Sandusky Found Guilty on 45 of 48 counts

[Tom Wetmore]

Jerry Sandusky found guilty on nearly all counts of child sex abuse

By Joel Achenbach, Friday, June 22, 10:47 PM

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A jury convicted Jerry Sandusky of 45 charges of child sex abuse Friday, ending a trial in which eight men took the witness stand to declare that the former Penn State coach molested them when they were boys.

So ended a stunning criminal case that has shocked and horrified the Penn State community and, on a national level, cast light on the nature of pedophilia and the silence and denial that often accompany it.

At about 10 p.m., the foreman of the jury stood and read the verdicts, starting with count one, “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse” — “Guilty.”

Sandusky showed no reaction. One of his sons wept and shook his head as he sat behind his mother, Dottie. She was impassive. The Sanduskys had been prepared by their attorney for a guilty verdict after the jury took less than two days to work through a long and complicated list of charges.

After the verdict was read, the prosecutor asked for bail to be revoked. Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s attorney, argued that he be allowed to stay under house arrest. The judge ruled otherwise.

“The bail is is revoked,” he said. “Mr. Sandusky, you are remanded to the custody of the Centre County Sheriff.” Sandusky stood, did not appear to look at his family, and calmly walked through a doorway, accompanied by three officers.

When the news of the verdict reached a throng gathered outside the courthouse, a huge cheer went up.

Sandusky always maintained his innocence, but prosecutors surrounded him with accusers, each of whom, at the end of his testimony, told the jury that he was not making any of this up. Their words persuaded the jurors, many of whom had direct ties to Penn State, that Sandusky had used the charity he founded for troubled kids to cultivate relationships with boys he could molest.

The jury, which deliberated for 21 hours over two days, rejected the argument by defense attorneys that their client was a good man targeted by a virtual conspiracy among zealous police, prosecutors, news organizations and money-hungry civil litigation lawyers.

Sandusky had been under house arrest, spending his final days of semi-freedom at home with his wife, who had testified in his support, and several of their children, according to Amendola. Absent from the final gathering in the Sandusky home was Matt Sandusky, the adopted son who this week claimed via his newly retained attorneys that his father had abused him.

After the verdict was announced Friday, Amendola revealed that he was told last week that Matt Sandusky had made a statement to prosecutors about the alleged sexual abuse in the early 1990s. That, Amendola said, changed the defense strategy. Had Sandusky testified, he said, the prosecution would have put the adopted son on the stand as a rebuttal witness.

“Even though Jerry denied that he had ever sexually assaulted Matt, it would have been explosive,” Amendola said. “If Matt had walked into that courtroom, any chance that Jerry had, any small chance, would have gone out the window.”

Sandusky was convicted of 45 of the 48 charges involving 10 boys. His convictions include first-degree felonies, some with a maximum of 20 years in prison.

With no prior history of criminal activity, Sandusky would normally face less time on each charge under standard sentencing guidelines. But Judge John Cleland has some discretion and could find either mitigating or aggravating circumstances. He could sentence Sandusky to consecutive terms for each count, or have them run concurrently.

Sandusky is 68 and under many scenarios would have to serve the rest of his life behind bars.

“This case was extremely difficult because of the numbers,” said Amendola, referring to the mountain of charges. It was like 10 different cases, he said. Amendola used one metaphor repeatedly: “It was like climbing Mount Everest. And we had to climb it from the bottom.”

The former coach is scheduled to go to the Centre County Correctional Facility, which is just a couple of miles up the road from this Victorian town. Sandusky will be kept in isolation, his attorney said. He’ll be permitted to bring with him only a small number of newly purchased, unwrapped clothing items.

His attorney said Sandusky had been optimistic throughout the past seven months about his chances of being acquitted. Even on trial days featuring horrific testimony from weeping witnesses, Sandusky could be seen late in the day joking and laughing with a small group of friends who came daily to support him.

Sandusky was charged with six different types of crimes involving 10 children over the course of 15 years: involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; indecent assault; unlawful contact with minors; corruption of minors; endangering the welfare of children; and aggravated indecent assault.

Sandusky’s lawyers gambled that he’d have his best shot with a local jury that would be familiar with his acclaimed 32-year career as a coach for the Penn State Nittany Lions and with his work with The Second Mile, an organization for troubled kids that he founded in 1977 and which became one of Pennsylvania’s leading charities.

The jury included two Penn State professors, one retired; a football season-ticket holder for more than three decades; and a Penn State student who works in the athletic department. Five jurors had direct ties to Penn State.

The verdict brings to a conclusion one chapter in the greater tragedy that is the Sandusky story. Other criminal cases loom. Two Penn State officials, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, stand accused of perjury and failure to report child abuse. Civil lawsuits promise to last for years, with Penn State the big target. Also likely to be sued is The Second Mile.

And the grand jury investigation of Sandusky remains open. Two plaintiff lawyers, Andrew Shubin and Justine Andronici, said this week that they represent other abuse victims who haven’t been publicly identified.

Sandusky’s arrest last fall was a bombshell at Penn State, leading to the firing of the school’s beloved head football coach, Joe Paterno, who was criticized for not doing enough after receiving a report of his assistant coach’s actions. Paterno died of lung cancer in January at age 85. School president Graham Spanier was also dismissed.

Prosecutors say that The Second Mile became a tool for harvesting children for abuse. Sandusky, they said, was a classic predatory pedophile, a man who befriended the most vulnerable boys, the ones needing a father figure, who became appreciative that someone would bring them to football games and make them feel special.

The accusers who took the stand during the two-week trial proved devastating. Their accounts were not exactly identical, and the defense attorneys were able to get some of the accusers to admit that their stories had changed over time. But they were broadly corroborative of one another, down to such small details as the way Sandusky would touch their legs as he drove them in his car.

Until the trial, the charges against Sandusky had been made in legal language and through the pseudonyms of “Victim 1,” “Victim 2” and so on.

But the jury saw something more vivid: Photographs of the boys as they were at the ages of 12, 13, 14.

And then, one by one, they came into the courtroom, now adults, fully grown. Some wept on the stand. The most damaging witness may have been the first to take the stand, “Victim 4,” who had become a virtual team mascot for the Nittany Lions in the late 1990s.

(The Washington Post generally does not name alleged victims of sex crimes. In this case most of the accusers wanted to testify under pseudonyms, but the judge said they had to use their real names on the stand. Attorneys for Matt Sandusky, a former foster child adopted as a teenager by the Sanduskys, announced in a mass e-mail to the news media Thursday that he is alleging abuse of an unspecified nature against his father; his name was widely reported.)

© The Washington Post Company

[phkrause]

And he still claims to be innocent! Amazing! I can't believe that all these boys/men could've got all there stories together and conspired to bring him down. I also wonder what Joe Paterno would've brought to the table, had he still been alive.

[olger]

i wish this stuff wasn't so "in your face" from the american news organizations. 99% of the people in America would be better off not knowing the sordid details.

og out

[Tom Wetmore]

Unpleasant as it is, the cone of silence about this sort of abuse further enables it to continue unchecked. Very frequently the abused thing they are alone, that nobody else is in their situation and are too embarrassed, ashamed or intimidated to come forward. They also think nobody would believe them anyway. And the abuser takes full advantage of their suffering in silence and even uses it to gain control over them and reinforce the perception that nobody would believe them.

It is only by shedding a harsh bright, and yes, uncomfortable light that the abused a freed from the prison of silence. Very often after the first courageous steps out of the dark shadows of their sense of shame, other victims of the abuser realize they were in fact not alone and can come forward too. And others similarly abused by other abusers now think they too can come out of the shadows. It is the first steps toward healing and justice that are so necessary.

[Jeannieb43]

He fit the classic picture of a pedophile. Too bad he had such a long free-rein and PennState did nothing to stop him.

[Gerr]

I am totally puzzled how a man could be sexually attracted to young boys or to the same sex.

[olger]

Indeed.

G

[Naomi]

Yes, Jeannie it is too bad ... so sad. Money, fame and winning teams appear to have been a priority.

[CoAspen]

Quote:

Money, fame and winning teams appear to have been a priority.

Really, are you sure of that? What about all of the other cases where such goes on for a long time? Why no accusers before this time? We can be quick to judgement of the situation without understanding the suffering and pain of the victims that keeps them from coming forward. It is also extremely difficult to get such events out into the open and stopped. I am not saying you are wrong, be neither do I have enough information to say you are correct. Penn State is going to suffer a long time for this. Hopefully all schools will take a closer look at the conduct of faculty and administrators. Society has some issues it need to address also. Just look at how women who claim rape are treated. Sex crimes and crimes against children is an area that society would rather not talk about or address. Hopefully this will not just bog down into the usual blame game but rather into solutions.