Mark Pendergrast - The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment

To Dottie Sandusky, for her steadfast courage

For I am become as it were a monster unto many:

But thou art my sure trust.

Cast me not off in the time of age:

Forsake me not when my strength faileth.

Psalm 71: 7-9, Geneva Bible (1599)

Table of Contents

SECTION I: CREATING VICTIMS

SECTION II: THE RUSH TO JUDGMENT

SECTION III: THE REAL JERRY SANDUSKY

Foreword

By Gary Gray, Visiting Professor of Finance,
Penn State Smeal College of Business

T he Most Hated Man in America raises important questions about the Jerry Sandusky case. I am a Penn State professor of finance, so I lived through the shock, grief, and outrage that occurred on this campus, in this state, and in this country in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

But for me, it was even worse, because I thought I had known Jerry Sandusky as a true hometown hero. I went to Penn State on a football scholarship and was a linebacker during the 1968-72 seasons. Then I was Jerry Sanduskys graduate assistant (assistant coach) in 1975 and 1976, as he was planning to start the Second Mile program. When word of molestation allegations leaked out, I didnt believe them, and I wrote a letter to the editor supporting my old mentor. In part, I wrote:

He (Jerry Sandusky) is straightforward, honest and caringa person that I have always admired. I have never known him to take an alcoholic drink, never heard him utter a cuss word (and he could have legitimately cursed at me on many occasions), or tell a lie. I remember well when the Second Mile was just his dream. He talked often about it and worked tirelessly to raise funds to start that charity (disclosureI am a contributor) and he made it wildly successful. I do not believe the allegations against Jerry.

But then the horrific multiple charges against Jerry became public with the Grand Jury Presentment in November 2011, much worse than I could have imagined, and I backed away from him. Everyone did. He was toxic. He had become a monster. I was completely confused. I felt betrayed. I couldnt believe it, but with all those allegations, it had to be true.

Still, part of me never could accept it, and now that I have read Pendergrasts thoroughly researched, well-documented book, I believe that my old friend and mentor, Jerry Sandusky, is almost certainly an innocent man, the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice.

You may or may not conclude the same thing, but I challenge you to read this book with an open mind and judge for yourselves.

Introduction

Sandusky, the Monster Story

How easy it was to erase a mans past and to construct a new version of him, an overwhelming version, against which it seemed impossible to fight. Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir

Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team and now convicted of serial child molestation, is perhaps the most hated man in America. Everyone now knows him as the pedophile who was discovered sodomizing a ten-year-old boy in the shower. Sandusky allegedly got away with his sick predatory behavior with children for years. In 1977, he started the Second Mile program, supposedly to help troubled youth, but really as a kind of juvenile candy shop where he could find fresh, vulnerable boys to groom and molest, as the abuse narrative has it.

In 1998, the first alarm bell went off when the mother of a Second Mile boy learned that Sandusky had showered naked with her child. She turned him in to the police, but they couldnt prove that he had done anything illegal and let him go. Just three years later, grad student Mike McQueary (who had played quarterback at Penn State and would go on to be an assistant coach there) walked into a Penn State locker room and heard wet slapping sounds that he interpreted as sexual. It was Sandusky with a boy. McQueary alerted Penn State officials, who didnt inform the police, but merely prohibited Sandusky from working out with boys in Penn State facilities.

Finally, in November 2008, a shy fifteen-year-old boy named Aaron Fisher blew the whistle on Sandusky, telling high school officials that he had been touched inappropriately. Psychologist Mike Gillum, under contract with Clinton County Children and Youth Services (CYS), encouraged the traumatized Fisher to tell him the worstSandusky had forced oral sex on himand Gillum and CYS told the cops. Still, Sandusky wasnt arrested until three years later, in November 2011, after the Grand Jury Presentment was issued. After the trial, Fisher, his mother, and Gillum described these events in their book, Silent No More .

Crusading local reporter Sara Ganim had first revealed the Sandusky investigation on March 31, 2011, eight months before. But it was only after the Grand Jury Presentment was made public that the media exploded with the sensational story. The number one priority has to be protecting our kids, pronounced President Barack Obama, who suggested that the allegations leveled against Jerry Sandusky should move the entire nation to do some soul-searching. Penn State board members searched their souls and quickly fired both legendary Head Coach Joe Paterno and University President Graham Spanier. Just before they voted to do so, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett told the Penn State board via speakerphone, Remember that little boy in the shower. The following Saturday, during the Nebraska-Penn State football game, Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died two months later, his reputation in ruins.

More self-proclaimed Sandusky victims came forward. There were ten official alleged victims by the time the trial began in June 2012, though two remained unidentified. In the middle of the trial, one of Sanduskys adopted sons, Matt (who had previously supported his father and testified for him in front of the grand jury), went to the police and revealed that he, too, had been abused.

After Sandusky, then sixty-eight, was convicted on forty-five counts of child sexual abuse, more men came forward to say that Sandusky had molested them as well. Penn State University set aside $60 million to pay the alleged victims, but that was just the start. So far, there have been thirty-three confirmed settlements for a total of $93 million, yielding an average of $2.8 million per alleged victim, though the individual amounts and names of all recipients have not been made public. The fallout from the Sandusky scandal continued, with former Penn State University President Graham Spanier, former Vice President Gary Schultz, and former Athletic Director Tim Curley prosecuted for allegedly covering up complaints against Sandusky and failing to notify the police, NCAA sanctions against Penn State, federal Clery Act fines, a multi-million-dollar whistleblower lawsuit, and more.

The overwhelming loathing that the name Jerry Sandusky now evokes was captured in an editorial by former policeman Peter Bella, who wrote a column headlined, Jerry Sandusky More Than a Monster, in the days following Sanduskys conviction:

Sandusky was a pillar of the community, a local celebrity and a man of stature. People looked up to him. He was good-looking, personable, charming, and dressed well. He was the perfect example of upper middle class success and achievement.

Sandusky lived a horrible dark secret life. He terrorized and sexually abused children. Children who trusted him. Children whom he carefully selected. Children who had behavioral, emotional, and social problems that made them vulnerable.