Amendola Defends Costas Interview at Sandusky Hearing

Updated at 4:05 p.m.

Joe Amendola says he was doing his best to get his client’s message out when he arranged for Jerry Sandusky to be interviewed on NBC by Bob Costas in November 2011, a week after Sandusky’s arrest on child sexual abuse charges.

Amendola testified Friday morning at a hearing for Sandusky’s Post-Conviction Relief Act appeal. Sandusky’s appeal attorneys are arguing Amendola provided ineffective counsel before and during their client’s 2012 trial, where the former assistant football coach and Second Mile charity founder was convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse.

Part of that argument is that Amendola provided more ammo to the prosecution in arranging for Sandusky to be interviewed by Costas over the telephone. Attorney Al Lindsey suggested that Amendola had angered NBC producers by promising a first television interview with him but then doing an interview with CNN, so he ‘served up’ Sandusky to curry favor with NBC.

‘I didn’t serve up Jerry Sandusky. That’s ridiculous to say that,’ Amendola said in a heated response. ‘ I talked to Jerry about doing interview. I made him available after speaking with him.’

Amendola testified that CNN producers had told him the interview wouldn’t air until after Costas’s, but that they ran it early. While he and Sandusky initially agreed it would be Amendola who would do the interview, Amendola said he had been considering having Sandusky do an interview to proclaim his innocence.

‘We were trying to find friends in the media,’ Amendola said. ‘Everyone was already convinced Jerry was guilty as heck, that Jerry was some monster child molester. I kept thinking this was a perfect opportunity for Jerry to say in a phone interview with Bob Costas ‘I’m innocent.”

That interview became infamous for Sandusky’s response when Costas asked him if he was sexually attracted to young boys.

‘Am I sexually attracted to underage boys?’ Sandusky answered. When Costas affirmed the question, Sandusky paused and replied ‘Sexually attracted, you know, I, I enjoy young people. I, I love to be around them. I,  I … but no I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.’

Amendola testified that Sandusky was apprehensive but agreed to do the interview. He said Sandusky had been adamant about stating his innocence since 2009, when the first accusation that led to the case was brought to Children and Youth Services. Amendola said he didn’t feel Costas would ask anything Sandusky couldn’t answer.

‘But for the magic pause and repeating of the question, the rest of the interview went well,’ Amendola said.

He also noted that Sandusky was not afraid to make his opinions known and often disagreed with Amendola, insisting on different courses of action during his defense.

‘He’s very outgoing and very opinionated about what he wants done,’ Amendola said on cross examination by Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Peterson.

Lindsey also suggested that Joe McGettigan, the lead prosecutor at the 2012 trial, may have withheld information needed for Sandusky’s defense, and the Amendola should have raised that. He pointed to the testimony of two victims who said they had only discussed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky with McGettigan and their own civil attorneys, and that they had not told McGettigan until after the civil attorneys had been engaged.

‘I thought we effectively showed they had changed their stories after they spoke with attorneys and hired attorneys.’ Amendola said. ‘I thought we elicited that information on the stand and that was great for Jerry.’

Lindsey asked about the testimony surrounding victim 8, who was never identified. Prosecutors relied on testimony from Penn State employee Ronald Petrosky, who said his co-worker, janitor Jim Calhoun, told him he saw Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy.

Calhoun suffered from dementia and could not testify at trial. But Lindsey read from the transcript of a recording of an investigator’s interview with Calhoun in May 2011, in which Calhoun said the man he saw with a boy was not Sandusky.

Amendola said he couldn’t remember if his own investigators had interviewed Calhoun or Petrosky and that he thought Calhoun’s dementia diagnosis may have extended back years. Peterson noted on cross-examination that Amendola did file a pre-trial motion to preclude Petrosky’s testimony as hearsay, and that Petrosky himself had testified he saw Sandusky coming out of the locker room with a boy on the same night.

Sandusky’s appeal has also questioned the idea that some victims recovered memories of abuse through repressed memory therapy, a disputed concept in psychology. Amendola said he was unaware before the trial that some of the witnesses would say they had recovered memories in that way, and he would have filed motions to block them from testifying or tried to engage an expert witness if he had.

He said prosecutors told him at the time they had no information on witnesses who were going through therapy.

Lindsey questioned Amendola on starting his opening arguments at trial by stating the evidence against Sandusky was overwhelming. Amendola replied that he was getting the jury’s attention by being satirical. He said he was pointing out that many people had already presumed Sandusky guilty, but that there were many questions and inconsistencies in the case against him.

Testimony continued Friday afternoon.

Psychologist Explains Treatment

The psychologist who provided psychotherapy for Victim 1, who has publicly identified himself as Aaron Fisher, testified about the process and timeline of Fisher revealing abuse by Sandusky.

Lindsey has called into question the testimony of victims whose stories had changed from when they were first interviewed by investigators through the Sandusky trial. He has also raised the issue of whether witnesses recovered memories of abuse through repressed memory therapy.

But Gillum, who co-authored the book ‘Silent No More’ with Fisher, said he does not practice repressed memory theory, does not work with individuals who claim to have repressed memories and does not consider it a strong scientific practice. 

Rather, Gillum said, Fisher, like many sexual abuse victims, took time to fully divulge the extent of his abuse.

‘When you initially meet with a male who has been sexually traumatized by an older male, the typical response is to not self-reveal at all,’ Gillum said. ‘If you can get them into therapy, they will tell you the least deviant things that happened. You have to gain some trust with them before they’re willing to divulge the rest of what happened, because of the stigma, because it’s humiliating. They are very traumatized. You have to let them tell their story. .. You do not pressure them. You do not lead them. You tell them it’s completely up to you what you want to tell me about what happened to you.

Gillum first became involved with treating Fisher after his mother brought him to Clinton County Children and Youth Services in Lock Haven. Fisher had told administrators at Central Mountain High School that Sandusky had abused him but wouldn’t elaborate. Gillum also said Fisher’s mother felt the school was trying to dissuade them from filing a report about Sandusky.

Lindsey asked Gillum if he had said to Fisher ‘I know something terrible happened to you,’ suggesting that Gillum had led Fisher. But Gillum said that remark was reiterating what Fisher had already told him.

‘It was me feeding back to him what he had told me which was that he was afraid of Mr. Sandusky and feared for his life and wanted to get away from him,’ Gillum said. ‘He had already told me sexual things had happened.’

After court adjourned for the day, Lindsey said he agreed with Gillum that repressed memory therapy is ‘bunk,’ but that he believes it was occurring with several of the witnesses who testified at trial. He may call an expert witness on it at the next hearing, scheduled for May 11.

Gillum also acted as an advocate for Fisher during the investigation, and Lindsey asked if it was appropriate for him to be both a psychologist and an advocate.

‘Yes,’ Gillum said. ‘In this case I was advocating for Aaron to feel safe and have justice. I did advocate in terms of making sure I felt law enforcement was doing what they needed to do.

‘I advocated that they needed to investigate the case because they weren’t’

‘To your satisfaction?’Lindsey asked

‘To the satisfaction of the attorney general’s investigators, to the satisfaction of the deputy attorney generals, to the satisfaction of the Pennsylvania State Police,’ Gillum replied. ‘They indicated that the highest levels of attorney general’s office was tying their hands and wouldn’t let them do things such as execute warrants. That concerned me very much.’

Troopers Testify About Questioning
Two Pennsylvania State Police Troopers who questioned potential victims during the investigation were called to testify mostly about an audio recording of their interview with one man, identified at trial as Victim 4, and his attorney, Benjamin Andreozzi.

Retired state police Cpl. Joseph Leiter, who was the crime unit supervisor at Rockview in 2011, explained Victim 4 was the only witness who brought his own attorney at that point in the investigation, and that police ‘were uncomfortable with that.’

On the recording of the April 11, 2011 interview, Leiter tells the man that others have made similar accusations. When they took a break in the interview and the man left the room, Leiter was heard discussing with Andreozzi how to get him to open up with more specifics about what Sandusky had done. Andreozzi asks if they should discuss specific accusations made by others and Leiter says ‘Yes, we do that with all the other kids.’

But Leiter said investigators were trying to build trust and make the man feel like he was not alone.

‘You were trying to make a case,’ Lindsey said.

‘We were trying to find the truth,’ Leiter replied.

Cpl. Scott Rossman who was also present for the interview and had stepped outside with the man when Leiter and Andreozzi spoke, echoed Leiter’s response.

‘You have to develop some type of rapport with an individual who is going to tell you something so heinous that has happened to them,’ Rossman said. ‘We’ve used the same technique on other kids who do not come forward and say something happened.

‘They don’t always disclose everything immediately. You have to build up some type of trust to tell you if a horrific act happened to them.’

At trial, Amendola did press Leiter and Rossman about the recording. But Lindsey said on Friday afternoon that he is trying to establish that investigators used suggestive questioning and that Amendola should have raised the issue in pre-trial motions.