A Five Part Editorial Originally Published in the Tribune-Democrat
January 15, 2020 through January 21, 2020
Read the first part of this series: Rev. Joseph Stains: Reconsidering Jerry Sandusky Part 1: Early Influences As Argument Against Culpability
Second of five parts.
By Rev. Joseph R. Stains
Most of the 2000s seemed to have been rewarding for Jerry Sandusky.
The Penn State University football program went into a major slump after his 1999 retirement. And as the “Joe Must Go” movement of the early 2000s demanded head coach Joe Paterno’s retirement, Sandusky’s stock in the public eye only rose, along with hopes that he might find vindication in supplanting Paterno for the head coaching job after all.
While that did not happen, Sandusky became highly admired nationally as an activist for good in his Second Mile work with troubled youth.
Jerry Sandusky with boys he mentored in the Second Mile.
There was no hint of scandal on the public radar deep into 2008. Assistant coach Mike McQueary, who testified to seeing what he thought may have been sexual behavior in a shower involving Sandusky around 2001, volunteered more than once to join with him in Second Mile charity events.
No air of suspicion or distancing was displayed during those years.
But that changed, as acclaimed science writer Mark Pendergrast shows in 2017’s “The Most Hated Man in America,” a review of the Sandusky case. The bulk of information in this five-day column series is based on Pendergrast’s research.
The fuse that lit the Sandusky case came in a phone call in November 2008 to a Clinton County high school office by a mother who was worried that Sandusky might have molested her 15-year-old son.
When Aaron Fisher (Victim 1, who went public with a book after the trial) reported to the office, he didn’t know why he was called there, and would not speak. His mother voiced her suspicions, and Children and Youth Services was contacted.
Fisher had been in the Second Mile from age 11, and at first enjoyed the program.
After entering his teens, he took other interests, and regarded Sandusky’s attention as an embarrassing nuisance.
He had never mentioned abuse to his mother – years later, she said he never mentioned any specific acts to her – but he did ask one day to see the list of local abusers she often reviewed by internet, and asked if Sandusky was on the list.
Thus was the basis of her call to the school.
CYS assigned Fisher to counselor Mike Gillum, who was told that Fisher was an uncooperative sexual abuse victim, and who took to heart from the beginning that Sandusky had surely abused Fisher, and that Gillum’s mission was to elicit specific descriptions of the abuse.
Gillum also was a believer in repressed memory therapy, which is based on the notion that traumatic memories are forced into the subconscious and forgotten without therapy. The theory was first proposed and later dismissed by Sigmund Freud. Memory scientists have debunked the popular notion with research, finding quite the contrary: that traumatic memories are the most vividly recalled, as a defense against future risk.
Therapist Michael Gillum
Gillum claimed that his belief in the therapy had nothing to do with his counseling approach with Fisher.
Pendergrast, however, found the practice’s basic text prominently displayed in Gillum’s office, and language and techniques of the practice evident in his reports on Fisher.
After months of near-daily sessions, Gillum finally evoked some specific descriptions from Fisher. The state police (who also were told from the start that abuse by Sandusky was confirmed) were notified, and testimony before a state grand jury was scheduled. The 2009 session’s testimony was riddled with conflicting content, and the grand jury ruled that there were no grounds for indictment. After six months more of counseling, a second grand jury session was scheduled, with the same dismissing outcome.
There were grounds for doubt. For instance, Fisher testified at one point to several occasions of sex acts at Sandusky’s hands, and at another point testified that such acts did not occur. Mixed signals also lingered in the 2012 trial, when Fisher offered four differing time frames for the seasons of abuse, one of which included episodes in 2009 – after Sandusky had been removed from contact with Fisher – and an episode in the Sandusky basement in the same time frame that Victim 9 had claimed to be isolated there and abused.
Fisher took a lot pf persuading to get up the gumption to remember Sandusky abused him.
In early 2010, the police and assistant Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach engaged a concerted search for additional victims to strengthen their case against Sandusky. Hundreds of interviews with more than 100 Second Mile alumni produced nothing except accolades for Sandusky’s influence in their lives.
Finally, in November 2010, they received the tip that revived their mission.
Stay tuned for Part 3: The nightmare in the shower.
