The man who claims he was at the center of the most infamous case in the sexual abuse charges against Jerry Sandusky testified on Friday for the first time.
A Clinton County man, now 29, says he was the boy identified as Victim 2 in the November 2011 grand jury presentment of findings against Sandusky. In that case, former Penn State football assistant coach Mike McQueary testified he saw Sandusky abusing a boy in a locker room shower at Penn State’s Lasch Football Building.
What the accuser told investigators at various points, and whether prosecutors and Sandusky’s trial attorney believed he was Victim 2, has been a focal point of Sandusky’s appeal for a new trial under the Post-Conviction Relief Act. He initially told investigators for the state and Sandusky that he was never abused, but later reported that he was.
He was not called to testify at Sandusky’s 2012 trial and prosecutors and investigators who led the case against Sandusky testified this summer that they did not believe he was Victim 2. The man is one of 32 who reached a civil settlement with Penn State.
The Victim 2 case led to charges against three former Penn State administrators, who still await trial on counts of failure to report suspected child abuse and child endangerment. Last week, a jury found in McQueary’s favor and awarded $7.3 million in damages on civil claims that former athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz misrepresented how they would handle his report of the incident and that he was defamed in a statement by former president Graham Spanier.
Sandusky was convicted on 45 of 48 counts of child sexual abuse. In the case of Victim 2, Sandusky was found not guilty of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, but convicted on three other counts, including indecent assault.
Among Sandusky’s appeal claims that he received ineffective counsel are that his trial attorney, Joe Amendola, knew who the person identified as Victim 2 was, made a deal with prosecutors that neither side would call the accuser and failed to object when lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan said during closing arguments that there were other victims ‘unknown to us, to others presently known to God but not to us.’ Sandusky also claims McGettigan knew the identity of and was referring to Victim 2 with that statement.
In Centre County Court on Friday, at the last of the scheduled appealed hearings, the accuser never referred to Sandusky by name and was openly irritated by the questioning of Sandusky attorney Al Lindsay, on one occasion admonishing Lindsay not to raise his voice at him.
A former U.S. Marine, the man said he was referred by his school to Sandusky’s The Second Mile charity for at-risk children because he came ‘from a broken family.’ Asked by Lindsay if he went to Second Mile camps, he replied ‘I went to the camps for a couple years until your client handpicked me.’
He said as a boy and teenager he considered Sandusky a father-figure and that after graduating from high school in 2005 went to live at Sandusky’s home to attend Penn State. ‘Then I left because he was controlling,’ he said. ‘It was the last I ever lived with him.’
On the stand, he did not directly testify about the shower incident McQueary said he witnessed or any other specific instances of abuse. Instead, Lindsay questioned him about statements he gave to investigators. For much of it, he said he couldn’t recall the specifics of what he said and when.
‘I can’t recall what happened and what I said verbatim what I said in every one of these interviews,’ he said at one point.
In a brief cross-examination by deputy attorney general Jennifer Peterson, he was asked directly if he was sexually abused and answered yes.
Soon after that, Sandusky was called to the stand and asked if he had ever abused the accuser. With an angered expression and breathing heavily Sandusky replied, ‘Absolutely not.’
‘[The accuser] came prepared today to say the scale and full scope of what Jerry did to him, which is sexually abuse him over years and years in every way possible,’ Justine Andronici, the man’s current attorney, said outside the courthouse after the hearing. ‘As far as what he said in the early days of this case, all he did is what almost all child sexual abuse victims do, which is try to protect themselves and their abuser. As soon as he realized Jerry was in jail he began to break that contact. He came forward and told the truth about what happened to him. My client was one of the most severely abused victims of Jerry Sandusky.’
The man said he was living in California when, at some point in 2011 before investigators contacted him, Sandusky called him and told him about the investigation but that he couldn’t remember what specifically they discussed. He was back in Pennsylvania in September 2011 and, he said, he had just been charged with DUI when a letter was stapled to his mother’s door stating that Pennsylvania State Police wanted to speak with him.
State Trooper James Ellis and Corporal Joseph Leiter interviewed him on Sept. 20, 2011, having identified him through the investigation as a potential Sandusky victim. As Lindsay recounted and Leiter testified this summer, the man said he was never abused by Sandusky.
‘That would reflect what I said then, not what I would say now,’ the accuser testified Friday.
After Sandusky was charged in November 2011, he, along with his mother, went to Amendola’s office and was interviewed by Amendola investigator Curtis Everhart. According to the interview record read by Lindsay, he told Everhart about a specific night in 2002, when the Victim 2 incident was originally believed to have occurred, when he and Sandusky went to shower after working out.
He told Everhart that he and Sandusky were snapping each other with towels and he was sliding on the floor of the shower. He heard a locker door close, but never saw who closed it and never saw anyone look in at them. McQueary has testified he saw Sandusky engaged in sexual activity with a boy and slammed his locker door to make his presence known.
‘This is not the truth. Mr. McQueary is not telling the truth. Nothing happened,’ the man said according to the Everhart interview record. ‘I would be very sure if something like that happened and I would have called police.’
He twice stated, according to Lindsay’s reading, ‘I am alleged Victim 2.’
After that interview, the man retained civil attorney Andrew Shubin, who had represented him in his DUI case. Amendola testified this summer that he was surprised when Shubin told him the man was now claiming Sandusky abused him.
Shubin previously testified that he sent multiple letters to prosecutors prior to the trial stating that his client would speak with them, but that the state attorneys showed no interest. But, McGettigan and former Deputy Attorney General Fina testified, he was not made available as a witness until after McQueary testified at a preliminary hearing for the Penn State administrators charged with perjury and failure to report child abuse.
‘After that testimony, suddenly Mr. Shubin was going to make [his client] available to us,’ Fina said. ‘That was a factor in our evaluation of [him].’
McGettigan and Fina noted that once he was interviewed, his account reflected some of the specific details McQueary had testified to, including getting the month and year of the shower incident wrong. McQueary had been unsure what the year was and it had been referred to in court occurring in March 2002. Investigators soon learned it was February 2001. The man also was unable to accurately draw a diagram of the locker room where the incident happened, and McGettigan said that at the time of the incident the man would have been three or four years older than the approximately 10-year-old boy McQueary described.
On re-direct Friday Lindsay asked the accuser if he hired Shubin to get him money in a settlement with Penn State. He said no.
Outside the courthouse after the hearing, Lindsay was asked if he believed the man changed his story for money. ‘You can draw your own conclusions,’ Lindsay replied.
The man testified that another investigator for Sandusky, Kenneth Cummings, came to his house during the 2012 trial, on the day the man had brought his newborn child home. He said he knew who Cummings was and that he told him to ‘get the f— off my property.’
Lindsay was set to call Cummings to the stand on Friday, but ultimately did not. Lindsay said Cummings would have testified that he brought a copy of the Everhart interview and confirmed what he said.
Before the accuser took the stand on Friday, specially-presiding Judge John Cleland first questioned Sandusky to ensure he understood the potential consequences of calling the witness. Sandusky’s current attorneys had attempted to speak with him but he declined, so they did not know how he would testify.
‘Do you understand this testimony could be helpful to you under certain arguments Mr. Lindsay has made but that it could be harmful to your case?’ Cleland asked Sandusky, who said he understood and that he waived his right to later claim ineffective counsel for calling him.
‘Everything’s a risk,’ Lindsay said after the hearing, ‘But we thought it was important that the court should have the full flavor of what this gentleman had said in the past, particularly in light of the fact that the Commonwealth indicated the witness was not believable and was not Victim 2. I think we established pretty well that this was Victim 2.’
Cleland said both sides will submit final briefs next week and oral arguments will be scheduled if necessary.
