Jerry Sandusky, 80, the former Penn State assistant football coach and founder of the Second Mile charity, is in prison for something which I believe he has not done.
Jerry Sandusky with Joe Paterno
In 2011, Sandusky, 68, was accused of abusing ten men when they were youths. None of the accusers ever mentioned any abuse while it was allegedly happening. Sandusky was found guilty in 2012 and sentenced to 30-60 years.
One of the accusers, “victim #5,” was Michal Kajak, now 35.
Michael Kajak
Grand Jury Testimony
In 2011, Michal Kajak, then 22, testified before a Pennsylvania grand jury that Sandusky took him to Penn State to work out when he was nine or ten years old. After working out, Sandusky took him into the sauna and then the showers.
Sandusky started the Second Mile. Mike Kajak is among the boys in the photo.
While showering, Kajak told the grand jury that he looked over his shoulder and saw Sandusky looking at him with an erection, which he “did not understand the significance of this at the time.”
The grand jury presentment reads:
“The next thing he knew, Sandusky’s body touched (Kajak) from behind, and Sandusky was rubbing (Kajak’s) arms and shoulders. (Kajak) crept forward… Sandusky “pinned” Kajak against a wall, then took his hand and “placed it on his erect penis. Kajak was “extremely uncomfortable and pulled his hand away and slid by Sandusky… walked out of the shower and dried himself off and got dressed. Sandusky never touched him again.”
Kajak’s Civil Lawyer
Thomas R. Kline
In contemplation of a civil lawsuit, Kajak retained the man who many say is Pennsylvania’s most successful civil litigation attorney.
The National Law Journal listed Thomas R. Kline among “Ten of America’s Top Litigators” and Super Lawyers selected him as the #1 attorney among 64,000 Pennsylvania lawyers year after year.
Kline became rich with big-money verdicts, including the Johnson & Johnson/Risperdal litigation, where he won an $8 billion verdict for his clients and himself.
As chairman of the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission for the Federal Courts in Pennsylvania, Kline decided who would become a federal judge.
He donated more than $50 million to law schools, including the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University, the Thomas R. Kline Institute for Trial Advocacy, the Thomas R. Kline Center for Judicial Education, and the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Duquesne University.
The arrangement Kajak made was that Kline would collect a percentage of whatever he got for Kajak. The usual fee split on contingency cases is 33-40 percent for the lawyer and the rest for the client.
Penn State’s Generous Plan
From Philadelphia to Pittsburg, civil lawyers knew that wealthy real estate developer Ira Lubert was the Penn State trustee in charge of settling claims from men who said they were abused by Sandusky at Penn State.
Penn State trustee Ira Lubert
Lubert made it clear to lawyers in the know that he had three criteria for determining how much Penn State would pay:
The political clout of the lawyer.
Whether the alleged abuse occurred before or after Feb 9, 2001. The date coincided with what prosecutors finally decided was the date Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary alleged he saw Sandusky in the Penn State locker room molesting an unknown 10-year-old boy (not Kajak). The reason for choosing to pay a lot more money to men who claimed they were abused after this date is that prosecutors alleged inaction by head coach Joe Paterno and his superiors, the athletic director, Tim Curley, the vice president Gary Shultz and the president of Penn State, Graham Spanier. These men were alleged to have covered up the abuse and thus enabled Sandusky to continue his alleged abuse, thus allegedly endangering children after that date. Those who alleged abuse after February 9, 2001, would be likely to get millions, while those abused before might get something in the hundreds of thousands.
The final criterion was the severity of the abuse. There were three categories of abuse:
The lowest was: Unlawful contact/corruption/endangerment of minors
The intermediate was: Indecent assault
The most severe was: Involuntary deviate sexual intercourse (which included anal rape and fellatio.)
Of course, all payments were contingent on Sandusky’s conviction, which all agreed was a forgone conclusion.
Kajak’s Date Problem
While Kajak selected the attorney with the most significant clout in the state, he had told the grand jury he was abused as a nine or ten-year-old sometime around 1998.
He was destined to be among the lower-paid victims, since this was years before the February 9, 2001 date when Penn State had multi-million-dollar liability.
Kajak had the right lawyer, but the wrong date.
Michal Kajak around the time he was testifying
Change of Date
In June 2012, the criminal trial of Jerry Sandusky began and ended. Among the eight men who testified Sandusky abused them was Kajak, now 23.
He testified about the shower incident he had previously said occurred around 1998 when he was nine or ten, except he changed the date to late summer of 2001, six months after the date that made financial claims worth millions of dollars.
The change to 2001 made Kajak no longer nine or 10, but 13 when it allegedly happened.
Testimony
Kajak testified about the shower incident as he brushed away tears and used a tissue.
He said Sandusky “threw some soap at me and started lathering my shoulders. I crept forward… I felt his body on my back. I kept lurching forward… I just felt his penis on my back. I kind of turned away and … he touched my genitalia. And then he took my hand and he placed it on his. That was – I don’t know how long that was, but I was able to just run around the corner and get away.”
He also said of Sandusky, “I noticed that his penis was enlarged but I didn’t understand the significance of it back then.”
The story of his naivete made more sense when Kajak said he was nine or 10. He was the rare 13-year-old boy who did not know what an erection was.
Kajak Explains Change of Date
During the trial cross-examination, Kajak admitted he told the grand jury the shower incident occurred around 1998 when he was 9-10 years old. However, he explained the reason for the change was that he sat down to think, possibly with a person or persons unknown, and compared the dates to other events, like September 11, 2001.
He was now confident that the incident occurred in the late summer of 2001.
Conviction of Sandusky
The jury convicted Sandusky of 45 of 48 charges.
There were four charges prosecutors brought related to Kajak:
Unlawful contact with minors
Corruption of minors
Endangering the welfare of children
Indecent assault
The jury found Sandusky guilty of the first three. However, jurors did not believe Kajak’s shower story and acquitted Sandusky of indecent assault.
Kajak Lawsuit
Undaunted by the acquittal on the most severe offense against his client, attorney Kline filed paperwork for settlement with Penn State a month after the verdict.
The shower incident ruined Kajak’s whole life, Kline wrote.
Though Kajak graduated from Penn State (yes, he attended Penn State even after the abuse he said that ruined his life) with a business degree in 2010 – one year before he told anyone about the abuse .
At the time he filed his claim, Kajak was gainfully employed as a manager and product analyst for Wayne Automation, a company that specializes in creating automated packaging machinery for industries.
But the intake form filed with Penn State said Kajak suffered from fear, anxiety, flashbacks, shock, depression, nightmares, sleeplessness, embarrassment, and guilt.
Life ‘Ruined’
His attorney arranged for Kajak to see Dr. Joseph Cohen, a psychologist specializing in helping lawyers prove their clients’ claims. Dr. Cohen met Kajak twice and evidently repeated everything Kajak told him in justifying a diagnosis of PTSD.
Kajak told Dr. Cohen he had many symptoms arising from the shower incident, including
feeling like it was actually happening again,
breaking out in a cold sweat almost every day,
avoiding people,
having memory issues regarding the incident,
not participating in essential activities,
feeling numb,
insomnia,
irritability,
anger issues,
being jumpy,
thinking he will get cancer,
thinking himself as deformed,
and being a drunk.
From Kajak’s recent social media
With his “egg-shell” personality, Dr. Cohen concluded Kajak will require therapy from a qualified professional such as himself “for many years.”
Speech at Sentencing
Kajak spoke at Sandusky’s sentencing.
Judge John Cleland rushed the trial of Jerry Sandusky, but took his time at sentencing.
Kajak told the judge he will never forget the image of Sandusky “forcing my hand on him.”
Kajak added that Sandusky’s punishment “will never erase what he did to me” and that any punishment the judge gave him “will never make me whole.”
“He must pay for his crimes, take into account the tears, the pain, the private anguish,” the avenger said.
Judge Cleland sentenced Sandusky to 30-60 years in October 2012.
Kajak Changes Story to Rape
As settlement discussions went on between Penn State and Kajak’s attorney, they realized that though he had changed the date, the abuse was not nearly as severe as some other tellers of tales of abuse.
After all, it was just one touch of an erect penis by the hand of a 13-year-old who didn’t even know what an erection meant.
That’s when Kajak suddenly “remembered” that Sandusky did more. He told his lawyer (or his lawyer told him) and attorney Kline filed the paperwork with Penn State that claimed Sandusky “pushed Michal against the shower wall, penetrated Michal, and sodomized him.”
Now, it was not indecent assault. It was involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
Mike Kajak, Victim 5
Kajak had hit all three of Ira Lubert’s requirements – the right lawyer, the right date, and the right severity.
On September 4, 2013, Penn State settled Kajak’s claim for $8.1 million without deposing him or having a psychiatrist examine him for possibly making up this entire story.
Retrospect
At the sentencing, Kajak said any punishment the judge gave Sandusky “will never make me whole.”
And yet, judging from his social media posts, Kajak made a remarkable recovery after collecting his share of the $8.1 million.
He drowned his grief in sports cars.
and a nice garage to store them.
And a nice house.
Fine cuisine
And fun at the beach.
It has been tough for the millionaire grifter indeed.
