endangerment. The conviction was initially overturned on appeal but then reinstated and he was ordered on May 26, 2021, to serve two months in the Centre County jail.

Beyond the anguish suffered by the victims, the Sandusky scandal was wrenching for Penn State and the State College community. The borough was overrun by national media the week after Sandusky was indicted, and some students rioted downtown when Paterno was fired, while others gathered outside Paterno’s house in support of the longtime coach. A student-organized vigil against sexual abuse was held outside Old Main the following night and an estimated 10,000 people attended.

National pundits attacked Penn State and Paterno’s reputation. Long regarded as a bastion of clean play and a school that struck a balance between athletics and academics, Penn State was seen as deaf to the victims’ suffering.

A 267-page report commissioned by the university in the immediate aftermath of Sandusky’s indictment — led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh — was released in July 2012. It accused university leaders of hiding allegations against Sandusky to avoid “bad publicity.” The document also said Penn State had a “culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community.” Ten days after the report’s release, the iconic Joe Paterno statue and plaza was removed under threats of vandalism, further outraging alumni, students, and fans; the location of the statue remains undisclosed.

The NCAA followed up the Freeh report within two weeks by bypassing its own investigative process and imposing severe sanctions on Penn State football, including a four-year bowl ban, loss of up to 20 scholarships, a $60 million fine, and vacating 112 wins from the football program’s record. Many alumni and residents were outraged by what they considered unfair and excessive penalties.

Within three years, the penalties were rolled back when NCAA emails released through a lawsuit showed officials at the college sports governing body essentially acknowledging they did not have the authority to impose the sanctions. A U.S. court case brought by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania disclosed doubts about Freeh’s cooperation with the NCAA in their sanctions applied to Penn State, including Paterno’s football record. The coach’s wins, which had been removed by the NCAA, were restored.

The Freeh Report made more than 100 recommendations on how Penn State should improve its policies to prevent sexual abuse in the future, and many of the recommendations were implemented. In response to the scandal, the university also created the Penn State Network for Child Well Being and Protection, comprised of numerous faculty members with interdisciplinary expertise, to advance research, education, and service in combatting child maltreatment.

Trustees.jpg
Penn State Board of Trustees gathered as board vice chair John Surma issued a statement accepting the resignation of Penn State President Graham Spanier and announcing the firing of football coach Joe Paterno. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
Ultimately, the “Sandusky Scandal,” as it came to be known, had many interwoven threads and actors. The Pennsylvania lawsuit against the NCAA sanctions revealed that applying the “death penalty” to Penn State football was a strong motivation on the part of the NCAA executives. Nevertheless, Penn State football players largely refused to abandon the program, enabling new head coach Bill O’Brien to manage an 8-4 season in 2012. In 2014, James Franklin took over as head coach and continued to build the program, including winning the Big Ten Conference Championship in 2016.

Relations between the Board of Trustees and Penn State alumni became strained in the aftermath of the scandal. All nine alumni trustees who served on the board in 2011 were replaced. The newly elected alumni trustees have pushed for more transparency, an open discussion, and rejection of the Freeh report’s conclusions, as well as full honors for Coach Joe Paterno, including returning his statue to public display. Under the leadership of President Eric Barron, some movements in these directions have occurred, but many alumni still demand more.

Ultimately, what many thought at the time to be the worst catastrophe to ever befall Penn State has become a historic event of major dimensions, but perhaps not the disaster imagined in the months following November 2011. For the victims of sexual abuse, unfortunately, the effects will last indefinitely. The major actors suffered anguish, reputational damage and their lives have changed.
 
Keep demonstrating your own ignorance.
The burden is always of the one who asserts. That is the way of debate. We aren't in court where you would be declared a fraud.
Right. I agree. You are asserting that I am lying about a very common statement (my profession) which to any normal person wouldn't require any proof. People on this board talk about their jobs all the time. No one calls them a liar or asks for proof. So YOU are making the assertion that I am lying. PROVE IT.
If I claimed to be an author and you called me a liar. I would give you the titles of my books and invite you to look them up. Then you could independently verify it. It's mind boggling you can't figure that out being the genius you are.
How would you do that without divulging your name?
All of it is
You couldn't be more wrong. I've got the documentation and have even shared some of it with you.
No you are fraud who pretends to have an intellect.
Nothing fraudulent about me, Super Chief.
Every bit
Then prove it.
You are by far the dumbest I have seen
Better look in the mirror then.
See above. Then stand and deliver
Give me an example that I can use. Your example above doesn't work because of PII. I've already told you, you are never getting my name.
Calling out frauds is always a good use of time.
Then you are wasting your time here.
Is that a porn show you watch?
Not only are you dumb, but you apparently have terrible taste in TV shows.
I run circles around you.
This is Nole attempting to run:

Which shows your utter stupidity as you remain anonymous! LOL if you can't see the stupidity in that well...but you are rather stupid. What are you worried about? Your anonymous reputation on a cult board? LOLOLOLOLOL
I don't like being accused of things that I am not in any venue, anonymous or not. Not sure why that is hard to understand. You don't seem to like it when I tell everyone that you **** ostriches, even though you are anonymous too.
Prove it.
The eight who testified against Sandusky are telling the truth. You are defending the guilty because of your religion.
They very clearly aren't, as has been demonstrated ad nauseum on this board and elsewhere. And I obviously do not have a religion. Religion is the enemy of science.
Evil is not subjective but then again we identify your immorality.
It is actually. Again, where do you get your morality? Who tells you how to think and how to behave?
No, it is none of your business except for you to know that morality and evil are objectively shown.
Objectively shown by who? Who tells you what to think?
That you say anything goes as long as one is "internally consistent" is sick,
It isn't sick, it is intellectually honest.
You defend a pedophile and his enablers who all went to jail
Nope. I defend wrongly convicted men.
You are very sick at this. You are saying they (Stalin, Hitler and Putin) "moral framework" is valid. That is insane.
It isn't. Your brain is too just too small to understand that morality is not objective. I have give you many examples to illustrate this, but you are too dumb to understand.
What is accurate is you have no morals.
Wrong again. My morals are just very different than yours (thankfully)
What a clown! LOLOLOLOL And a delusional narcissist as well. Wow!
How does not caring what people think make me delusional or a narcissist? You should really look up the definition of words before you use them.
No one else uses that handle. It's you. Surprised you leave it up there. LOL
Obviously there are at least two people who use it. I cannot control who uses a username (in forums I don't use or even know about) that I have used for years.
Yeah it is funny you think you are smart.
So pretty funny then? Cool.
 
Strangely, Jerry Sandusky was convicted in 2012 of sexually assaulting multiple boys both during and after his career as an assistant coach for Penn State’s football team. The scandal led to the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno and the criminal convictions of three top university officials, including President Graham Spanier. Penn State paid more than $100 million to Sandusky’s victims and its reputation was tarnished.

Gerald Arthur Sandusky, better known as Jerry, started at defensive end for Penn State’s football team from 1963-65 and worked as an assistant coach under Paterno from 1969-99. In his twenty-three years as defensive coordinator, he was largely credited with making Penn State football into “Linebacker U.”

In 1977, Sandusky founded a Centre County-based charity for youth from troubled families called The Second Mile. It was recognized by President George H.W. Bush as among his “Thousand Points of Light” highlighting volunteerism in America, and by 2011 the charity worked with more than 100,000 young people across Pennsylvania and had an annual budget of $2.4 million. However, when a Pennsylvania grand jury indicted Sandusky in 2011 after a two-year investigation, prosecutors said Sandusky used The Second Mile to groom his victims.

Sandusky-1.jpg
Pennsylvania State Police and Attorney General’s Office officials took former football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky to his arraignment hearing. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
In June 2012, Sandusky was convicted on 45 of 48counts related to serial sex abuse of children and sentenced to 30 years to 60 years in state prison. His appeals to date have failed, and he is currently serving his sentence at the state prison at Laurel Highlands in Somerset County. In the years since the scandal broke, Penn State has paid more than $109 million to thirty-five people who claim to have been victims of Sandusky dating as far back as 1971. Penn State has also paid out many millions of dollars more in fines and attorneys’ fees, among other costs.

Allegations against Sandusky were raised several times over the years before a Clinton County case in 2008 resulted in the grand jury investigation that ultimately led to his downfall. The most explosive charge in terms of public reaction was a 2001 incident in which graduate assistant Mike McQueary said he walked in on Sandusky and a boy showering in the football building, heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds,” and believed he was witnessing sexual activity, according to the grand jury presentment in the case.

McQueary told Paterno the next day a version of what he had seen, and Paterno in turn notified Athletic Director Tim Curley, his supervisor. Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz interviewed McQueary a week later. They later outlined the allegation to Spanier, who said the incident was characterized to him as horseplay. Curley and Schultz were charged at the time of Sandusky’s indictment for failing to report child abuse and perjury.

Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football history, expressed regret and said he would retire at the end of the 2011 football season, but the Penn State Board of Trustees fired him on the night of November 9, 2011. Spanier resigned as president but remained a tenured faculty member. Curley and Schultz had already resigned.

Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer soon after he was fired and died in January 2012; the Attorney General’s office stated that he had cooperated fully and found it had no grounds to charge him. Spanier insisted he was innocent of any crime, but was charged in November 2012 with several counts, including perjury and child endangerment. He stood trial in 2017 and, through appeals, most of the charges against him, as well as Curley and Schultz, were dismissed. The Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court later ruled that Cynthia Baldwin, the University’s legal counsel, had violated the rights of the three Penn State administrators by testifying against them, which made it impossible to prosecute them on charges of obstruction of justice, related conspiracy, and perjury.

Vigil.jpg
A student-organized candlelight vigil against child sexual abuse was held held outside Old Main. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
Curley and Schultz each later pleaded guilty to a single count of child endangerment and served brief jail terms.Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor count of child endangerment and acquitted of conspiracy and a second count of child endangerment. The conviction was initially overturned on appeal but then reinstated and he was ordered on May 26, 2021, to serve two months in the Centre County jail.

Beyond the anguish suffered by the victims, the Sandusky scandal was wrenching for Penn State and the State College community. The borough was overrun by national media the week after Sandusky was indicted, and some students rioted downtown when Paterno was fired, while others gathered outside Paterno’s house in support of the longtime coach. A student-organized vigil against sexual abuse was held outside Old Main the following night and an estimated 10,000 people attended.

National pundits attacked Penn State and Paterno’s reputation. Long regarded as a bastion of clean play and a school that struck a balance between athletics and academics, Penn State was seen as deaf to the victims’ suffering.

A 267-page report commissioned by the university in the immediate aftermath of Sandusky’s indictment — led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh — was released in July 2012. It accused university leaders of hiding allegations against Sandusky to avoid “bad publicity.” The document also said Penn State had a “culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community.” Ten days after the report’s release, the iconic Joe Paterno statue and plaza was removed under threats of vandalism, further outraging alumni, students, and fans; the location of the statue remains undisclosed.

The NCAA followed up the Freeh report within two weeks by bypassing its own investigative process and imposing severe sanctions on Penn State football, including a four-year bowl ban, loss of up to 20 scholarships, a $60 million fine, and vacating 112 wins from the football program’s record. Many alumni and residents were outraged by what they considered unfair and excessive penalties.

Within three years, the penalties were rolled back when NCAA emails released through a lawsuit showed officials at the college sports governing body essentially acknowledging they did not have the authority to impose the sanctions. A U.S. court case brought by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania disclosed doubts about Freeh’s cooperation with the NCAA in their sanctions applied to Penn State, including Paterno’s football record. The coach’s wins, which had been removed by the NCAA, were restored.

The Freeh Report made more than 100 recommendations on how Penn State should improve its policies to prevent sexual abuse in the future, and many of the recommendations were implemented. In response to the scandal, the university also created the Penn State Network for Child Well Being and Protection, comprised of numerous faculty members with interdisciplinary expertise, to advance research, education, and service in combatting child maltreatment.

Trustees.jpg
Penn State Board of Trustees gathered as board vice chair John Surma issued a statement accepting the resignation of Penn State President Graham Spanier and announcing the firing of football coach Joe Paterno. (Photograph by Andy Colwell)
Ultimately, the “Sandusky Scandal,” as it came to be known, had many interwoven threads and actors. The Pennsylvania lawsuit against the NCAA sanctions revealed that applying the “death penalty” to Penn State football was a strong motivation on the part of the NCAA executives. Nevertheless, Penn State football players largely refused to abandon the program, enabling new head coach Bill O’Brien to manage an 8-4 season in 2012. In 2014, James Franklin took over as head coach and continued to build the program, including winning the Big Ten Conference Championship in 2016.

Relations between the Board of Trustees and Penn State alumni became strained in the aftermath of the scandal. All nine alumni trustees who served on the board in 2011 were replaced. The newly elected alumni trustees have pushed for more transparency, an open discussion, and rejection of the Freeh report’s conclusions, as well as full honors for Coach Joe Paterno, including returning his statue to public display. Under the leadership of President Eric Barron, some movements in these directions have occurred, but many alumni still demand more.

Ultimately, what many thought at the time to be the worst catastrophe to ever befall Penn State has become a historic event of major dimensions, but perhaps not the disaster imagined in the months following November 2011. For the victims of sexual abuse, unfortunately, the effects will last indefinitely. The major actors suffered anguish, reputational damage and their lives have changed.


Remember, an investigation was initiated by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office into sexual abuse allegations against Sandusky in 2008. The charges were initiated at Central Mountain High School, where a student made allegations of abuse against Sandusky.[43] The investigation reached a new level of urgency when it became apparent that the allegations were not an isolated set of incidents, but that Sandusky had a strategy to abuse vulnerable boys. Through his Second Mile organization, Sandusky would first approach potential victims, typically boys without a father living at home, when they were 8–12 years old; subsequently, Sandusky employed classic child grooming strategies such as offering trips to football games or bestowing gifts, which would lead to incremental touching. This form of manipulation is generally the modus operandi of pedophiles as a ploy to build trust while invading personal boundaries — all part of instilling confusion, leading up to and part of the sexual abuse. Eventually, Sandusky often initiated overtly sexual behavior in the locker room showers. "The testimony of one victim, who said he was forced to play with Sandusky's testicles and erect penis when he was 8 to 10 years old, particularly outraged investigators. 'The poor kid was too young to even understand what an erect penis means,' one said."[42][44]

On November 4, 2011, a grand jury[45] that had been convened in September 2009, or earlier,[33] indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of sex crimes against young boys. The indictment came after a three-year investigation that explored allegations of Sandusky having inappropriate contact with an underage boy over the course of four years, beginning when the boy was ten years old. The boy's parents reported the incident to police in 2009.[46] The grand jury identified eight boys who had been singled out for sexual advances or sexual assaults by Sandusky, taking place from 1994 through 2009.[5] At least 20 of the incidents allegedly took place while Sandusky was still employed at Penn State.[47]

According to the first indictment,[48] in 2002 assistant coach Mike McQueary, then a Penn State graduate assistant,[49] said he walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten-year-old boy. The next day, McQueary reported the incident to head coach Joe Paterno. (Later while testifying during the Sandusky trial, McQueary spoke about what he had relayed to Paterno: "I told him and I want to make sure I'm clear. I made sure he knew it was sexual and wrong. There was no doubt.")[50] Paterno told McQueary at the time, "You did what you had to do. It is my job now to figure out what we want to do."[51] At the Preliminary Hearing for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, McQueary testified that Paterno was "shocked and saddened, kind of slumped back on his chair." He said that Paterno told him: "'I'm sorry you had to see that. It's terrible.' And he said, 'I need to think and tell some people about what you saw and I'll let you know what ... what we'll do next.'"[52] Paterno then informed Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. At the Preliminary Hearing, McQueary also testified that he "believed" Sandusky was having "some type of intercourse" with the boy. He said that this was based on "the positioning" of Sandusky and the boy, but that he never saw "insertion" or "penetration" and is not "100 percent sure" that intercourse was occurring.[53]

Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz (who oversaw the Penn State police department) called McQueary to a meeting a week and a half later.[54] In McQueary's testimony he stated that during the meeting he relayed in "graphic detail" what he had witnessed in the locker-room showers at the Lasch Building. At the Preliminary Hearing of Curley and Schultz, McQueary testified that he would have given Curley and Schultz a "rough idea" of the body positions of the individuals in the shower, and would have described the activity as "extremely sexual and I thought some kind of intercourse was going on."[55]

The indictment accused Curley and Schultz not only of failing to tell the police, but also of falsely telling the grand jury that McQueary never informed them of the alleged sexual activity.[56]

On November 5, 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, eight counts of corruption of minors, eight counts of endangering the welfare of a child, seven counts of indecent assault, and other offenses.[57]

The prosecution charged Curley and Schultz with perjury and failure to report suspected child abuse by Sandusky.[58][59]

On November 6, 2011, Penn State banned Sandusky from campus.[60] His bail conditions did not include restrictions on his travel.[61][62]

In December 2011, Sandusky was charged with an additional 12 counts of sexual crimes against children.[63][64] The grand jury's second presentment charged Sandusky with an additional count of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and two additional counts of unlawful contact with a minor. The additional victims, known only as "Victim 9" and "Victim 10," were participants in Sandusky's youth program and were between the ages of 10 and 12 at the time of the sexual assaults.[64]

On December 7, 2011, Sandusky was arrested for a second time based on the additional sexual abuse charges. Sandusky was released on $250,000 bail and placed on monitored house arrest while he awaited trial.[65] Sandusky chose to waive his preliminary hearing that took place in mid-December.[citation needed]

Pre-trial interviews​

On November 14, in a televised phone interview on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams, Sandusky admitted to correspondent Bob Costas to having showered with underage boys and touching their bodies, as he described it "without intent of sexual contact." Sandusky denied being a pedophile.[66] The interview received substantial coverage in the media, particularly regarding the manner in which Sandusky answered Costas when asked if he is sexually attracted to young boys:[67][68][69]

COSTAS: "Are you sexually attracted to young boys, to underage boys?"
SANDUSKY: "Am I sexually attracted to underage boys?"
COSTAS: "Yes."
SANDUSKY: "Sexually attracted, you know, I enjoy young people. I love to be around them... But no, I'm not sexually attracted to young boys."[70][71]
In the days following the interview, several potential victims contacted State College lawyer Andy Shubin to tell their stories, with one claiming Sandusky had abused him in the 1970s.[72]

In a taped interview with Jo Becker of The New York Times on December 3, 2011, Sandusky and his lawyer, Joe Amendola, attempted to clarify the remarks he made in the November 14 interview:[73]

SANDUSKY: "I was sitting there like, 'what in the world is this question?' am I going to be, if I say, 'no I'm not attracted to boys,' that's not the truth because I'm attracted to young people -- boys, girls."
AMENDOLA (off-camera): "Yeah but not sexually, you're attracted to them as in you like spending time with them."
SANDUSKY: "Right, I enjoy, that's what I'm trying to clarify, I enjoy spending time with young people. I enjoy spending time with people. I mean, my two favorite groups are the elderly and the young. The young because they don't think about what they say and the old because they don't care, you know?"
During the same interview, Sandusky responded to the initial 40 charges of sexual crimes against children:[74][75]

BECKER: "You must have some theory, without getting into individual cases or naming names."
SANDUSKY: "You would have to, to have my understanding of that. What I think? I mean, what I think are that these are individual matters. These kids, some of them, I know them. Some of them. I don't know all of them. [lawyer Amendola interjects 'we're assuming']. We're assuming we know them. Two of the kids. My gut feeling would be that they got pulled into this."

Trial​

The trial, for 52 charges of sexual crimes against children, started on June 11, 2012, at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.[76][77] State Deputy Attorney General and former homicide prosecutor Joseph E. McGettigan III, led the prosecution team for the Commonwealth; defense attorney Joseph Amendola was Sandusky's lead attorney for the defense team; and Senior Judge John Cleland presided.

Over the course of the trial that lasted eight days, jurors heard from eight witnesses who testified that Sandusky sexually abused them.[78] Jurors also heard testimony about assaults on two other victims who were never identified.[78] Of the eight males who gave testimony, each explained that they met Sandusky through The Second Mile organization; their individual accounts spanned from the mid-1990s until 2009.[79][80] The witnesses testified of similar stories of being abused in the football locker room showers or in the basement of Sandusky's home.[79]

The first prosecution witness, identified in media reports as "Victim 4," described detailed accounts of many instances of sexual abuse, including unwanted oral and anal sex, by Sandusky while the witness was a participant in Sandusky's Second Mile charitable organization.[76] According to "Victim 4," he was sexually abused by Sandusky as many as three times a week for three years, beginning when he was 13 years old.[77] The witness further testified that when he attempted to distance himself from Sandusky, Sandusky offered the boy a contract for money to continue spending time with him.[77]

On the second day of trial, "Victim 1", the youngest of Sandusky's alleged victims, testified to over 20 incidents of abuse, including forced oral sex, by Sandusky during 2007 and 2008 while the boy was a participant in Sandusky's Second Mile program. The boy was 11 or 12 years old when the sexual abuse started.[81][82] Mike McQueary, former Penn State graduate assistant football coach, testified that in 2001 in a Penn State locker room, he heard "skin on skin" slapping sounds coming from the showers. McQueary testified that he then saw Sandusky naked behind a 10- to 12-year-old boy propped against a shower wall, with "Sandusky's arms wrapped around the boy's midsection in the closest proximity that I think you could be in."[50][83]

Sandusky's defense attorneys argued that the accusers were driven by financial motives.[84] The defense also pointed out some of the accusers had changed their stories and that some of them continued a relationship with Sandusky after the alleged abuse (one went to a football game with Sandusky shortly before his arrest, another brought his girlfriend to meet Sandusky). A psychiatrist testifying for the defense, Dr. Eliot Atkins, diagnosed Sandusky with histrionic personality disorder, a disorder characterized by attention seeking behavior and exaggerated emotions. Dr. Atkins testified that the letters written by Sandusky to the accusers were consistent with this disorder, rather than "grooming" behavior as alleged by the prosecution.[85][86]

On June 18, 2012, it was reported that during the full-day court recess the previous Friday, prosecutors had contacted NBC "asking the network to re-authenticate a full unedited transcript" of the Bob Costas interview from November.[87] An unaired portion of the Costas interview featured Sandusky saying, "I didn't go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I've helped".[71][88] Legal analysts explained that this could be used by the prosecution to cross-examine Sandusky if he were to take the stand.[87]

On June 21, 2012, after the case had gone to the jury, Matt Sandusky, one of Sandusky's six adopted children, stated through his attorney that he was also a victim of the former coach's sexual abuse. He had been ready to testify for the prosecution, but did not do so.[89] Later, Amendola said that Jerry Sandusky had every intention of testifying in his own defense, but decided against it because he claimed that the prosecution would have called Matt Sandusky to the stand.[7]

Subsequently, sources close to the investigation conducted by the Office of the State attorney general have stated that the prosecutor never threatened to have Matt Sandusky testify at trial, and that "prosecutor Joseph McGettigan relished the opportunity of taking-on Jerry Sandusky in cross examination and had promised Amendola early on that they would not call any additional rebuttal witnesses".[90]

Verdict and sentencing​

The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, many with direct ties to Penn State,[91] deliberated for 21 hours over two days.[79] On the evening of June 22, 2012, the jury reached its verdict, finding Sandusky guilty on 45 of the 48 counts against him.[6][92] Specifically, Sandusky was convicted of the following charges and counts: eight counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, seven counts of indecent assault, one count of criminal intent to commit indecent assault, nine counts of unlawful contact with minors, 10 counts of corruption of minors and 10 counts of endangering the welfare of children. Cleland immediately revoked Sandusky's bail and remanded him to the Centre County Correctional Facility to await sentencing.[84]

Sandusky faced a maximum sentence of 442 years in prison.[93] According to NBC News' Michael Isikoff, Sandusky faced a minimum sentence of 60 years under Pennsylvania sentencing guidelines — at his age, effectively a life sentence.[94] A sentencing hearing was expected 90 days from the date of conviction.[78][92] On September 17, it was announced that Sandusky would be sentenced on October 9.[95]

Sandusky's statement the evening before his sentencing
On the evening before his sentencing hearing, Sandusky released an audio statement maintaining his innocence.[96] The next day, Cleland sentenced Sandusky to 60 years in prison–as mentioned above, the minimum possible sentence under Pennsylvania law. He will not be eligible for parole until he serves at least 30 years. His earliest possible release date will be October 9, 2042; when he will be 98 years old–virtually assuring that he will die in prison. In pronouncing the sentence, Cleland said that Sandusky was a particularly dangerous breed of child molester because he masked his manipulation and abuse of children behind a respectable facade. "It is the remarkable ability to conceal that makes these crimes so heinous," he said. While acknowledging Sandusky's "positive work," Cleland called him a "dangerous" child molester who should never be allowed to be free again.[97] At the same hearing, Cleland granted prosecutors' request to have Sandusky declared a "sexually violent predator" under Pennsylvania's version of Megan's Law. This would subject him to stringent reporting requirements if he is released. Sandusky would not only have to report his address to police every three months for the rest of his life, but would also have to participate in a court-approved counseling program; however, this designation will likely be academic since as mentioned above, Sandusky will almost certainly die in prison.[95][98] Earlier, on August 30, the Pennsylvania Sexual Offenders Assessment Board had recommended that Sandusky be declared a sexually violent predator.[99][100]

Sandusky could also potentially face federal charges for molesting boys at both the 1999 Outback Bowl in Tampa and his final game as a collegiate coach, the 1999 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. Although these were spelled out in the state indictment, federal authorities have jurisdiction over any crime that crosses a state line.[101] Although federal investigators appear to be focusing their probe on a possible cover-up of Sandusky's crimes by officials at Penn State, it would not be double jeopardy to bring charges against Sandusky himself.[102] Officials in San Antonio are conducting a probe of the 1999 Alamo Bowl case, and Sandusky could potentially face charges there; again, it would not be double jeopardy for him to be charged in Texas.[103]

Reaction​

Penn State became the subject of significant media criticism because several members of its staff, ranging from the university's president down to a graduate assistant[who?], covered up Sandusky's assaults.[104][105] Maureen Dowd wrote of the scandal: "Like the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Penn State hierarchy appears to have covered up pedophile crimes to protect its brand."[106]

In June 2012, Penn State University implemented a policy to require mandatory reporting of child abuse by any Penn State employee working with children. The policy also requires all Penn State employees working with children to go through a background check and training related to child abuse and reporting requirements.[107]

Freeh report​

The Penn State Board of Trustees commissioned a report by a special investigative group headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh. After interviewing over 400 people and reviewing over 3.5 million documents, the crux of the report's findings, which were released July 12, 2012, state:

Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, the Special Investigative Counsel finds that it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the University — Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from authorities, the University's Board of Trustees, the Penn State community, and the public at large.[108]
The Freeh Report states that although the "avoidance of the consequences of bad publicity" was the main driver in failing to protect child abuse victims and report to authorities, the report outlines other causes as well, among which were: "A striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University"; a failure of oversight by the Board of Trustees; a University President "who discouraged discussion and dissent"; "a lack of awareness of child abuse issues"; and "a culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community".[109]

The report outlines how all four men were aware of the 1998 abuse incident in the locker-room shower, and had followed its investigation at the time.[110] Freeh's investigation uncovered a file kept by Schultz in which he wrote notes about Sandusky's 1998 incident. For instance, Schultz wrote: "Is this opening of Pandora's box?" He also wondered, "other children?"[111] Freeh stated that Schultz had "actively sought to conceal those records".[112][113]

The evidentiary weight of Freeh's report draws heavily upon retrieved emails from 1998 and 2001, which Freeh referred to as "the most important evidence" in the report.[113] The report asserts that these emails demonstrate that in 1998 Paterno knew of the investigation of Sandusky, and followed it closely;[114] and suggest that it was Paterno, "long regarded as the single most powerful official at the university," who persuaded Spanier, Curley, and Schultz not to formally report Sandusky to law enforcement or child welfare authorities. According to The New York Times, the university's handling of the 2001 report of Sandusky raping a young boy is "one of the most damning episodes laid out by Mr. Freeh's investigation ..."[115]

The report states that nobody took any "responsible action after February 2001 other than Curley informing the Second Mile that Mr. Sandusky had showered with a boy"[116] and then telling Sandusky not to bring his "guests" into the Penn State facilities; but the topic of sexual abuse was not broached with Sandusky.[117][118]

The report criticizes Paterno for his failure to "alert the entire football staff, in order to prevent Sandusky from bringing another child into the Lasch Building".[119]

According to details in the report, despite being aware of Sandusky's sexual misconduct with young boys in the locker-room showers in the Lasch Building in 1998, and 2001, Spanier, Paterno, Curley, and Schultz never restricted Sandusky's access to Penn State facilities. The report states that Sandusky had access to the Lasch Building until November 2011. Over the next ten-year period, Sandusky "was frequently at the Lasch Building working out, showing up at campus events that Penn State supported ... He was showering with young boys, staying in dormitories ... There are more red flags than you could count, over a long period of time."[111] Consequently, out of the 10 young boys that Sandusky would be convicted of sexually assaulting, most of them were abused after he was investigated in 1998[120] — at least five of them were assaulted "at Penn State's football facilities and other places on campus after May 1998".[121] After his retirement in 1999, the report notes that Sandusky continued to have "unrestricted and unsupervised access to the University's facilities and affiliation with the university's prominent football program. Indeed, the continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims".[119][122]

Beyond the question of building access, the report details that as part of Sandusky's retirement agreement he could "continue to work with young people through Penn State" for more than a decade, including Second Mile events on campus, youth football camps, etc.[123]

At the July 12 press conference announcing the report's findings, Freeh stated in his prepared remarks: "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children Sandusky victimized." He said they "never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky's victims" until after he was arrested in 2011.[124]

Further allegations and investigations​

Three men came forward and told police that they were abused in the 1970s or 1980s by Sandusky. They are the first men to allege abuse before the 1990s.[125] CBS News also reported that the United States Postal Service is leading an investigation to see whether Sandusky sent child pornography through the mail across state lines.[126] According to one source, child pornography was found on at least one of Sandusky's computers.[127] Other reports indicated that individuals had come forward claiming that Sandusky had assaulted them during the 1960s, while he was living at the Brownson House in Washington, Pennsylvania.[128]

On August 24, 2012, as reported by the Associated Press, the individual known as "Victim 1" who testified at the trial of Sandusky brought suit against Pennsylvania State University. They reported that the suit charged the university's conduct with regard to the complaints that Sandusky had acted towards boys with sexual impropriety was "deliberate and shameful", saying that Penn State engaged in "purposeful, deliberate and shameful subordination of the safety of children to its economic self-interests, and to its interest in maintaining and perpetuating its reputation."[129]

In September 2012, former Philadelphia child prostitute Greg Bucceroni alleged that in 1979 and 1980 Philadelphia philanthropist Ed Savitz brought him from his New Jersey residence to State College Second Mile fund raiser for the purpose of child trafficking.[130]

Imprisonment​

On October 23, 2012, Sandusky was transferred to Camp Hill state prison in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, for pre-imprisonment evaluation.[131] He was then moved to Greene state prison in Franklin Township, where most of the state's life and capital inmates are housed, on October 31, 2012, to serve his sentence. He was housed in protective custody.[10]

On December 3, 2014, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reported that Sandusky received a letter from Penn State asking to renew his season ticket plan for the football team and attend a "recruiting" trip to a Penn State basketball game. The letter was reportedly sent out in error.[132]

Sandusky was transferred to SCI Somerset, a medium-security prison outside Somerset, Pennsylvania, in March 2017.[133] As of May 2017, he is currently serving his sentence at SCI Laurel Highlands, a minimum security facility near Pittsburgh that primarily serves ill or elderly inmates.[1]

Sandusky has been trying to obtain a new trial. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus would testify in his defense as a specialist of repressed memory,[134] as many victims' testimonies against Sandusky are allegedly based on repressed memories.
 
Remember, an investigation was initiated by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office into sexual abuse allegations against Sandusky in 2008. The charges were initiated at Central Mountain High School, where a student made allegations of abuse against Sandusky.[43] The investigation reached a new level of urgency when it became apparent that the allegations were not an isolated set of incidents, but that Sandusky had a strategy to abuse vulnerable boys. Through his Second Mile organization, Sandusky would first approach potential victims, typically boys without a father living at home, when they were 8–12 years old; subsequently, Sandusky employed classic child grooming strategies such as offering trips to football games or bestowing gifts, which would lead to incremental touching. This form of manipulation is generally the modus operandi of pedophiles as a ploy to build trust while invading personal boundaries — all part of instilling confusion, leading up to and part of the sexual abuse. Eventually, Sandusky often initiated overtly sexual behavior in the locker room showers. "The testimony of one victim, who said he was forced to play with Sandusky's testicles and erect penis when he was 8 to 10 years old, particularly outraged investigators. 'The poor kid was too young to even understand what an erect penis means,' one said."[42][44]

On November 4, 2011, a grand jury[45] that had been convened in September 2009, or earlier,[33] indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of sex crimes against young boys. The indictment came after a three-year investigation that explored allegations of Sandusky having inappropriate contact with an underage boy over the course of four years, beginning when the boy was ten years old. The boy's parents reported the incident to police in 2009.[46] The grand jury identified eight boys who had been singled out for sexual advances or sexual assaults by Sandusky, taking place from 1994 through 2009.[5] At least 20 of the incidents allegedly took place while Sandusky was still employed at Penn State.[47]

According to the first indictment,[48] in 2002 assistant coach Mike McQueary, then a Penn State graduate assistant,[49] said he walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten-year-old boy. The next day, McQueary reported the incident to head coach Joe Paterno. (Later while testifying during the Sandusky trial, McQueary spoke about what he had relayed to Paterno: "I told him and I want to make sure I'm clear. I made sure he knew it was sexual and wrong. There was no doubt.")[50] Paterno told McQueary at the time, "You did what you had to do. It is my job now to figure out what we want to do."[51] At the Preliminary Hearing for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, McQueary testified that Paterno was "shocked and saddened, kind of slumped back on his chair." He said that Paterno told him: "'I'm sorry you had to see that. It's terrible.' And he said, 'I need to think and tell some people about what you saw and I'll let you know what ... what we'll do next.'"[52] Paterno then informed Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. At the Preliminary Hearing, McQueary also testified that he "believed" Sandusky was having "some type of intercourse" with the boy. He said that this was based on "the positioning" of Sandusky and the boy, but that he never saw "insertion" or "penetration" and is not "100 percent sure" that intercourse was occurring.[53]

Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz (who oversaw the Penn State police department) called McQueary to a meeting a week and a half later.[54] In McQueary's testimony he stated that during the meeting he relayed in "graphic detail" what he had witnessed in the locker-room showers at the Lasch Building. At the Preliminary Hearing of Curley and Schultz, McQueary testified that he would have given Curley and Schultz a "rough idea" of the body positions of the individuals in the shower, and would have described the activity as "extremely sexual and I thought some kind of intercourse was going on."[55]

The indictment accused Curley and Schultz not only of failing to tell the police, but also of falsely telling the grand jury that McQueary never informed them of the alleged sexual activity.[56]

On November 5, 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, eight counts of corruption of minors, eight counts of endangering the welfare of a child, seven counts of indecent assault, and other offenses.[57]

The prosecution charged Curley and Schultz with perjury and failure to report suspected child abuse by Sandusky.[58][59]

On November 6, 2011, Penn State banned Sandusky from campus.[60] His bail conditions did not include restrictions on his travel.[61][62]

In December 2011, Sandusky was charged with an additional 12 counts of sexual crimes against children.[63][64] The grand jury's second presentment charged Sandusky with an additional count of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and two additional counts of unlawful contact with a minor. The additional victims, known only as "Victim 9" and "Victim 10," were participants in Sandusky's youth program and were between the ages of 10 and 12 at the time of the sexual assaults.[64]

On December 7, 2011, Sandusky was arrested for a second time based on the additional sexual abuse charges. Sandusky was released on $250,000 bail and placed on monitored house arrest while he awaited trial.[65] Sandusky chose to waive his preliminary hearing that took place in mid-December.[citation needed]

Pre-trial interviews​

On November 14, in a televised phone interview on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams, Sandusky admitted to correspondent Bob Costas to having showered with underage boys and touching their bodies, as he described it "without intent of sexual contact." Sandusky denied being a pedophile.[66] The interview received substantial coverage in the media, particularly regarding the manner in which Sandusky answered Costas when asked if he is sexually attracted to young boys:[67][68][69]


In the days following the interview, several potential victims contacted State College lawyer Andy Shubin to tell their stories, with one claiming Sandusky had abused him in the 1970s.[72]

In a taped interview with Jo Becker of The New York Times on December 3, 2011, Sandusky and his lawyer, Joe Amendola, attempted to clarify the remarks he made in the November 14 interview:[73]


During the same interview, Sandusky responded to the initial 40 charges of sexual crimes against children:[74][75]


Trial​

The trial, for 52 charges of sexual crimes against children, started on June 11, 2012, at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.[76][77] State Deputy Attorney General and former homicide prosecutor Joseph E. McGettigan III, led the prosecution team for the Commonwealth; defense attorney Joseph Amendola was Sandusky's lead attorney for the defense team; and Senior Judge John Cleland presided.

Over the course of the trial that lasted eight days, jurors heard from eight witnesses who testified that Sandusky sexually abused them.[78] Jurors also heard testimony about assaults on two other victims who were never identified.[78] Of the eight males who gave testimony, each explained that they met Sandusky through The Second Mile organization; their individual accounts spanned from the mid-1990s until 2009.[79][80] The witnesses testified of similar stories of being abused in the football locker room showers or in the basement of Sandusky's home.[79]

The first prosecution witness, identified in media reports as "Victim 4," described detailed accounts of many instances of sexual abuse, including unwanted oral and anal sex, by Sandusky while the witness was a participant in Sandusky's Second Mile charitable organization.[76] According to "Victim 4," he was sexually abused by Sandusky as many as three times a week for three years, beginning when he was 13 years old.[77] The witness further testified that when he attempted to distance himself from Sandusky, Sandusky offered the boy a contract for money to continue spending time with him.[77]

On the second day of trial, "Victim 1", the youngest of Sandusky's alleged victims, testified to over 20 incidents of abuse, including forced oral sex, by Sandusky during 2007 and 2008 while the boy was a participant in Sandusky's Second Mile program. The boy was 11 or 12 years old when the sexual abuse started.[81][82] Mike McQueary, former Penn State graduate assistant football coach, testified that in 2001 in a Penn State locker room, he heard "skin on skin" slapping sounds coming from the showers. McQueary testified that he then saw Sandusky naked behind a 10- to 12-year-old boy propped against a shower wall, with "Sandusky's arms wrapped around the boy's midsection in the closest proximity that I think you could be in."[50][83]

Sandusky's defense attorneys argued that the accusers were driven by financial motives.[84] The defense also pointed out some of the accusers had changed their stories and that some of them continued a relationship with Sandusky after the alleged abuse (one went to a football game with Sandusky shortly before his arrest, another brought his girlfriend to meet Sandusky). A psychiatrist testifying for the defense, Dr. Eliot Atkins, diagnosed Sandusky with histrionic personality disorder, a disorder characterized by attention seeking behavior and exaggerated emotions. Dr. Atkins testified that the letters written by Sandusky to the accusers were consistent with this disorder, rather than "grooming" behavior as alleged by the prosecution.[85][86]

On June 18, 2012, it was reported that during the full-day court recess the previous Friday, prosecutors had contacted NBC "asking the network to re-authenticate a full unedited transcript" of the Bob Costas interview from November.[87] An unaired portion of the Costas interview featured Sandusky saying, "I didn't go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I've helped".[71][88] Legal analysts explained that this could be used by the prosecution to cross-examine Sandusky if he were to take the stand.[87]

On June 21, 2012, after the case had gone to the jury, Matt Sandusky, one of Sandusky's six adopted children, stated through his attorney that he was also a victim of the former coach's sexual abuse. He had been ready to testify for the prosecution, but did not do so.[89] Later, Amendola said that Jerry Sandusky had every intention of testifying in his own defense, but decided against it because he claimed that the prosecution would have called Matt Sandusky to the stand.[7]

Subsequently, sources close to the investigation conducted by the Office of the State attorney general have stated that the prosecutor never threatened to have Matt Sandusky testify at trial, and that "prosecutor Joseph McGettigan relished the opportunity of taking-on Jerry Sandusky in cross examination and had promised Amendola early on that they would not call any additional rebuttal witnesses".[90]

Verdict and sentencing​

The jury, consisting of seven women and five men, many with direct ties to Penn State,[91] deliberated for 21 hours over two days.[79] On the evening of June 22, 2012, the jury reached its verdict, finding Sandusky guilty on 45 of the 48 counts against him.[6][92] Specifically, Sandusky was convicted of the following charges and counts: eight counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, seven counts of indecent assault, one count of criminal intent to commit indecent assault, nine counts of unlawful contact with minors, 10 counts of corruption of minors and 10 counts of endangering the welfare of children. Cleland immediately revoked Sandusky's bail and remanded him to the Centre County Correctional Facility to await sentencing.[84]

Sandusky faced a maximum sentence of 442 years in prison.[93] According to NBC News' Michael Isikoff, Sandusky faced a minimum sentence of 60 years under Pennsylvania sentencing guidelines — at his age, effectively a life sentence.[94] A sentencing hearing was expected 90 days from the date of conviction.[78][92] On September 17, it was announced that Sandusky would be sentenced on October 9.[95]

Sandusky's statement the evening before his sentencing
On the evening before his sentencing hearing, Sandusky released an audio statement maintaining his innocence.[96] The next day, Cleland sentenced Sandusky to 60 years in prison–as mentioned above, the minimum possible sentence under Pennsylvania law. He will not be eligible for parole until he serves at least 30 years. His earliest possible release date will be October 9, 2042; when he will be 98 years old–virtually assuring that he will die in prison. In pronouncing the sentence, Cleland said that Sandusky was a particularly dangerous breed of child molester because he masked his manipulation and abuse of children behind a respectable facade. "It is the remarkable ability to conceal that makes these crimes so heinous," he said. While acknowledging Sandusky's "positive work," Cleland called him a "dangerous" child molester who should never be allowed to be free again.[97] At the same hearing, Cleland granted prosecutors' request to have Sandusky declared a "sexually violent predator" under Pennsylvania's version of Megan's Law. This would subject him to stringent reporting requirements if he is released. Sandusky would not only have to report his address to police every three months for the rest of his life, but would also have to participate in a court-approved counseling program; however, this designation will likely be academic since as mentioned above, Sandusky will almost certainly die in prison.[95][98] Earlier, on August 30, the Pennsylvania Sexual Offenders Assessment Board had recommended that Sandusky be declared a sexually violent predator.[99][100]

Sandusky could also potentially face federal charges for molesting boys at both the 1999 Outback Bowl in Tampa and his final game as a collegiate coach, the 1999 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. Although these were spelled out in the state indictment, federal authorities have jurisdiction over any crime that crosses a state line.[101] Although federal investigators appear to be focusing their probe on a possible cover-up of Sandusky's crimes by officials at Penn State, it would not be double jeopardy to bring charges against Sandusky himself.[102] Officials in San Antonio are conducting a probe of the 1999 Alamo Bowl case, and Sandusky could potentially face charges there; again, it would not be double jeopardy for him to be charged in Texas.[103]

Reaction​

Penn State became the subject of significant media criticism because several members of its staff, ranging from the university's president down to a graduate assistant[who?], covered up Sandusky's assaults.[104][105] Maureen Dowd wrote of the scandal: "Like the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Penn State hierarchy appears to have covered up pedophile crimes to protect its brand."[106]

In June 2012, Penn State University implemented a policy to require mandatory reporting of child abuse by any Penn State employee working with children. The policy also requires all Penn State employees working with children to go through a background check and training related to child abuse and reporting requirements.[107]

Freeh report​

The Penn State Board of Trustees commissioned a report by a special investigative group headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh. After interviewing over 400 people and reviewing over 3.5 million documents, the crux of the report's findings, which were released July 12, 2012, state:


The Freeh Report states that although the "avoidance of the consequences of bad publicity" was the main driver in failing to protect child abuse victims and report to authorities, the report outlines other causes as well, among which were: "A striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University"; a failure of oversight by the Board of Trustees; a University President "who discouraged discussion and dissent"; "a lack of awareness of child abuse issues"; and "a culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community".[109]

The report outlines how all four men were aware of the 1998 abuse incident in the locker-room shower, and had followed its investigation at the time.[110] Freeh's investigation uncovered a file kept by Schultz in which he wrote notes about Sandusky's 1998 incident. For instance, Schultz wrote: "Is this opening of Pandora's box?" He also wondered, "other children?"[111] Freeh stated that Schultz had "actively sought to conceal those records".[112][113]

The evidentiary weight of Freeh's report draws heavily upon retrieved emails from 1998 and 2001, which Freeh referred to as "the most important evidence" in the report.[113] The report asserts that these emails demonstrate that in 1998 Paterno knew of the investigation of Sandusky, and followed it closely;[114] and suggest that it was Paterno, "long regarded as the single most powerful official at the university," who persuaded Spanier, Curley, and Schultz not to formally report Sandusky to law enforcement or child welfare authorities. According to The New York Times, the university's handling of the 2001 report of Sandusky raping a young boy is "one of the most damning episodes laid out by Mr. Freeh's investigation ..."[115]

The report states that nobody took any "responsible action after February 2001 other than Curley informing the Second Mile that Mr. Sandusky had showered with a boy"[116] and then telling Sandusky not to bring his "guests" into the Penn State facilities; but the topic of sexual abuse was not broached with Sandusky.[117][118]

The report criticizes Paterno for his failure to "alert the entire football staff, in order to prevent Sandusky from bringing another child into the Lasch Building".[119]

According to details in the report, despite being aware of Sandusky's sexual misconduct with young boys in the locker-room showers in the Lasch Building in 1998, and 2001, Spanier, Paterno, Curley, and Schultz never restricted Sandusky's access to Penn State facilities. The report states that Sandusky had access to the Lasch Building until November 2011. Over the next ten-year period, Sandusky "was frequently at the Lasch Building working out, showing up at campus events that Penn State supported ... He was showering with young boys, staying in dormitories ... There are more red flags than you could count, over a long period of time."[111] Consequently, out of the 10 young boys that Sandusky would be convicted of sexually assaulting, most of them were abused after he was investigated in 1998[120] — at least five of them were assaulted "at Penn State's football facilities and other places on campus after May 1998".[121] After his retirement in 1999, the report notes that Sandusky continued to have "unrestricted and unsupervised access to the University's facilities and affiliation with the university's prominent football program. Indeed, the continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims".[119][122]

Beyond the question of building access, the report details that as part of Sandusky's retirement agreement he could "continue to work with young people through Penn State" for more than a decade, including Second Mile events on campus, youth football camps, etc.[123]

At the July 12 press conference announcing the report's findings, Freeh stated in his prepared remarks: "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children Sandusky victimized." He said they "never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky's victims" until after he was arrested in 2011.[124]

Further allegations and investigations​

Three men came forward and told police that they were abused in the 1970s or 1980s by Sandusky. They are the first men to allege abuse before the 1990s.[125] CBS News also reported that the United States Postal Service is leading an investigation to see whether Sandusky sent child pornography through the mail across state lines.[126] According to one source, child pornography was found on at least one of Sandusky's computers.[127] Other reports indicated that individuals had come forward claiming that Sandusky had assaulted them during the 1960s, while he was living at the Brownson House in Washington, Pennsylvania.[128]

On August 24, 2012, as reported by the Associated Press, the individual known as "Victim 1" who testified at the trial of Sandusky brought suit against Pennsylvania State University. They reported that the suit charged the university's conduct with regard to the complaints that Sandusky had acted towards boys with sexual impropriety was "deliberate and shameful", saying that Penn State engaged in "purposeful, deliberate and shameful subordination of the safety of children to its economic self-interests, and to its interest in maintaining and perpetuating its reputation."[129]

In September 2012, former Philadelphia child prostitute Greg Bucceroni alleged that in 1979 and 1980 Philadelphia philanthropist Ed Savitz brought him from his New Jersey residence to State College Second Mile fund raiser for the purpose of child trafficking.[130]

Imprisonment​

On October 23, 2012, Sandusky was transferred to Camp Hill state prison in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, for pre-imprisonment evaluation.[131] He was then moved to Greene state prison in Franklin Township, where most of the state's life and capital inmates are housed, on October 31, 2012, to serve his sentence. He was housed in protective custody.[10]

On December 3, 2014, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reported that Sandusky received a letter from Penn State asking to renew his season ticket plan for the football team and attend a "recruiting" trip to a Penn State basketball game. The letter was reportedly sent out in error.[132]

Sandusky was transferred to SCI Somerset, a medium-security prison outside Somerset, Pennsylvania, in March 2017.[133] As of May 2017, he is currently serving his sentence at SCI Laurel Highlands, a minimum security facility near Pittsburgh that primarily serves ill or elderly inmates.[1]

Sandusky has been trying to obtain a new trial. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus would testify in his defense as a specialist of repressed memory,[134] as many victims' testimonies against Sandusky are allegedly based on repressed memories.

Read Surma info.

When he was investigating cold cases for NCIS, Special Agent John Snedden knew you always have to start from the beginning.

"Let's take a deep breath," he said. "And let's go back to square one, to the source of the original allegation, to determine whether it's credible."

On the Penn State campus in 2012, with national security at stake, that's just what Special Agent Snedden did on behalf of the U.S. government. And instead of finding a sex scandal or a cover-up in the cold case he was investigating in Happy Valley, Snedden said he discovered ample evidence of a "political hit job."

Back in 2012, Snedden was working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services. His assignment against the backdrop of the so-called Penn State sex abuse scandal was to determine whether former Penn State President Graham Spanier deserved to have his high-level national security clearance renewed.

The focus was on Spanier, but to do that investigation properly, Snedden, a PSU alum himself, had to unravel a big mess at his old alma mater. To figure out whether Spanier could be trusted with access to the most sensitive national secrets.

So Snedden began his job by starting at the beginning. By going back eleven years, to 2001, when Mike McQueary made his famous trip to the Penn State locker room. Where McQueary supposedly heard and saw a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with a young boy.

But there was a problem. In the beginning, Snedden said, McQueary "told people he doesn't know what he saw exactly." McQueary said he heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" in the shower, Snedden said.

"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden said.

"I don't think you can say he's credible," Snedden said about McQueary. Why? Because he told "so many different stories," Snedden said. McQueary's stories about what he thought he saw or heard in the shower ranged from rough horseplay and/or wrestling all the way up to sex.

Which story, Snedden asked, do you want to believe?

"None of it makes any sense," Snedden said about McQueary's tale. "It's not a credible story."

Back in 2001, Snedden said, 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 to stop 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, then why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building? The locker room where McQueary supposedly saw Sandusky with the boy in the showers.

When he was a baby NCIS agent, Snedden said, a veteran agent who was his mentor would always ask the same question.

"So John," the veteran agent would say, "Where is the crime?"

At Penn State, Snedden didn't find one.

Working on behalf of FIS, Snedden wrote a 110-page report, all in capital letters, where he catalogued the evidence that led him to conclude that McQueary wasn't a credible witness.

In his report, Snedden interviewed Thomas G. Poole, Penn State's vice president for administration. Poole told Snedden he was in Graham Spanier's office when news of the Penn State scandal broke, and Penn State's then-senior Vice President Gary Schultz came rushing in.

Schultz blurted out that "McQueary never told him this was sexual," Snedden wrote. Schultz was shocked by what McQueary told the grand jury, Snedden wrote.

"He [McQueary] told the grand jury that he reported to [Schultz] that this was sexual," Schultz told Poole and Spanier.

"While speaking, Schultz shook his head back and forth as in disbelief," Snedden wrote about Poole's observations. Poole "believes it appeared there was a lot of disbelief in the room regarding this information."
"I've never had a rape victim or a witness to a rape tell multiple stories about how it happened," Snedden said. "If it's real it's always been the same thing."

But that's not what happened with McQueary. And Snedden thinks he knows why.
"In my view, the evolution of what we saw as a result of Mike McQueary's interview with the AG's office" was the transformation of a story about rough horseplay into something sexual, Snedden said.
"I think it would be orchestrated by them," Snedden said about the AG's office, which has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

In Snedden's report, he interviewed Schuyler J. McLaughlin, Penn State's facility security officer at the university's applied research laboratory. McLaughlin, a former NCIS agent himself, as well as a lawyer, told Snedden that McQueary initially was confused by what he saw.

"What McQueary saw, apparenty it looked sexual to him and he may have been worried about what would happen to him," Snedden wrote. "Because McQueary wanted to keep his job" at Penn State.
[McLaughlin] "believes Curley and Schultz likely asked tough questions and those tough questions likely caused McQueary to question what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. McLaughlin "believes that after questioning, McQueary likely did not know what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. "And McQueary "probably realized he could not prove what he saw."

There was also confusion over the date of the alleged shower incident. At the grand jury, McQueary testified that it took place on March 1, 2002. But at the Sandusky trial, McQueary changed the date of the shower incident to Feb. 9, 2001.

There was also confusion over the identity of the boy in the showers. In 2011, the Pennsylvania State Police interviewed a man suspected of being "Victim No. 2." Allan Myers was then a 24-year-old married Marine who had been involved in Sandusky's Second Mile charity since he was a third-grader.

Myers, however, told the state police he "does not believe the allegations that have been raised" against Sandusky, and that another accuser was "only out to get some money." Myers said he used to work out with Sandusky since he was 12 or 13, and that "nothing inappropriate occurred while showering with Sandusky." Myers also told the police that Sandusky never did anything that "made him uncomfortable."

Myers even wrote a letter of support for Sandusky that was published in the Centre Daily Times, where he described Sandusky as his "best friend, tutor, workout mentor and more." Myers lived with Sandusky while he attended college. When Myers got married, he invited Jerry and Dottie Sandusky to the wedding.

Then, Myers got a lawyer and flipped, claiming that Sandusky assaulted him ten times. But at the Sandusky trial, the state attorney general's office deemed Myers an unreliable witness and did not call him to testify against Sandusky.

Instead, the prosecutor told the jury, the identity of Victim No. 2, the boy in the showers, "was known only to God."

Myers, however, eventually collected $3 million in what was supposed to be a confidential settlement with Penn State as Victim No. 2.
Mike McQueary may not have known for sure what he heard and saw in the shower. And the cops and the prosecutors may not know who Victim No. 2 really was. But John Snedden had it figured out pretty early what the source of the trouble was at Penn State.

Snedden recalled that four days into his 2012 investigation, he called his bosses to let them know that despite all the hoopla in the media, there was no sex scandal at Penn State.
"I just want to make sure you realize that this is a political hit job," Snedden recalled telling his bosses. "The whole thing is political."
Why did the Penn State situation get blown so far out of proportion?

"When I get a case, I independently investigate it," Snedden said. "It seems like that was not the case here. It wasn't an independent inquiry. It was an orchestrated effort to make the circumstances fit the alleged crime."

How did they get it so wrong at Penn State?

"To put it in a nutshell, I would say there was an exceptional rush to judgment to satisfy people," Snedden said. "So they wouldn't have to answer any more questions."

"It's a giant rush to judgement," Snedden said. "There was no debate."

"Ninety-nine percent of it is hysteria," Snedden said. Ninety-nine percent of what happened at Penn State boiled down to people running around yelling, "Oh my God, we've got to do something immediately," Snedden said.

It didn't matter that most of the people Snedden talked to at Penn State couldn't believe that Graham Spanier would have ever participated in a coverup, especially involving the abuse of a child.

Carolyn A. Dolbin, an administrative assistant to the PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier told her "that his father has physically abused him when [Spanier] was a child, and as a result [Spanier] had a broken nose and needed implants."
Spanier himself told Snedden, "He had been abused as a child and he would not stand for that," meaning a coverup, Snedden wrote.

Snedden couldn't believe the way the Penn State Board of Trustees acted the night they decided to fire both Spanier and Paterno.

There was no investigation, no determination of the facts. Instead, the officials running the show at Penn State wanted to move on as fast as possible from the scandal by sacrificing a few scapegoats.

At an executive session, the vice chairman of the PSU board, John Surma, the CEO of U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh, told his fellow PSU board members, "We need to get rid of Paterno and Spanier," Snedden said. And then Surma asked, "Does anybody disagree with that?"

"There wasn't even a vote," Snedden said. In Snedden's report, Dr. Rodney Erickson, the former PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier "is collateral damage in all of this."

Erickson didn't believe there was a coverup at Penn State, because of what Spanier had told him.

"I was told it was just horsing around in the shower," Spanier told Erickson, as recounted in Snedden's report. "How do you call the police on that?"

On the night the board of trustees fired Paterno, they kept calling Paterno's house, but there was no answer. Finally, the board sent a courier over to Paterno's house, and asked him to call Surma's cell phone.


When Paterno called, Surma was ready to tell the coach three things. But he only got to his first item.

"Surma was only able to tell Paterno that he was no longer football coach before Paterno hung up," Snedden wrote.

In Snedden's report, Spanier is quoted as telling Frances Anne Riley, a member of the board of trustees, "I was so naive."

"He means that politically," Snedden said about Spanier. "He was so naive to understand that a governor would go to that level to jam him. How a guy could be so vindictive," Snedden said, referring to the former governor, who could not be reached for comment.

When the Penn State scandal hit, "It was a convenient disaster," Snedden said. Because it gave the governor a chance "to fulfill vendettas."

The governor was angry at Spanier for vocally opposing Corbett's plan to cut Penn State's budget by 52 percent, Snedden wrote. In his report, Spanier, who was put under oath by Snedden and questioned for eight hours, stated that he had been the victim of "vindictiveness from the governor."

In Snedden's report, Spanier "explained that Gov. Corbett is an alumni of Lebanon Valley College [a private college], that Gov. Corbett is a strong supporter of the voucher system, wherein individuals can choose to utilize funding toward private eduction, as opposed to public education."
Corbett, Spanier told Snedden, "is not fond of Penn State, and is not fond of public higher education."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, "is now hearing that when the Penn State Board of Trustees was telling [Spanier] not to take action and that they [the Penn State Board of Trustees] were going to handle the situation, that the governor was actually exercising pressure on the [The Penn State Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave."
The governor, Snedden said, "wants to be the most popular guy in Pennsylvania." But Spanier was fighting him politically, and Joe Paterno was a football legend.

Suddenly, the Penn State scandal came along, and Corbett could lobby the Penn State Board of Trustees to get rid of both Spanier and Paterno.

And suddenly Corbett starts showing up at Penn State Board of Trustees meetings, where the governor was a board member, but didn't usually bother to go. Only now Corbett "is the knight in shining armor," Snedden said. Because he's the guy cleaning up that horrible sex abuse scandal at Penn State.

"The wrong people are being looked at here," Snedden said about the scandal at Penn State. As far as Snedden was concerned, the board of trustees at Penn State had no reason to fire Spanier or Paterno.

""It's a political vendetta by somebody that has an epic degree of vindictiveness and will stop at nothing apparently," Snedden said about Corbett.

The whole thing is appalling," Snedden said. "It's absurd that somebody didn't professionally investigate this thing from the get-go."

As far as Snedden is concerned, the proof that the investigation was tampered with was shown in the flip-flop done by Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel.

"You've got a clear indication that Cynthia Baldwin was doing whatever they wanted her to do," Snedden said about Baldwin's cooperation with the AG's office.

In her interview with Snedden, Baldwin called Spanier "a very smart man, a man of integrity." She told Snedden that she trusted Spanier, and trusted his judgment. This was true even during "the protected privileged period" from 2010 on, Baldwin told Snedden. While Baldwin was acting as Spanier's counsel, and, on the advice of her lawyer, wasn't supposed to discuss that so-called privileged period with Snedden.

Baldwn subsequently became a cooperating witness who testified against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

Another aspect of the hysterical rush to judgment by Penn State: the university paid out $93 million to the alleged victims of Sandusky, without vetting anybody. None of the alleged victims were deposed by lawyers; none were examined by forensic psychiatrists.

Instead, Penn State just wrote the checks, no questions asked. The university's free-spending prompted a lawsuit from Penn State's insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company.

So Snedden wrote a report that called for renewing Spanier's high-level security clearance. Because Snedden didn't find any evidence of a coverup at Penn State. Because there was nothing to cover up.

"The circumstances surrounding [Spanier's] departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on [Spanier's] current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote.
Meanwhile, the university paid $8.3 million for a report from former FBI Director Louie Freeh, who reached the opposite conclusion that Snedden did. Freeh found that there had been a top-down coverup of a sex crime at Penn State that was allegedly orchestrated by Spanier.

What does Snedden think of the Louie Freeh report?

"It's an embarrassment to law enforcement," Snedden said.

Louie Freeh, Snedden said, is a political appointee.

"Maybe he did an investigation at one point in his life, but not on this one," Snedden said about the report Freeh wrote on Penn State.

What about the role the media played in creating an atmosphere of hysteria?

"Sadly, I think they've demonstrated that investigative journalism is dead," Snedden said.
If Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile, Snedden said, how did he survive a month-long investigation back in 1998 by the Penn State police, the State College police, the Centre County District Attorney's office, and the state Department of Child/Public Welfare?

All of those agencies investigated Sandusky, after a mother complained about Jerry taking a shower with her 11-year-old son. Were all those agencies bamboozled? None of them could catch a pedophile in action?

Another problem for people who believe that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile: When the cops came to Sandusky's house armed with search warrants, they didn't find any porn.

Have you ever heard of a pedophilia case where large caches of pornography weren't found, I asked Snedden.

"No," he said. "Having worked child sex abuse cases before, they [pedophiles] go from the porn to actually acting it out. It's a crescendo."

"I'm more inclined" to believe the results of the 1998 investigation, Snedden said. "Because they're not politically motivated."

Snedden said he's had "minimalistic contact" with Sandusky that basically involved watching him behave at a high school football game.

"I really do think he's a big kid," Snedden said of Sandusky.

Does he believe there's any credible evidence that Sandusky is a pedophile?

"Certainly none that's come to light that wasn't susceptible to manipulation," he said.

Does Sandusky deserve a new trial?

"Without a doubt," Snedden said. Because the first time around, when he was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in jail, Sandusky didn't have a real trial, Snedden said.

"To have a real trial, you should actually have real credible witnesses and credible victims," Snedden said. "And no leaks from the grand jury."

It also would have been a fair trial, Snedden said, if the people who Sandusky would have called as defense witnesses hadn't already been indicted by the state attorney general's office.

While he was investigating Spanier, Snedden said, he had his own dust-up with the state Attorney General's office. It came in the form of an unwanted phone call from Anthony Sassano, the lead investigator in the AG's office on the Sandusky case.

Sassano didn't go through the appropriate channels when he called, Snedden said. But Sassano demanded to see Snedden's report.

Snedden said he told Sassano, sorry, but that's the property of the federal government. Sassano, Snedden said, responded by "spewing obscenities."

"It was something to the effect of I will ****ing see your ass and your ****ing report at the grand jury," Snedden recalled Sassano telling him.

Sure enough, Snedden was served with a subpoena from the state AG's office on October 22, 2012. But the feds sent the subpoena back saying they didn't have to honor it.

"The doctrine of sovereign immunity precludes a state court from compelling a federal employee, pursuant to its subpoena and contempt powers, from offering testimony contrary to his agency's instructions," the feds wrote back to the state Attorney General's office.

So what would it take to straighten out the mess at Penn State?

"The degree of political involvement in this case is so high," Snedden said.

"You need to take an assistant U.S. Attorney from Arizona or somewhere who doesn't know anything about Penn State," Snedden said. Surround him with a competent staff of investigators, and turn them loose for 30 days.
 
Keep demonstrating your own ignorance.
Just truth bombing you
Right. I agree. You are asserting that I am lying about a very common statement (my profession) which to any normal person wouldn't require any proof. People on this board talk about their jobs all the time. No one calls them a liar or asks for proof. So YOU are making the assertion that I am lying. PROVE IT.
No, you made the claim and when you are anonymous and can't be checked out then you must prove it if challenged. The fact that some aren't challenged does not shift the burden. In fact you challenged @bourbon n blues on whether he had a friend in the investigation and then called him a liar when he didn't say who it was. Prove who you are or be called a liar. Hypocrite.
How would you do that without divulging your name?
Irrelevant.
You couldn't be more wrong. I've got the documentation and have even shared some of it with you.
Faked stuff
Nothing fraudulent about me, Super Chief.
Most everything
Then prove it.
Burden is on you
Better look in the mirror then.
I would see you
Give me an example that I can use. Your example above doesn't work because of PII. I've already told you, you are never getting my name.
I thought you were a genius. 🤣 I told you how to do it. Ponder it and then figure it out.
Then you are wasting your time here.
Spending it well and helping you with your mental issues
Not only are you dumb, but you apparently have terrible taste in TV shows.
I don't watch porn
This is Nole attempting to run:
Childish, but then you are immature.
I don't like being accused of things that I am not in any venue, anonymous or not.
You are very insecure. Notice how I and others do not rise to your juvenile bait when you try to use your stupid humor derived from porn TV shows. We know who we are and don't need your acknowledgement. You need ours and can't stand being called out as a liar. You have some real problems Rooster.
Not sure why that is hard to understand.
Because I am a secure person unlike you.
You don't seem to like it when I tell everyone that you **** ostriches, even though you are anonymous too.
Do you really believe that? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL You desperately WANT me to be upset about but I laugh at it because you sound like a teenager. And all this from some stupid porn show you watch? Man, thanks for really making me laugh today. LOL
Prove it.
On you
They very clearly aren't, as has been demonstrated ad nauseum on this board and elsewhere. And I obviously do not have a religion. Religion is the enemy of science.
Your religion is PSU and the Cult of Joe. You have proven nothing about the victims and Sandusky will remain in jail until he dies.
It is actually. Again, where do you get your morality? Who tells you how to think and how to behave?
No one tells me what to think or believe but subjective morality is immorality. This is why you can rationalize defending a pedophile and lie about your background.
Objectively shown by who? Who tells you what to think?
See above
It isn't sick, it is intellectually honest.
It's evil and sick. You would fit right in with a cult or other such institution. Like the Cult of Joe!
Nope. I defend wrongly convicted men.
They are not.
It isn't. Your brain is too just too small to understand that morality is not objective. I have give you many examples to illustrate this, but you are too dumb to understand.
And you are too evil to comprehend why they must be objective or they are of no value or use.
Wrong again. My morals are just very different than yours (thankfully)
You have no morals. Period.
How does not caring what people think make me delusional or a narcissist? You should really look up the definition of words before you use them.
Calling others "unwashed" is narcissist. Hilarious too given your stupidity.
Obviously there are at least two people who use it. I cannot control who uses a username (in forums I don't use or even know about) that I have used for years.
You are the only one who uses it. There is no other. LOL
So pretty funny then? Cool.
No, pretty sad you think you are smart when you are really dumb.
 
That's not an example. God, you are dumb.
Sure it is. C'mon Genius, give me something I can look up. Have you won any prizes of international reputation like Sara Ganim? You know the one you say you've lapped professionally?
 
Sure it is. C'mon Genius, give me something I can look up. Have you won any prizes of international reputation like Sara Ganim? You know the one you say you've lapped professionally?
I have but all of those contain my name. And I'm not giving you my name. So unless you want something with my name blacked out (which you will then claim is photoshopped), then that won't work, will it?
 
Just truth bombing you
Couldn't be farther from the truth. I suggest getting a hobby. Perhaps search a word puzzles? Or cross stitch? Those seem on par with your cognitive capabilities.
No, you made the claim and when you are anonymous and can't be checked out then you must prove it if challenged. The fact that some aren't challenged does not shift the burden.
It's not a crazy claim. It's stating what my job is. If someone said, "Hey, I sell insurance" would you say "BS, prove it!" It's a job. Many people have similar jobs. Lots of STEM people among PSU grads. Lots of scientists and engineers on this board. It is far from a crazy assertion. It's not like I'm saying I'm in the CIA or something. It is not something that needs to be proved. It's a simple fact, just like "My mom was a teacher." Not complicated; not something you need to prove.
In fact you challenged @bourbon n blues on whether he had a friend in the investigation and then called him a liar when he didn't say who it was. Prove who you are or be called a liar. Hypocrite.
But the difference is that claiming you have a friend who is close to the case and providing cryptic information that they have supposedly provided to you IS actually relevant to this discussion and therefore something someone might lie about. Furthermore, if one did know an investigator, there is zero chance they are blabbing about information that isn't in the public record. So that claim is far less believable (although not impossible) than me saying I'm a scientist.
Irrelevant.
It's not irrelevant because you are never getting my name. So unless you can come up with an example that doesn't involve PII just STFU about. You don't have to admit you are wrong (even though you are), you don't have to apologize (you really should), just never mention it again. I will also never mention it again, because it really doesn't matter and you have made a federal case about it FOR ZERO GOOD REASON. I would have ignored it if you hadn't accused me of multiple horrible falsehoods.
Faked stuff

Most everything
Nothing is faked. Happy to prove it.
Burden is on you
Again, it isn't. But I'm happy to prove it anyway. You just have to tell me how (without using PII).
I would see you
You would look in the mirror and see me? You are either terrible at the English language or you are a moron.
I thought you were a genius. 🤣 I told you how to do it. Ponder it and then figure it out.
You haven't given me an example that doesn't involve PII. So you are either dumb as a post or being purposefully obtuse.
Spending it well and helping you with your mental issues
you are the one with mental issues, ostrich ****er.
I don't watch porn
It's not porn; it's a TV show on Hulu, your Puritanical ****.
Childish, but then you are immature.
Yes, and proud of it.
You are very insecure. Notice how I and others do not rise to your juvenile bait when you try to use your stupid humor derived from porn TV shows.
WTF is a "porn TV show"??? You are really hung up about sex. I assure you the reference has ZERO to do with porn.
We know who we are and don't need your acknowledgement. You need ours and can't stand being called out as a liar.
Most people I know don't like to be accused of being a liar, or being a racist or stealing valor. All of those falsehoods have been hurled at me by you. I'm defending myself. Again, if you drop it, I too will drop it. If you keep bringing it up, I will keep making you look like a moron.
Because I am a secure person unlike you.
LOL. A secure person wouldn't spend his days looking for attention on another team's message board.
Do you really believe that? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL You desperately WANT me to be upset about but I laugh at it because you sound like a teenager. And all this from some stupid porn show you watch? Man, thanks for really making me laugh today. LOL
You clearly are because you get all upset about "porn." I think you need sex counseling, my dude. I pity your partner. I seriously doubt he or she or they is satisfied.
You make the allegation; you provide the proof. Or STFU.
No one tells me what to think or believe but subjective morality is immorality.
This is nonsensical. If no one told you what your morality is, how do you know what it is? You didn't come up with it yourself (as you have said). So who told you?
This is why you can rationalize defending a pedophile and lie about your background.
I do neither of those things.
It's evil and sick.
I think it's evil and sick that your spread lies on another team's message board.
They are not.
They clearly are as I and other have shown time and time again.
And you are too evil to comprehend why they must be objective or they are of no value or use.
Objective according to who? Who told you what your morals should be? How do you reconcile this with the examples I have given you? Why are your set of morals better than the Baptists or the Mormons or the Muslims or the Scientologists or the Members of the Church of the FSM? How is that objective?
You have no morals. Period.
Wrong.
Calling others "unwashed" is narcissist. Hilarious too given your stupidity.
First of all, "unwashed masses" is a common phrase. Second of all, even if you are taking it literally how does hygiene related to narcissism???
You are the only one who uses it. There is no other. LOL
Totally wrong. I'm not a gamer and I have no idea what those other forums even are.
No, pretty sad you think you are smart when you are really dumb.
The only relevant thing here is that I am smarter than you which is a dead certain lock.
 
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ESPN scapegoating Paterno for conduct involving a former coach and kids who were under the alleged control of a child protective agency based upon rank speculation, innuendo and hearsay while basically ignoring sexual misconduct involving coaches and players? Who the hell would have thunk it.


Legit facts are hard to come by.

In a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, Jerry Sandusky, acting as his own jailhouse lawyer, accuses attorney Andrew Shubin of using the quack science of recovered memory therapy to manufacture tainted testimony against him by alleging sex abuse that never really happened.
When the Penn State sex abuse scandal hit, "Shubin went into action advertising for and identifying accusers," Sandusky writes in an affidavit accompanying his motion for a new trial. "He [Shubin] collaborated with therapist Cynthia McNabb to create a group contagion."
"In the words of some of their clients, buried memories were retrieved," Sandusky wrote. "Seeds of incrimination were planted in the minds of susceptible individuals, as revealed in the newly discovered evidence, and tainted, unreliable testimony was created."
On his website, Shubin, of State College, who did not respond to a request for comment, brags that he led "the charge to hold Penn State accountable for its role in the devastating sexual abuse of young boys."


In the process, Shubin hit the lottery for both his clients and himself, racking up more than $32 million in civil settlements for six alleged victims of abuse. Four of the six alleged victims represented by Shubin initially claimed that Sandusky had never abused them. And then, the four alleged victims underwent recovered memory therapy. Through the use of highly suggestive and leading questions, Sandusky charges, the alleged victims supposedly recovered hidden memories of abuse that in the criminal courts, helped convict Sandusky; and in the civil courts enabled the alleged victims to cash in.
After they changed their stories, Jason Simcisko collected $7.25 million; Dustin Struble, $3.25 million; Frankie Probst, $9 million; and Matt Sandusky, Sandusky's adopted son, $325,000. A fifth alleged victim, Alan Myers, allegedly the infamous "boy in the showers," initially insisted to a private investigator that Sandusky had never abused him and even wrote a letter to a local newspaper, defending Sandusky. But after he retained Shubin and flipped on Sandusky, Myers collected $6.9 million.
The sixth alleged victim represented by Shubin was Ryan Rittmeyer, a convicted criminal with 17 arrests who served nearly three years in jail for offenses that included reckless endangerment, theft by deception and false impression, robbery, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm. Rittmeyer got his case rolling by calling in on a special sex abuse hot line set up by the state Attorney General's office, and, with Shubin as his lawyer, he cashed in to the tune of $5.5 million.




Sandusky has previously been represented on appeal by lawyers Alexander Lindsay of Butler, PA, and Philip Lauer of Easton, and more recently, E. J. Rymsza of Williamsport. But after a decade of unsuccessful appeals, Sandusky is still in prison and running out of legal options. In calls to this reporter from prison, the former defensive coach at "Linebacker U" has openly expressed frustration with his lawyers for not being aggressive enough.
As a result, at the State Correctional Institute at Laurel Highlands, Sandusky has taken to writing his own briefs and affidavits, which are signed only by him. In his motion for a new trial, filed last week in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas, Sandusky cited as newly discovered evidence a Jan. 15, 2018 interview conducted by Shubin with the late Shawn Sinisi.
Sinisi, who died of a drug overdose in 2018, is currently the subject of a current and highly bogus podcast, "The Mayor of Maple Avenue," hosted by Sara Ganim. She's the useful idiot of a reporter who, during the Penn State scandal, functioned as the press agent for corrupt prosecutors in the state attorney general's office. The bad actors that Ganim carried water for included former deputy attorney general Frank Fina, who had his law license suspended because of his unconstitutional acts against other defendants in this very same case.
In his motion for a new trial, Sandusky requests an evidentiary hearing where he can present the "expert testimony of licensed psychologist Christopher Barden Ph.D on the taint issue." Besides being a licensed psychologist, Barden, of Plymouth, Minn., is also a scientist, attorney, and as an expert witness has testified in multiple malpractice lawsuits against therapists who practiced recovered memory therapy.
Every alleged victim in the Sandusky case drastically changed their stories, which were never vetted by anyone at Penn State. But in this newest case, the Sinisi family might have set a new standard by proving that when it comes to allegations of sex abuse, you don't even have to still be alive to be able to collect from the rollover specialists at Penn State.



On March 30, 2011, Ganim, then working for the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, ignited the entire Penn State sex abuse scandal by publishing a story that disclosed, by virtue of an illegal grand jury leak, that the state attorney general's office had launched a secret investigation of Sandusky for allegedly being a serial sexual abuser of children.
Two months later, on May 27, 2011, Agent Anthony Sassano of the state attorney general's office went to see Shawn Sinisi, then 19, who told the agent that he and his older brother Josh had attended the Second Mile summer camps annually between 2004 and 2007, and had also stayed overnight at Sandusky's home seven or eight times.
"He [Shawn Sinisi] indicated he never felt uncomfortable around Sandusky and would tell me if anything inappropriate had occurred," Sassano wrote. "Shawn indicated he believes Sandusky is a great role model as he helps people in need."
Sassano also interviewed Shawn's older brother, Josh, who stated that he didn't believe the allegations against Sandusky were true. "He indicated that Sandusky is a very generous and most positive person who helps people [kids] with problems," Sassano wrote. "He indicated to this day, he has occasional contact with Sandusky via phone and considers him a friend.".
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. 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."
During the Penn State sex abuse scandal, the Sinisis didn't change their story, and continued to publicly defend Sandusky.
On Nov. 6, 2011, after Ganim's bombshell on the illegally 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 that same story, 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.
Enter Andrew Shubin
But in 2019, a year after her son overdosed, Marianne Sinisi filed a civil law suit on behalf of her late son's estate against Sandusky, the 2nd Mile and Penn State. In the lawsuit, Shubin charged that Sandusky molested Shawn Sinisi between 2000 and 2002, and was responsible for Shawn Sinisi's death.
In his motion for a new trial, Sandusky wrote, "After six years of numerous opportunities to make allegations, which he didn't make, Shubin asked [Shawn Sinisi] what he remembered about showering with Sandusky."
"Sinisi's response: "He groped me a couple different times in the shower."
After Shubin asked what he meant by that, Sinisi allegedly responded, "like grab my penis."
According to Sandusky, Shubin asked, "Did he masturbate you," and Sinisi allegedly replied, "He tried to. I like pulled away, then he just stopped."
"Shubin's interview technique is highly suggestive and tainted the memory of Sinisi and caused him to recall events that never took place," Sandusky wrote.
"The new evidence obtained in discovery in the civil case is relevant in this matter because it demonstrated the techniques used by Shubin to influence the testimony of Sinisi and other young males, who, like Sinisi, had previously given statements that denied any wrongdoing on Sandusky's part, but had later made accusations against Sandusky and, in some cases, testified against him in his criminal case," Sandusky
In his motion for a new trial, Sandusky states that he wasn't served with Sinisi's complaint until last year.
Last November, on the tenth anniversary of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Ganim's new podcast asserted that Shawn Sinsisi was the first alleged victim of Sandusky's to die as a result of the alleged abuse.
"In so many ways, Shawn Sinisi was a textbook abuse victim: he was ashamed, confused, angry, unable to admit or discuss what had happened," Ganim said on the podcast. "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."


In his affidavit, Sandusky wrote that "Shawn never worked out nor showered with me," and that he "never groped or masturbated him."
Sandusky also said that he was always clothed in his dealings with Shawn Sinisi.
"At times, I would roughhouse [wrestle but not seriously] with them, hugging them, and telling them I loved them [because to me they were part of my extended family]," Sandusky wrote. "These acts were not sexual in nature."
In his affidavit, Sandusky stated that Shawn Sinisi was a troubled kid who suffered from "pain and anxiety," and expressed numerous reasons for turning to drugs.
In 7th grade, at age 13, Sandusky wrote, Shawn Sinisi told him he had found a friend's father dead who had been like a second father to him. After a drinking party, Sandusky wrote, Shawn's best friend died in Shawn's presence after being involed in a car accident, and "Shawn blamed himself."
A year later, Sandusky wrote, another good friend died instantly in another car accident.
"I have had so many ****ed up things happen to me at such a young age," Sandusky recalled Shawn telling him.
"Just before going to jail in December 2012, one of [Shawn's] other best friends died of an overdose Shawn blamed himself for starting him on drugs," Sandusky wrote.
In 2013, at age 21, Shawn was accused of raping a female acquaintance. "He was shocked, hurt, and under much stress, leading to heavy drug use," Sandusky wrote. Shawn was also grieving the deaths of his grandmother and grandfather.
According to Sandusky, Shawn Sinisi was "a troubled young man with a propensity to fabricate stories" who was led astray by his "relationship with an ambitious therapist, who was trying to make a name for himself."


In the Sinisi case, Penn State, according to a knowledgable source, has agreed in principle to pay the Sinisi family, but hasn't parted with any cash yet.
This is what Penn State did with 36 of Sandusky's 41 accusers. The university's trustees have previously paid out a total of $118 million to 36 accusers, an average of $3.3 million each, without deploying any of the usual methods to vet their stories, such as having the alleged victims questioned by private investigators, deposed by lawyers, personally examined by forensic psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.
Instead, Penn State just rolled over and wrote checks.
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.

“It appears as though Penn State made little effort, if any, to verify the credibility of the claims of the individuals,” Eric Anderson, a Pittsburgh lawyer who was an expert witness in the case, 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.
The lawsuit ended in 2016 with a confidential settlement.
The False Accuser
In his motion for a new trial, Sandusky discloses as his second piece of newly discovered evidence statements made by A.J. Dillen on the 14th episode of John Ziegler's podcast, "With the Benefit of Hindsight."
In 2014, A.J. Dillen, a 31-year-old former Second Miler who didn’t believe any of the alleged victims were telling the truth, purposely made up a ridiculous story -- he’d been raped by Sandusky in a park behind Joe Paterno’s house -- and then Dillen decided to see how far he could get with it.
He got pretty far.
Dillen went to see Shubin, who took him in as a client. But according to Dillen, who recorded his private meetings with Shubin on his cell phone, the lawyer radically altered Dillen’s original story to make it more compatible with a possible Penn State settlement. Then, Shubin referred Dillen to a therapist who sent him to a psychotherapist, who certified Dillen as having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Finally, after more than three years of legal counsel and about 100 paid therapy sessions, Shubin informed Dillen that he couldn’t pursue his claim because it was past the statute of limitations. Shubin referred Dillen to the state attorney general’s office, where Dillen could file a possible criminal complaint against Sandusky, which, if successful, might have cleared the way for Dillen to get paid in a civil claim.

But rather than go any further with the charade, Dillen decided to out himself. He never wanted money, he just wanted to prove a point. As Dillen told myself and John Ziegler in 2017, “Hopefully, people will start to realize that this whole case stinks.”

In his affidavit, Sandusky writes that "in recorded meetings with Dillen, Shubin 'corrected' Dillen's version of his encounters with Sandusky, to substantially enhance their settlement value by, for example, moving the location of events to Penn State, from a public park."

On Ziegler's podcast, Sandusky wrote, Dillen stated his reaction to what Shubin did was shock.

"I am immediately thinking this entire thing is BS," Dillen stated on the podcast, according to Sandusky's motion for a new trial. "I came as a fake accuser, and he [Shubin] has changed my story. What makes me think he didn't do this with everyone?"



In his motion for a new trial, Sandusky writes that initially, Shubin clients Jason Simcisko and Dustin Struble "told the OAG and state police investigators that Sandusky had never molested them but gave very different testimony at trial."

On July 19, 2011, Jason Simcisko told police that Sandusky never did anything inappropriate to him, and "I don't believe any of this stuff is true and hope he is found not guilty," Sandusky wrote.
But "after six meetings with Shubin and therapy with McNabb," Sandusky wrote, Simcisko changed his story to testify in court that Sandusky "touched his penis, washed his butt, and kissed his shoulders."
In 2004, Dustin Struble wrote on an application for financial aide in 2004, "Jerry Sandusky, he has helped me understand so much about myself. He is such a kind and caring gentleman, and I will never forget him.
But after Shubin and therapist McNabb met with Struble some 10 to 15 times, Struble claimed that through counseling, he recalled instances of inappropriate touching.
"That doorway that was closed, has since been opening more," Struble testified at Sandusky's criminal trial. "Through counseling and different things I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside then."
Another alleged victim who initially claimed he was never molested by Sandusky was Allan Myers, the alleged boy in the showers that Mike McQueary allegedly saw being raped as a 10-year-old boy by Sandusky.

On Nob. 9. 2011, Myers told investigator Curtis Everhart, "Never in my life did I ever feel uncomfortable or violated . . . never did Jerry do wrong by me . . . I will never have anything bad to say about Jerry."
"Investigator Sassano asked Myers if he ever told Shubin the specifics of the sexual conduct between him and Sandusky and he indicated he never told them," Sandusky wrote.
Then, Sandusky quotes Sassano as saying, "This is in contrast to what Shubin told me on Feb. 10, 2012. Furthermore, Sassano rejected a three-page document given to Inspector [Michael] Corricelli that was purported to be Myers's recollection of sexual conduct because Corricelli indicated he suspected Shubin wrote it," Sandusky wrote.
Regarding Allan Myers, his "earlier statements exonerated Sandusky," Sandusky wrote. But Myers "was prevented by Shubin from being called as a witness in Sandusky's defense by being hidden at an undisclosed location," Shubin wrote.
Regarding Ryan Ritttmeyer, Sandusky wrote in his motion for a new trial that Rittmeyer was a friend of Dustin Struble's, and that Rittmeyer "incorporated what [Struble] had been told by Shubin to say in his trial testimony."
After he called the state attorney general's sex abuse hotline, Rittmeyer initially told the cops that Sandusky had groped him at a swimming pool and then attempted to have oral sex while driving him around in a silver convertible. According to Rittmeyer, Sandusky said that if he didn’t submit, he would never see his family again.
The problems with Rittmeyer’s story start with the car.
“Jerry Sandusky never owned a silver convertible,” Dick Anderson, a retired coach who was a colleague of Sandusky’s for decades on the Penn State coaching staff, and has known Sandusky since 1962, when they were Nittany Lions teammates told me in 2018. “He drove Fords or Hondas.”



According to Sandusky, "numerous accusers and their families responded to Shubin's request, and potential solutions and came upon large amounts of money and justification for failures through alleging sexual abuse by Sandusky."
"Without Shubin's influence and the lure of financial gain, they may not have come forward, or if they did, would not have presented a compelling story," Sandusky wrote in his motion for a new trial.
"The social contagion created by Shubin spread to others, accusers, families, attorneys and the public," Sandusky wrote." If Shubin's effort had been eliminated, there is a high probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different."
 
what gets me is that these anti-PSU guys are saying "The police covered up 1998" and in the next breath "Paterno should have called the police". You really can't have it both ways.
 
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Only because of the way the narrative has been written. Joe and Jerry's paths should have been separate all along. What Jerry did or didn't do is one thing, but should have little bearing on Joe's culpability since he didn't see anything and received second hand reports. What matters regarding Joe and PSU's potential culpability is what they were told, primarily by McQueary since he was the whistleblower. But the general public has a hard time separating the two, and the media coverage going after the big fish in PSU and Paterno didn't help.


The public does not pay attention.

For two hours today, U.S. District Court Judge Mitchell Goldberg grilled three top supervisors in the district attorney's office about why they, in the opinion of the judge, had breached their "obligation to be candid with the court."

At issue was the case of Robert Wharton, who, with a co-defendant, was convicted in 1984 of strangling and drowning to death a minister's son and his wife.

If that wasn't bad enough, after Wharton and his codefendant got through brutally murdering the couple and ransacking their home, they turned off the heat in the dead of winter and left the couple's infant daughter, then 7-months old, alone to freeze to death. Before they left, the heartless killers even stole the infant's crib.

If you're asking yourself why the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner got involved in the case, it wasn't to protect the public from such a depraved killer. And it certainly wasn't to advocate on behalf of the daughter of the murdered couple, who had somehow miraculously survived because the minister showed up two days after the murders of his son and daughter-in-law, to rescue the crying, dehydrated infant and rush her to the hospital.

No, in the case of the Commonwealth v. Wharton, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner took the side of the convicted killer, by trying to get Judge Goldberg to agree to let Wharton off death row. In doing so, the D.A.'s office claimed that Wharton had rehabilitated himself while in prison.

In making that argument, however, the three supervisors in the D.A.'s office did not tell the judge that in 1986, the supposedly rehabilitated Wharton had tried to escape a courtroom in City Hall, and was only stopped after he was shot twice by a sheriff's deputy.

The D.A.'s office also neglected to inform Judge Goldberg about the six times that Wharton had been disciplined in prison, twice after he was caught with pieces of a metal antenna that Wharton had fashioned into a key to unlock his handcuffs.

The D.A.'s office also neglected to inform Judge Goldberg that they hadn't bothered to contact the only surviving child of the murdered couple, as they were required to do by law, to let her know that they were trying to get the convicted killer of her parents off death row.


What happened in court today was the most illuminating look to date at the inner workings of the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner, where the paramount concern is for the welfare of criminals, and the public and victims of crime be damned.

When court opened this morning shortly before 9 a. m., David Rudovsky, Esquire, entered his appearance on behalf of the D.A.'s office to represent Krasner's three supervisors in front of Judge Goldberg, who was threatening to hit them with sanctions.

Rudovsky is a veteran civil rights and criminal defense lawyer who has spent his career suing the city and trying to get convicted killers out of jail. He and Krasner are longtime friends, progressive soulmates and political allies; it was Rudovsky's firm that employed Lisa Rau, Krasner's wife, before she became a Common Pleas Court judge.

Rudovsky was also a key player in a long-running civil dispute involving the D.A.'s office that ultimately wound up enriching both Rudovsky's law firm and Krasner's political war chest. The dispute began in 2014, in a civil lawsuit where the city was accused of illegally seizing more than $50 million in forfeitures from criminal defendants. In 2018, after Krasner took office as D.A., the city, which had fought the case for the previous four years, began negotiating with Rudovsky's firm to resolve it.

On Jan. 27, 2021, the city agreed to set up a $3 million restitution fund, of which $1.6 million was paid out to alleged victims in the case. The settlement included an award of $772,633 to the Philadelphia Foundation, so that D.A. Krasner could grandstand while passing out public service grants that would further enrich his political fortunes.

On top of the $3 million in restitution, to settle the case, the D.A.'s office under Krasner also agreed to pay $2.6 million to Rudovsky's firm. So Krasner and Rudovsky are a couple of cozy, longtime

Today in court, Judge Goldberg repeatedly asked the three supervisors in the D.A.'s office to answer a simple question, namely why they hadn't been candid with him. And the response of the three supervisors was to plead ignorance, and to surprisingly wrap themselves up in the past practices of the D.A.'s office under previous district attorneys. Along the way, each supervisor made some damning admissions.

Meanwhile, Rudovsky, brimming with the smug, moral superiority of the progressively enlightened, repeatedly lectured the judge that he was overstepping his boundaries; he also repeatedly asserted that the public, as well as the crime victim in the case, had no right to know the inner deliberations of the D.A.'s office.

The public and the crime victim, Rudovsky said, also didn't have any right to know why the D.A.'s office had suddenly reversed decades of defending Wharton's conviction, and was now trying to get Wharton off of death row.

The ultimate authority in this case, Rudovsky insisted, was the D.A. himself. As for crime victims, Rudovsky said, they were "completely irrelevant."

Rudovsky began by objecting to a motion that the judge had filed yesterday, where Judge Goldberg was claiming that by withholding information from him, the D.A.'s office was trying to circumvent the judge's narrow legal role in deciding death row appeals such as the Wharton case.

"There is a new focus here," Rudovsky complained; he also objected to the judge's charge that the D.A.'s office had violated their duty of candor.

The judge did not back down.

"I'm concerned that they [the D.A.'s office] tried to to circumvent well established case law" in not divulging the true facts of the case to him, the judge said.

Rudovsky: The Public Has No Right To Know

But when the judge tried to probe the inner workings of the D.A.'s office, and why it decided after decades to suddenly reverse course, and go along with the efforts of criminal defense lawyers to get the supposedly rehabilitated Wharton off death row, Rudovsky objected.

The "internal deliberations" of the D.A.'s office, Rudovsky said, should not be disclosed to the public, and "should not be done in a fish bowl."

Judge Goldberg protested that he couldn't understand how the D.A.'s office, which was claiming that convicted killer Wharton had rehabilitated himself in prison, had not informed him that Wharton had attempted to escape by slipping out of his handcuffs, shoving a sheriff's deputy, and bolting.

"He escaped from a City Hall courtroom and was 30 feet from Market Street and had to be shot," the judge stated.

When the judge asked Nancy Winkelman, supervisor of the D.A.'s law division, to explain why she wasn't candid with the court, Winkelman gave a long and emotional speech about how much her reputation meant to her.

The judge agreed that Winkelman had an "exemplary reputation," but he he added, "I'd rather avoid all the speeches."

The judge admitted he hadn't taken lightly his accusations against the D.A.'s office.

"I've lost countless hours of sleep over this," he said. But he added that he couldn't understand the behavior of the D.A.'s office regarding the Wharton case, which he described as "one of the most horrific cases I've ever witnessed."



In response, Winkelman explained that the decision to file a notice of concession in the Wharton case was made by a team of supervisors in the D.A.'s office known as the Capital Case Review Committee.

The notice of concession was a formal waiving of the white flag by the D.A.'s office. When Wharton's defense lawyers filed a motion to get the convicted killer off death row, by claiming his trial lawyer had been ineffective, instead of standing up for the public, and the relatives of the murder victims, the D.A.'s office decided to throw in the towel, and formally concede without a fight so that Wharton's life should be spared.

The Capital Case Review Committee, which reports to the D.A., includes the D.A.'s first assistant, and supervisors of several key units, including homicide, law, victim's services, and the conviction integrity unit. But it's Krasner, Winkelman said, who makes the final decisions.

When the judge asked about the committee's deliberations regarding Wharton, Winkelman responded, "I can't remember those discussions on this particular case."

When the judge got tired of asking the same question, and getting speeches on office procedures from Winkelman, he stated, "I do think you're evading my question."

But Winkelman said, "We did not withhold evidence, we followed practice," and that "our process was no different" from previous administrations in the D.A.'s office.

When Judge Goldberg asked Winkelman if she knew about Wharton getting shot, she responded, "I did not know about the escape."

But when the judge tried to pry further into the workings of the Capital Case Review Committee by asserting that the "the public has a right to know about the deliberative process," Rudovsky replied, "Absolutely not."

'We Recognize A Mistake'

The judge followed that up by asking Winkelman what the D.A.'s office had done to inform the relatives of the murder victims that the D.A.'s office had decided to go along with a defense request to get Wharton of of death row.

Winkelman said that the D.A.'s victims rights coordinator had contacted the eldest brother of one of the murder victims, and that he had not responded that he was "strongly against" letting Wharton off death row.

Winkelman said the D.A.'s office asked the eldest brother to talk to other relatives about the request to get Wharton off of death row, but the D.A.'s office didn't bother to contact the only child of the murder victims.

"It's something we should have done," Winkelman admitted. "We recognize a mistake."

But, she said, it wasn't her job to inform the other relatives of the murder victims that the D.A.'s office was going along with the defense's request to get Wharton off of death row.



In his memorandum opinion, Judge Goldberg wrote about the daughter of the murder victims: "Lisa Hart-Newman, now age thirty-seven, the infant left to die by Wharton, is a surviving victim but was never contacted by the District Attorney."

"In her June 6, 2019 letter to this Court, Lisa Hart-Newman stated that she was 'extremely disappointed to learn of the District Attorney’s stance [to seek to vacate the death penalty] and very troubled that the District Attorney implied that the family approved of his viewpoint.'"

"At no point was I contacted by the District Attorney or anyone in his office to ascertain what my views are," Hart-Newman wrote about the D.A.'s office. "Seeing as I was also a victim in this tragedy, my opinion should have been sought and should carry weight. At seven months old, after my parents had been murdered, I was left in a house where the heat had been intentionally turned off in hopes that I would die. I am the sole survivor of this tragedy and I am alive despite his efforts."

During a hearing before the judge, Lisa Hart-Newman testified that when she did finally find out about what the D.A.'s office was up to, namely trying to get the murderer of her parents off death row, “It was as though, well, it’s already done, and there’s nothing you can do about it . . . you don’t matter, essentially.”



In court today, Winkelman said it was also office precedent to ask the supervisor of the federal litigation unit to write the notice of concession by the D.A.'s office, which informed Judge Goldberg that the D.A.'s office would not contest the defense motion to get Wharton off death row.

"This is how the office previously operated," Winkelman told the judge.

At this point, the judge got impatient with the witness.

When Larry Krasner ran for district attorney, the judge reminded Winkelman, he said "he's gonna do things a lot different than other administrations had done," before His Honor added, "That's your answer?"

Yes it was

After Winkelman, the next witness was Paul George, assistant supervisor in the D.A.'s law division.

George also admitted that when the Capital Case Review Committee was deliberating what to do about the Wharton case, George was not aware of Wharton's attempted escape, and neither was any other member of the committee.

The escape attempt by Wharton, George told the judge, "was not on our radar."

When the judge asked George if the committee had considered any evidence that went against the argument that Wharton had supposedly rehabilitated himself in prison, George responded by saying, "Whatever might be said about our thoroughness, that did occur."

Merely Following Orders

The last witness was Max Kaufman, former supervisor of the federal litigation unit.

In an affidavit, Kaufman told the judge that when he wrote the notice of concession, "I was not personally aware of Wharton's attempted escape in 1986," he admitted. Nor was he aware, Kaufman admitted in his affidavit, of the six times that Wharton was charged in prison for misconduct.

In the affidavit, Kaufman wrote that the notice of concession did not intend to imply that the "victims' family agreed with the decision" of the D.A's office to go along with the defense request to get Wharton off death row.

In his affidavit, Kaufman conceded that the "admittedly vague" language in his notice of concession about "communication with the victims' family" would lead someone to erroneously conclude that the victims' family agreed with the D.A.'s decision to not contest the defense motion to get Wharton off death row.

"Please know that this was certainly not my intention, and I apologize to the court for the lack of clarity," Kaufman wrote.

In court today, Judge Goldberg asked Kaufman why he hadn't been more thorough in his work on the Wharton appeal.

"This is a death penalty case; there is nothing more important that we do," the judge stated.

But Kaufman explained that in writing the notice of concession, he wasn't involved in any decision making, he was merely following the orders of his superiors.

Judge Goldberg, however, refused to accept the notice of concession from the D.A.'s office. Instead, the judge asked the D.A.'s office to answer a couple of follow-up questions.

So Kaufman wrote another response from the D.A.'s office. And when the judge asked who wrote the answers to his questions, Kaufman replied that it was Wharton's defense lawyers, and that he merely signed the response.


In his affidavit, Kaufman said that he subsequently sought and received permission from his supervisors to stop working on the Wharton case.

Why? "Because it seemed apparent the case was evolving from a perfunctory concession of relief to active litigation on Wharton's behalf," Kaufman wrote.

In his appearance in court today before Judge Goldberg, the judge asked Kaufman why he had asked his superiors to get off the Wharton case.

"I wanted to focus on more traditional cases," Kaufman responded. It appeared to be his way of saying that he was more comfortable working on cases where the D.A.'s office was actually prosecuting criminals, rather than advocating on their behalf.

"I appreciate your candor and won't press you on that topic," the judge responded.

In February, Kaufman quit the D.A.'s office to become clerk to state Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty.


The judge ended the hearing by saying, "I don't know where we're going to go from here."

This is the second time in two years that Judge Goldberg has had to formally admonish the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner for a lack of candor.

On Feb. 11, 2021, Judge Goldberg issued a 23-page "memorandum opinion" that constituted a formal admonishment of then ADA Patricia Cummings, the former head of the D.A.'s Conviction Integrity Unit, for violating her duty of candor to the court.

While Cummings was arguing an appeal in federal court, Judge Goldberg wrote, she should have informed His Honor that she had parallel litigation going in state court in her crusade to get Antonio Martinez out of jail, who was serving a life sentence after being convicted of a 1985 double homicide.

Do we need more evidence that under Larry Krasner, the paramount function of the District Attorney's office is to advocate for the rights of criminals?
 
I have but all of those contain my name. And I'm not giving you my name. So unless you want something with my name blacked out (which you will then claim is photoshopped), then that won't work, will it?
You could give titles and dates published/won etc. The last stuff you faked had virtually the whole thing blacked out. But they have to be something I can verify. Taking your word (since you are a liar) won't cut it Super Chief.
 
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