In 2012, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania falsely convicted Jerry Sandusky as part of a panic-frenzy that required the sacrifice of an innocent man. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania conducted itself much like the Province of Massachusetts Bay did in 1692 when they burned witches.
Whether in Salem Town, Ipswich, or Andover or State College, Lockhaven or Bellefonte, it was the same kind of trial.
The events at the Centre County Courthouse were witnessed once before in the Salem Town Meeting House.
The judges, too, were of the same ilk.
If I were inclined to believe in reincarnation, I would suspect that the chief magistrate of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, William Stoughton, was reborn as Senior Judge of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, John Cleland.
Judge Stoughton knew he had to convict to please the mob.
Judge John Cleland
Soulless, conscienceless men to whom the life of a man or woman, innocent even though they may be, was nothing compared to the expediency of pleasing their superiors, the governor, and the rabble, the maniacal, the puritanically tyrannical of which they were charter members themselves.
They were cut from the same dark cloth. Nothing has changed, but the centuries.
Judge John Cleland knew he had to convict Sandusky to please the NCAA, the media, the mob and his master Governor Corbett.
A Cleland Story Making the Rounds
There is an apocryphal story that might not be true, but illustrates the temperament of that old justice-lacking Judge Cleland.
The story goes that Judge John Cleland admitted he was sorry to have had to dispense with due process, rush the Sandusky trial, then put his fingers on the scales of justice to ensure Sandusky was convicted no matter what.
An attorney asked him, “But you enjoyed it?”
He said, “You act as if just because I am a judge, I don’t have the same feelings deep down that we all have. Enjoy it? My God, how could anyone not enjoy it?”
Judge John Cleland
But we were not talking about men of low morals like Cleland or Stoughton, but distinguished Americans who know a witch trial when they see one.
One of these observant Americans is one of its great editors, Sanford Thatcher. In a distinguished 40-plus-year career, half of which was as the director of Penn State University Press, Thatcher approved for purchase, edited, and released hundreds of important books by some of the top minds in the world. He has a deep connection to Penn State. In his regard for the truth, he wrote to some witch hunters in the Sandusky trial.
Sanford Thatcher
He wrote one letter to the prosecutors, Jonelle Eshbach, and her assistant prosecutor Michael Gillum.
Ethically challenged prosecutor Jonelle Eschbach
Gillum was not officially a prosecutor. He was supposed to be a therapist for accuser Aaron Fisher, known as victim #1.
Bankrupt therapist Mike Gillum
Dawn Hennessey with her son, Aaron Fisher
Fisher was the teenager who put the entire travesty in motion.
It was his original lie, encouraged by his mother and enflamed by this so-called therapist, Gillum, who kept trying to persuade Fisher he was a victim who did not know it.
It took two years to pump up Fisher, where he could be a credible liar. And it took two years to incentivize other victims lured by Eschbach’s leaks to the media of falsified grand jury minutes to find other “victims” of Sandusky.
The lure was the promise of millions.
Eight men lied about Jerry Sandusky, knowing their fortunes were assured.
The finishing touch on the Fisher perjury was, of course, attorney Slade McLaughlin, the suicide, who assured Fisher and his mother that they would pocket millions if the 18-year-old testified the way they needed.
Slade McLaughlin
McLaughlin ended his life much like he lived it, as a coward.
In addition to writing to Eschbach and Gillum, Thatcher also wrote to Sarah Ganim. She was the cub reporter who received the falsified, leaked grand jury minutes. This young reporter abandoned any pretense of fairness or seeking the truth. She wrote to whip the public into a frenzy. She was good at it too.
Without further ado, here are some excerpts.
Letter from Sanford Thatcher to prosecutor Eshbach and therapist Mike Gillum.
Sanford Thatcher
Dear Ms. Eshbach and Mr. Gillum;
… What troubles me about how you acted in bringing Sandusky to trial is that you both seemed to conclude Sandusky was guilty before you ever got to know the man and then just proceeded to bend all rules of professional conduct to come up with evidence, however conflicted and dubiously arrived at, to prove your assumption.
Mr. Gillum, you surely must have been aware of how repressed memory theory had been thoroughly discredited in your profession by the time you used it to elicit “memories” from a teenager whom you yourself acknowledged to be deeply disturbed—and obviously made a whole lot more disturbed by the kind of “therapy” you put him through.
And Ms. Eshbach, you surely know that law enforcement personnel are not supposed to harass potential witnesses into making admissions they clearly are reluctant to make. Why did you leave your professional ethics at the door when dealing with this case? I see no defensible reason for how you badgered Fisher into telling the story you wanted him to tell, not the one he wanted to tell himself…
The “rush to judgment” in which you two played major roles, we may hope, will be proven over time … And I wonder how you two can reconcile your actions with your own consciences, realizing as you must that your actions have ruined the lives of so many people for reasons that may indeed have been groundless?…
It seems pretty clear that, having failed to get any evidence of abuse from a great many Second Mile alumni, you focused on a handful of the most vulnerable, confused, and easily manipulated to aid and abet your colleagues at the DA’s office, overzealous police, unscrupulous lawyers, and unprofessional psychologists like Mr. Gillum in the process of essentially creating evidence to suit the needs of the prosecution in manufacturing an indictment out thin air and then coaxing a badgered jury into believing that all these made-up stories reflected reality rather than the pathetic fictions they were.
It boggles the mind to think that anyone could have taken the testimony of these mixed up kids as credible given how many times they changed their stories and how often they contradicted themselves….
Knowing what vast harm you unleashed on your alma mater, how do you sleep at night?… I suspect you know what the real truth is here—and you will have to live with that truth the rest of your lives.
Aaron Fisher’s photographic response to those who claimed he lied about Jerry Sanduysky for the money…
When lies are spoken as truth, the media of America shines.
Excerpts from Thatcher’s Letter to Sara Ganim
Dear Ms. Ganim,
….Unlike most people who read your stories about the case and found themselves swayed by the media frenzy that ensued, I knew all of the principals personally. …
I suspect that I knew all five of these people much better than you did and thus had more insights into their personalities, achievements, and motivations than you could have had as an undergraduate and later cub reporter for a Harrisburg newspaper. I thus have more reason to regret the severe damage to their lives and reputations that the scandal unleashed than you do….
You must sometimes have trouble sleeping at night considering how much damage was done, especially in the short term, and how many people suffered grievously from the stories that got their start with your reporting.
I already suspected there was much more to this story than your reporting revealed before I was advised to read Mark Pendergrast’s book, The Most Hated Man in America (2017), (and) a summary of that book written by UC-Berkeley English professor Frederick Crews. Both of these authors were well acquainted with the controversy surrounding the recovery of memories about childhood abuse and the repudiation of the theory of repressed memory by the mainstream psychological community, a subject I suspect you knew very little about before you started writing about Sandusky.
If there is one book for anyone who wants to understand what happened at the trial of Jerry Sandusky, it is Mark Pendergrast’s forensic masterpiece.
At your then still very young age I imagine you had never studied the controversy or even heard of it. Thus you would have had little reason to be concerned about having the son of the woman who complained about Sandusky (probably because she needed someone else to blame for her son’s troubles rather than taking responsibility herself) examined by a psychologist who maintained his faith in the discredited theory.
Aaron Fisher with his mother. He played the infantile baby well. He was a regular salt water river of tears and snivel. But were Fisher’s tears because of Sandusky? Or was it because he was selling his soul by lying about a man who had never hurt him? He would make millions, but he still has to live with his conscience.
But one might have expected you to have some doubts yourself when you discovered that the prosecuting attorneys and police had interviewed some 600 of Sandusky’s former Second Mile clients without having a single one claim that any abuse of them had occurred.
However, Penn State’s overwrought reaction to the unprecedented NCAA sanctions (not justified by any of the NCAA’s bylaws since no Penn State students or athletes were involved in any of the alleged scandal) produced a rich pot of money that brought out the worst in human behavior—greed, lying, rush to judgment, etc.—and, not surprisingly, lured a handful of easily manipulated and troubled people to cash in on the university’s largesse, saying whatever needed to be said to get their cut of the pie. …
Having set all of this moral panic in motion, and earned a nice Pulitzer Prize along the way, you then left the scene to pursue your fortunes elsewhere …
I can’t help wondering if you have bothered to follow the Sandusky saga further or have just left it behind as a now distant memory. Have you read Pendergrast’s book? Are you aware of John Ziegler’s years of research unearthing mounds of evidence that reveal this whole saga to have been a massive miscarriage of justice?…
As a journalist who must have taken a course or two about journalistic ethics at Penn State’s College of Communications, you must have some sense of responsibility for correcting errors and following the truth wherever it leads, so I am curious to know whether you have had any second thoughts about the Sandusky case or whether you have indeed just buried it in your past.
(End of excerpt).
It only remains for Frank Report to say Jonelle Eshbach, Mike Gillum and Sarah Ganim chose not to respond to Thatcher, one of America’s most distinguished and educated editors.
They did not respond with “here’s why you are wrong…” Their silence speaks volumes.
If you wish to be on our email list to get information and new stories on the wrongful conviction of Jerry Sandusky and/or add your name to the growing list of supporters requesting Penn State Trustees to examine the evidence, email me at FrankReport76@gmail.com.
Watch the following video to see how the media cherry picked the “facts” they wanted to support their narrative. Thanks to John Ziegler’s reporting, the truth (and lies) have been uncovered. This is an excerpt from Ziegler’s interview with Aaron Fisher’s former neighbor, Josh Fravel.
