Sandusky Accuser Expected to Recant Testimony

One of the accusers who testified more than 14 years ago that Jerry Sandusky sexually abused him is expected to recant his allegations at an upcoming appeal hearing for the former Penn State football assistant coach and Second Mile charity founder.

The man identified as Victim 10 during Sandusky’s 2012 trial on child sexual abuse charges and in court documents as “R.R.” said in a 2025 affidavit that he was extensively coached by investigators and prosecutors to make accusations that were “not willfully false, but induced under extreme psychological and institutional pressure.”

He is among the witnesses expected to testify at an evidentiary hearing scheduled for Sept. 8 in Bellefonte, where the now 82-year-old Sandusky will be in attendance.

R.R. initially said that Sandusky molested him in a swimming pool when he was about 11-years-old in 1997 after meeting him through the Second Mile, but over time his accusations grew to include refusing to perform a sex act Sandusky requested in a car that Sandusky never owned. At trial he testified about additional instances of abuse that had not been previously been disclosed, according to Sandusky’s post-conviction relief petition.

In his June 2025 affidavit, R.R. said that investigators told him his role was “critical to stopping a predator” and repeatedly encouraged him to say Sandusky had molested him, despite his “lack of clear or certain memory of any such conduct.”

Investigators, he said, told him trauma likely fragmented his memory, that he “could safely affirm details” he couldn’t fully recall, and that he was “assured this was common and
even expected.”

His account changed over time, he said, as “the result of emotional strain, repeated exposure to leading questions, intense investigative pressure and psychological manipulation.” He alleges that he was “was misled repeatedly during the process” by prosecutors.

R.R. is among the accusers who received mult-million dollar settlements from Penn State.

Sandusky’s attorneys say the R.R.’s account establishes prosecutorial coercion and memory manipulation “which permeated throughout each of the accusers as well.”

Specially Presiding Judge Maureen Skerda rejected most of the arguments in Sandusky’s lates post-conviction relief petition filed last fall, but ordered the evidentiary hearing in April on the basis of R.R.’s recantation.

Sandusky was convicted in June 2012 of 45 counts related to child sexual abuse of boys between 1995 and 2008. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in state prison, which he is serving at SCI Laurel Highlands in Somerset County.

His post-conviction attorneys have long argued, among other claims for relief, that Sandusky’s accusers were heavily coached or subjected to largely discredited repressed memory therapy. Requests for a new trial have been repeatedly denied.

Former Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina is also expected to testify at the evidentiary hearing about his and other prosecutors’ interactions with R.R., including including interviews and preparation sessions for grand jury and trial testimony. A lead prosecutor in the case, Fina had his law license suspended for a year in 2020 for improperly obtaining grand jury testimony from former Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin about then-university President Graham Spanier and administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz

Sandusky last appeared in Centre County Court when he was re-sentenced by Skerda to effectively the same prison after a state appeals court ruled mandatory minimums had been improperly applied at his original sentencing.