June 17--BELLEFONTE -- He thought he was the only one. They all did.
Starved for attention, the boys accepted Jerry Sandusky's friendship without hesitation. Born into broken, impoverished homes, they coveted his gifts, his tickets to Penn State football games and his invitations to have dinner and spend the night.
Fearing the "good things" would go away, they said, they accepted his abuse, too. For years, few told anyone about the joint showers, the awkward bear hugs and the forced sex acts.
They suppressed it, they said, and hid their nightmares from parents, friends and police.
Only two, a decade apart, ever reported Sandusky to law enforcement.
Another wished he had.
"I thought I was the only person and I came to terms with that and put it away," the man identified by prosecutors as Victim 4 told jurors last week at Sandusky's child sex abuse trial.
"Then I found out it happened over and over and over again," he said. "I felt responsible. I thought, 'If I had just said something, none of that would have ever happened to them.'"
Victim 4, now 28 and a father himself, could have reported Sandusky after their first awkward shower in the old Penn State football locker room in July 1997 -- before the former Penn State defensive coordinator ever met the boys who became men known as Victims 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9.
Victim 4 could have gone to police again in early 1998 -- months before another preteen boy alerted police to no avail - when, as he testified, Sandusky attempted to rape him.
But he couldn't.
"I didn't want to lose the good things I had," Victim 4 said, echoing the words of some of the other accusers. "I kind of looked like Jerry as a father figure and he was nice to me, other than those instances."
No one else alerted the authorities, either.
Not the former Penn State assistant coach who said he walked in on Sandusky raping a boy in a team shower in February 2001. Not the university officials informed of what McQueary reported. Not the janitor who said he witnessed a similar incident three months earlier.
For years, Sandusky's celebrity status as the architect of two national championship-winning defenses gave him carte blanche in Central Pennsylvania. Parents trusted him. Colleagues, encouraging his work helping troubled youth, gave him deference. A district attorney, confronted with a boy's report of inappropriate showering in May 1998, gave him the benefit of doubt.
Mothers, preoccupied by their own lives, let their children spend days at a time sleeping over in Sandusky's basement.
Penn State coaches, support staff and their families -- including those of a team doctor and the director of football operations -- rode on buses and flew to bowl games with a boy invited along by Sandusky.
An elementary school wrestling coach walked in on Sandusky and a boy lying side-by-side in a high school weight room, but "didn't think anything of it."
"It's Jerry Sandusky. He's a saint," the coach, Joe Miller, remembered thinking.
Witnesses at Sandusky's trial last week identified more than a dozen people who saw Sandusky's alleged abuse first-hand, were aware of the allegations, or encountered behavior that should have raised suspicions.
Two of them reported seeing what appeared to be Sandusky abusing young boys on the Penn State campus, according to testimony:
n Jim Calhoun, a temporary janitor whose duties included cleaning the showers at the Lasch Football Building, emerged from a locker room one night in November 2000 and told colleagues he saw "that dirty old man" Sandusky with a boy "up against the shower wall licking on his privates."
n Former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary testified he saw Sandusky raping a 10-to-12-year-old boy in a Lasch building shower in February 2001 -- three months after the incident Calhoun said he witnessed. McQueary said he heard "skin-on-skin smacking sounds" and saw Sandusky "standing behind a boy who is propped up against the shower, the showers are running and he is right up against the boy's back with his front."
McQueary said he slammed a locker door and had a brief face-to-face stare down with Sandusky and the boy, but left the boy with Sandusky as he retreated to his office.
Neither Calhoun nor McQueary called 911.
At least a half-dozen others knew of the abuse allegations:
n Ron Petrosky, one of the colleagues Calhoun went to after supposedly seeing Sandusky and the boy in the shower. Petrosky testified at Sandusky's trial last week, telling jurors he saw two hairy legs and two bare legs sticking out from under a shower partition and later saw Sandusky and the boy walking out of the Lasch building holding hands. He also relayed what the now-incapacitated Calhoun told him.
n McQueary's father, John, who testified that his son telephoned and visited him for advice after the February 2001 incident. John McQueary said he was aware the incident involved a sexual assault. According to his testimony, John McQueary advised his son to immediately leave the football facility -- leaving Sandusky alone with the boy -- and later told him to report what he saw to then-head coach Joe Paterno.
n Dr. Jonathan Dranov, the friend and colleague John McQueary summoned to his home for advice after his son called. Mike McQueary said he provided Dranov a detailed account of the alleged abuse. The doctor, he said, advised him: "the first thing you need to do, Mike, as soon as you can is tell your boss Joe Paterno." The former head coach happened to be one of Dranov's patients.
n Paterno, who received a phone call from McQueary at 7 a.m. the morning after the alleged incident and invited him over to discuss the matter. Paterno, who died of lung cancer in January, told a grand jury last year that McQueary made it obvious Sandusky "was doing something with a youngster," of a sexual nature. Paterno said he was in a "little bit of a dilemma" because Sandusky no longer worked for him. He told McQueary the athletic director at the time, Tim Curley, would handle the situation "appropriately." Paterno, who was inducted into the Pittsburgh Hall of Fame that night, said he waited a day to alert Curley because he "didn't want to interfere" with his weekend.
n Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz, whose jurisdiction included oversight of the campus police force. McQueary said he met with the officials 9 or 10 days after speaking with Paterno and described for them what he saw Sandusky doing as "extremely sexual" and "over the lines." McQueary said he viewed Schultz, with his connection to the police force, as a "district attorney for the university" and expected him to handle the matter. John McQueary said Schultz later told him he was aware of "noise" about Sandusky's behavior in the past. University police investigated Sandusky in 1998, following a report by the man known as Victim 6, but then-District Attorney Ray Gricar declined to press charges.
Petrosky waited more than a decade, until reading last March about the McQueary episode, to tell police about the incident. That incident, he said, "Sounded identical to the incident that happened when I was working there."
Asked what would have prompted him to call 911, John McQueary said his son would have had to "tell me he saw someone crying, injured --I don't know --That sounds like a 'what if?'--Whatever happened was over by the time he came to me. It's not like I walked in on it."
Dranov, mandated by state law to report suspicions of child abuse when in a professional or official capacity, did not alert police of the allegations he learned of in a personal capacity at McQueary's home.
Paterno alerted Curley but did not call police.
Instead, according to prosecutors, they warned Sandusky against bringing young people to the Penn State campus, but never barred him from campus and did not strip him of his keys. In a court filing last week, prosecutors said Schultz "created, maintained and possessed" a secret file on Sandusky's behavior.
Prosecutors last week also disclosed a sampling of emails that sources said showed Penn State officials organizing a strategy for dealing with the McQueary allegations, which did not include reporting them to the authorities. The emails contained discussion of "sexual activity," the sources said.
NBC News reported last Monday that the emails showed former university president Graham Spanier, one of the targets of the ongoing investigation, and Schultz agreeing that it would be "humane to Sandusky" not to alert the authorities.
Tom Kline, an attorney for the accuser known as Victim 5, said the now 23-year-old looks at his abuse as "Sandusky having preyed upon him and Penn State having failed him. There's no doubt in our mind that Penn State grossly mishandled this situation."
At least four people were aware of behavior that should have triggered suspicions:
n Former Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, who Victim 4 said walked in on him and Sandusky showering together in the late 1990s. "I can't say what his thoughts were, but I think he was suspicious of something because he stayed in there until everything was done," Victim 4 testified. Bradley appeared before a grand jury investigating Sandusky but would not discuss his testimony when asked last November. "This was taken to a higher authority," he said.
n The elementary school wrestling coach, Joe Miller, who testified he walked in on Sandusky and Victim 1 lying side-by-side after hours in a high school weight room. Miller said Sandusky quickly pushed himself up and explained he and Victim 1 had been practicing wrestling moves. Miller, after slight hesitation, believed him. "It's Jerry Sandusky. He's a saint," Miller testified, recalling his thoughts at the time. "What he's doing with these kids, I didn't think anything of it."
n Sandusky's wife, Dottie, who the accusers said would always stay upstairs while her husband assaulted them in the basement. Victim 4 said Dottie, expected among the defense witnesses this week, walked in as Sandusky attempted to assault him during a trip to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio in 1999. "What are you doing in there?" she said, according to Victim 4. n Sandusky's adopted son, Matt, who Victim 4 said once went with him and Sandusky to play racquetball in the late 1990s. Afterward, as they showered together, Sandusky engaged Victim 4 in a "soap battle," the accuser said. Matt Sandusky, appearing "nervous," turned off his shower and went to an adjacent locker room.
Any one of them could have interceded and alerted authorities to investigate Sandusky. Only two people in the nearly two-decade Sandusky saga had the courage to do so: the accusers known as Victims 6 and 1.
Victim 6 said Sandusky showered with him, then 11, on May 3, 1998 after a workout at the Penn State football facility. Victim 6 said Sandusky washed his hair and picked him up from behind. Sandusky tickled him, Victim 6 said, and referred to himself as the "tickle monster."
After Sandusky dropped him off, Victim 6 said he made a veiled report to his mother: "If you're wondering why my hair is wet, it's because we took a shower."
She alerted university police and detectives later listened in as Sandusky told her: "I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead."
Victim 1, the Clinton County boy whose November 2008 report triggered a new investigation, revealed the alleged abuse to his mother three years into his relationship with Sandusky.
Victim 1 feared his mother, who previously "felt nothing wrong" with him staying at Sandusky's home for weeks at a time, would not believe him.
"I didn't tell my mom or anybody right out," he testified. "I asked my mom what the website was for people who do things to children and my mom said, 'you mean Megan's Law?' She asked why? I said, 'I want to see if Jerry's on it,' give her a little gist of what was going on."
Victim 1's mother took him to see a school guidance counselor and a children and youth services caseworker. The guidance counselor was disbelieving, he said.
"'He has a heart of gold. He would never do anything like that,'" Victim 1 said, recounting the counselor's reaction.
Other accusers worried about a similar reaction from police.
"They wouldn't believe you," the accuser known as Victim 9 said, recalling his reluctance to report Sandusky. "He was an important guy. He was a football coach. People don't believe kids."
[email protected], 570-821-2061, @cvmikesisak
Copyright 2012 - The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
