Prosecutors haven’t yet rested their case, but after testimony in Jerry Sandusky’s child-sex abuse case ended for the day on Thursday, the presiding judge said the trial would resume Monday.
Thursday marked the fourth day of testimony in the trial. The 68-year-old Sandusky has denied allegations of abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period, and his attorney has suggested the accusers have financial motives.
The last of Sandusky’s accusers testified on Thursday that he spent more than 100 nights in the former Penn State coach’s home and that he was forced into sex with him in a basement the boy thought was soundproof.
After the teen’s testimony Thursday, Judge John Cleland said trial would resume Monday with prosecutors continuing to present their case.
The now-18-year-old accuser was the last of eight people to testify that Sandusky sexually abused him. He said his mother summoned police to their home to talk to him after Sandusky’s arrest in November 2011.
The teenager said he screamed out for help at least once when Sandusky’s wife was in the house, but he did not know if she heard him. The accuser says Sandusky took him to Penn State football games and gave him gifts.
Many of the alleged victims’ stories have been similar: The young men stated that Sandusky took them on tours of the Penn State University locker room then were asked to shower with him.
One accuser, known in court documents as Victim 3, testified on Thursday that he loved Sandusky and that he viewed him as a father figure, but that he became angry with Sandusky because he never reached out to him after the witness was sent out of the area to live in a group home.
“He just forgot about me, like I was nothing,” said alleged Victim 3, who is now 25. “I would pray he would call me and maybe find a way to get me out of there … but it never happened.”
Also on Thursday, a police detective who investigated Sandusky in 1998 said he still believes charges should have been filed then, but the district attorney didn’t do so.
Ronald Schreffler testified Thursday he interviewed Sandusky in 1998 after a woman complained about her 11-year-old son and the former Penn State assistant football coach showering together.
Schreffler said he felt charges were warranted, but Ray Gricar, the DA at the time, didn’t agree. Gricar disappeared in 2005 and has been declared legally dead.
Earlier Thursday, alleged victim Number 6 in that 1998 encounter described Sandusky lathering him up and lifting him under a shower head to rinse his hair.
The man told jurors about one of the first times he was alone with Sandusky and they took a shower in the Penn State football complex. He said Sandusky began tickling the accuser in the shower and Sandusky told him he was the “tickle monster.” He testified Sandusky bear-hugged him and picked him up in the shower, but there was no sexual activity.
When he got home, alleged victim Number 6 told his mother his hair was wet because they took a shower.
Under cross-examination, alleged victim Number 6 acknowledged staying in contact with Sandusky for years. His mother eventually called police, but the accuser said he thought his mom was making a bigger deal out of it just to get Sandusky in trouble.
One of the police officers contacted retired officer Schreffler — the police officer who also testified Thursday and said he was surprised Gricar decided to not press charges.
Schreffler said he and Gricar sent Sandusky an email and set up an interview with Sandusky, during which he admitted what he did with the boy was wrong, asked for forgiveness and then said he wished he were dead.
Accuser Number 6 kept in touch with Sandusky and as recently as 2009, he sent Sandusky a text message thanking him for being in his life.
The judge in the trial is allowing hearsay testimony in court, including testimony on Wednesday from Penn State janitor Ronald Petrosky, who said he witnessed Sandusky leaving a shower with a child in 2000. Later that same night, Petrosky said he talked to fellow janitor Jim Calhoun, who told him he’d seen Sandusky and a boy performing sex acts inside a Lasch Hall building shower. Calhoun suffers from dementia and is unable to testify.
In the meantime, a commission led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh is looking through computers for new evidence. If new evidence is found, legal analysts said more charges could be filed against Sandusky.
Tom Kline, who is the attorney for alleged Victim Number 5, said, “There is already a long trail of documents and papers and now emails of Mr. (Graham) Spanier that demonstrate that back in the ’90s, ’98 and ’99, there were people at Penn State in positions of authority who knew about Mr. Sandusky and failed to stop it. That’s the Penn State story.”
Kline’s client, who is now 23 years old, testified on Wednesday that Sandusky exposed himself in a sauna they were sharing and grabbed his genitals in a shower shortly after. Speaking to jurors at the trial, Victim 5 said the alleged abuse took place in 2001, just before he turned 13.
In addition, a man whom court documents refer to as Victim 10 testified the former Penn State assistant football coach pinned him down and performed oral sex on him, then told him he’d never see his family again if he told anyone. Victim 10 testified he first met Sandusky in 1998 when he was 11 years old.
On Tuesday, Sandusky sat stone-faced as one of his accusers offered explicit testimony before star witness Mike McQueary took the stand. McQueary testified to hearing “slapping noises” and seeing Sandusky standing behind a boy in a Penn State shower in 2001.
McQueary is standing firmly by his claim that he saw Sandusky, naked in a team shower, apparently sodomizing a boy. McQueary testified Tuesday that while he couldn’t say with “1,000 percent” certainty, he is convinced Sandusky “was having sex” with the boy.
McQueary told coach Joe Paterno, who relayed it to his superiors, including the administrative head of campus police. Paterno was fired days after Sandusky’s arrest in November, and school trustees later cited, in part, a failure to do more to alert outside authorities.
McQueary’s father, John McQueary, told the court on Wednesday that he told his son to call Paterno after he spotted Sandusky in the shower with a young boy. He repeated the story that his son told the court on Tuesday, saying Mike McQueary did not see Sandusky having sex, but the actions in the shower were definitely sexual in nature.
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