The investigation into Jerry Sandusky and the trial missed the most basic marks of science and honesty. That is the record.
Was it carelessness? Or something darker in that Pennsylvania courthouse? The case was a repressed memories case.
Not one of the accusers came forward when it allegedly happened to them as boys. They were adults who recovered memories. In the Sandusky case, no one – the police or the prosecutors – recorded the interviews. That alone is enough to question everything. Without recordings, no one knows what was said. Without them, we cannot know if the memory was real.
You can build a memory. All it takes is repetition. Leading questions. A therapist. A lawyer. A civil suit with a promise of money. There is a word for it: contamination.
One hour. One session. One moment is sometimes enough. How many sessions happened?
The Sandusky jury never saw the questions. The Sandusky jury never heard the science. No one told them about the danger of repeated questions or leading interviews. Or the way a therapist can change a memory.
Mike Gillum would never let you forget you were abused. He would remember it for you.
You press a memory the wrong way, and it changes. You press harder, and something that never happened becomes real enough to send a man to prison.
Juries see a face. They hear a voice. They trust the tone. They trust the tears.
Mike Gillum stuck with Aaron Fisher until he said just what therapist Gillum wanted him to say.
Cross-examination isn’t enough. It can catch a liar. But not a man who truly believes his false memory of abuse that never happened to him as a boy.
Police know how to feed false memories. They nod. They smile. They say, “That’s right. That’s what we heard.”
Investigators like Joe Leiter. Therapists like Mike Gillum and Cyndy MacNab gave the witnesses feedback. The encouraging nod. And memories grew. Not real memories. But things that felt and sounded true. Things you could believe in when they never happened.
This jury never heard about the danger of repeated questions, the harm of leading interviews, or the way a therapist can shape a story. We don’t have the recordings. We can’t hear what was said or how it was said. They didn’t give the defense the names, the dates, the rooms, the people who were there when they interviewed hundreds of men to come up with eight low-income men to testify against a man who had given much of his life helping underprivileged children.
An incompetent and wholly unequipped lawyer. Joe Amendola knew nothing about science.
The defense didn’t bring in a memory scientist. They let the jury believe in therapy magic. The jury didn’t hear that PTSD symptoms can come from false memories.
They didn’t hear how therapists in the 1990s ruined lives. How families were torn apart by “repressed memories” and “buried trauma.” Those cases ended in court, in disgrace, in revocation of licenses and checks for millions.
They didn’t hear how the therapists— Gillum and Macnab — never got informed consent. They never told patients the risks. The jury didn’t hear how those therapists sat in on police interviews that were not recorded. They didn’t hear how stories grew.
Ethically challenged: Attorney Andrew Shubin
How the people who said nothing happened one week remembered horrors after sessions with Shubin or Macnab. The jury didn’t hear how a cop like Leiter or a lawyer like Shubin could push until a witness said what they expected. They called it therapy. What they were doing was Recovered Memory Therapy.
They convicted Jerry Sandusky on Recovered Memory Therapy – bad science that in most courts would never be admitted. The defense didn’t bring in a scientist who knows how false memories work. They let the jury believe in buried memories and recovered truth.
And the science says this: If there’s no proof, no recording, no evidence—don’t believe it. And the science says: People don’t forget abuse—they remember it. Trauma sharpens memory. The jury never heard that “blocked memories” and “dissociated memories” were tossed out by science. That courts had rejected the same claims in other trials – in every trial it was challenged.
If the defemse had challenged repressed memory being introduced in court against Sandusky, there would have been likely no case at all. By 2012, when the trial was held, no court was accepting recoverd repressed memory therapy as anything but junk science. BUt Sandusky’s lawyer waived his preliminary hearing where he could have raised the challenge by asking for a Frye or Daubert hearing. It would have also been the time to examine how much those memories of things that never happened would pay.
The jury didn’t hear lawyers like Shubin stood to gain millions. Some accuser’s memories only “came back” after talking to him.
Allen Myers, the “little shower boy” who told law enforcement that Sanudsky never abused him in the shower then hid during the trial. Then with Shubin, he changed his mind and “remembered.”
They never heard about Allan Meyers – the boy in the shower – who told investigators Sandusky never touched him. The police were angry when he didn’t say what they wanted. Shubin hid him during the trial. He collected $6.9 million – just for hiding and not blowing up the case.
Jason Simciscko began to “remember” that as a boy his old mentor Jerry Sandusky abused him – but only after therapy and a promise of millions.
Jason Simcisko told police Sandusky never touched him. He didn’t believe the stories and hoped the jury would find Jerry not guilty. Then came six meetings with Shubin and therapy. After that, new memories. New accusations. Then $7.25 million.
Dustin Struble explained his changing stories by saying he had repressed memories that opened a doorway in the mind.
Dustin Struble wrote a glowing letter in 2004, calling Sandusky kind and caring. He said he’d never forget him. Then Struble met with Shubin and MacNab. They said he had buried memories that therapy brought back. He called them “triggered.” He said counseling opened a doorway into a long abandoned attic of memories.
Three-point-two-five million dollars.
Nobody explained to the jury that science had discredited “repressed memory” therapy. The courts threw this junk science out in other states.
Shubin was working with MacNab. The stories started soft, then sharpened. Repetition. Suggestion. Payment. Shubin’s clients, many after meeting Macnab, claimed new memories of abuse. They received:
$6.9 million
$7.25 million
$3.25 million
$5.5 million
$9 million
That’s over $30 million in payouts for Shubin’s clients.
And a man went down for it.
That’s the record.
To Be Continued…
