Silent No More

by Aaron Fisher

  I had that uh-oh feeling that I just kept squashing down, a feeling that the stuff he was doing was creepy and it wasn’t just my imagination. But I let it go. I talked myself out of it. Even as I doubted him, I wondered why I felt so icky about what he was doing, as if maybe something was wrong with me instead of the other way around. When he reached down my pants and blew on my stomach and then kissed my lips, I just knew that something wasn’t right, but by then a part of me was also scared of him.

  Things got worse after that.

  It really wasn’t until I was fifteen and started seeing Mike that I realized the horror. Mike explained to me what Jerry’s MO was and how it was the profile of a child predator. I felt angry. I also felt extremely stupid for not catching on sooner. For those times when Jerry started doing all those things to me that I knew deep down were just not right, and I spaced. I took myself out of my body and away from him and out of that basement room.

  Let me put it this way for now. That first summer at camp I called Jerry Sandusky by his first name, like all of us kids did. Now I call him Monster.

  3

  Killers of the Soul

  Mike

  I’VE WORKED IN THIS FIELD FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL associate since 1988 and a licensed psychologist since 1994. I’ve dealt with families in distress, domestic violence, and the physical and sexual abuse of children, and I have never seen a case as bad as Aaron’s. This case was the absolute worst not only because the abuse went on for so long, but also because of the depth of the betrayal.

  Right from the start, from the moment that Aaron started camp at the Second Mile, Jerry Sandusky set out with one purpose: the careful preparation of Aaron as his target. Sandusky had a plan that read like a blueprint for sexual abuse right from the start. He wanted Aaron to feel like Jerry was his best friend, his mentor, and that he was the only one who would ever be special in Aaron’s life. He built things up gradually, knowing full well that Aaron was too young to know or question the normality of the sexual acts.

  Sandusky’s plan worked well in Aaron’s case, as Aaron would later explain. He trusted Sandusky and assumed that everyone did those things in families. Although Aaron contended that he had Pap in his life, and that he never felt the absence of a father, since he never knew one in the first place, a fatherless boy is at a clear disadvantage when faced with the likes of a Jerry Sandusky.

  Posing as the ultimate father figure, Sandusky guided Aaron into thinking this was all normal and natural. More than that, Aaron felt almost obligated because Sandusky was doing all these nice things for him—and who was Aaron to say no to anything that Sandusky wanted? I had seen this with other children. I see this sort of thing almost every day: someone older exploits a child and the child is unaware. But this was the first case I had ever seen of serial pedophilia.

  The way in which Sandusky lured Aaron was a classic case of what is called child grooming. The pedophile subtly manipulates the child into trusting him and getting close to him emotionally. Sandusky created a strong bond with Aaron and then gradually desensitized him as he insidiously conditioned Aaron not only to comply with his sexual demands but also not to tell.

  The process is such that the touching begins innocently, as though it could be perceived as an accident. In Aaron’s case, it was an arm over the shoulder, tickling, a pat on the butt, a bear hug, and then it slowly escalated to a hand on a bare thigh, a kiss on the forehead, blowing on Aaron’s stomach, and then a kiss on the lips.

  The child is initially not as troubled as one might expect, because the pedophile’s advancements to the next level are made slowly. In Aaron’s case, Sandusky advanced to horrifying behavior—first to a lot of fondling and ultimately to oral sex, the latter of which began in the winter of 2006, when Aaron was twelve and Sandusky had his confused and easy prey sequestered in that basement room.

  When Aaron explained and described Sandusky’s phases and routines to me, I wasn’t at all surprised. As Sandusky slowly intensified his repertoire, Aaron froze up. When I listened to Aaron, it was not unlike listening to a female talking about being raped. I have had many rape victims tell me that they left their body while the rape happened. The same thing happened with Aaron. He just took himself someplace else mentally. This response is a classic flight-or-fight reaction. Despite all the adrenaline flowing, victims find themselves unable to act. Freezing is also a form of flight.

  But even before the touching began—again, as is the case generally with pedophiles—Sandusky ensured that Aaron was both endeared and obligated to him as he took him swimming and to ball games and hotels. Those feelings gave Sandusky time, since the more trust a victim feels the longer it takes him to feel certain that something is wrong. He left a vulnerable child in the position of feeling that what ultimately ensued sexually was normal, and although unknown territory to Aaron, it was something that Sandusky implied was to be expected. The duration of the abuse is beyond the scope of most pedophiles. Long-term abuse such as Aaron’s is, however, in keeping with the profile of a serial pedophile, and we have now all come to know that Sandusky was one of the worst serial pedophiles in history.

  I’ve explained this process of grooming to Aaron many times over his three years in therapy sessions. I have also explained how different a boy’s frame of mind is at eleven or twelve, how it slowly changes at thirteen or fourteen, but that in the hands of a pedophile even a boy of slightly older age remains an unwitting captive. Younger boys as well as teenagers feel that something is “wrong” but neither group has developed sufficient self-esteem to rebel or fight back. And in Aaron’s case, where the abuse started at such a young age, when he was a preteen and prepubescent, the self-esteem that might have been developing was eroded.

  Kids are taught to respect adults who are in positions of authority. That the adult is right and the child has to respect them. As Aaron explained so often through tears, “Even though I felt weird, he was an adult and who was I to question what he was doing?”

  Jerry Sandusky was not only an adult; he was also one of incredibly high standing. And what kid—or, as we found out later, what adult, even—would be bold enough to question him? Within the community, Sandusky was the guy with the heart of gold who founded the Second Mile. In Aaron’s mind, he was the guy who was doing all these nice things for kids, the one who picked him as a favorite. Sandusky was spending his time and energy on Aaron, taking him to dinner, swimming, charity golf tournaments, college football games, and even NFL games, where he got to meet the Philadelphia Eagles. Who was Aaron to be so ungrateful as to question him? Terrifyingly, the very thought on the child’s part that he should even consider questioning his abuser produces guilt. The child does not define the pedophile as an abuser.

  There is also the sheer physical disparity between a boy and a man. Think about this: When Aaron was twelve and the abuse began in full, he weighed about seventy-five pounds and Sandusky weighed at least two hundred and fifty. Sandusky stood six foot two while Aaron was just shy of five feet.

  Many children don’t get past this. A great deal of the recovery depends on the child’s support system, his parents, the individual, and therapy. Even those who follow through with therapy often resort to drugs and alcohol to escape. They just want to numb themselves and push away the unpleasant memories. Drugs and alcohol temporarily subdue the post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of the victims tell themselves that they’re over it, but they’re not. When the boys become men, they often attempt to secure their identities by having relationship after relationship with women, to the point of sexual addiction. Even from a single act of abuse, many individuals do not recover well.

  The severe abuse and emotional injuries were inflicted upon Aaron during a critical period, the years from eleven to fifteen, and directly destroyed his development during that period. The post-traumatic stress that Aaron suffers will continue to rear its head throughout his life, as it does with other victims. He’s made excellent strides, but healing is never really
over.

  The sexual abuse of a child is emotional homicide. Child abuse murders the soul.

  4

  The Taking of Innocence

  Aaron

  WHEN I CAME HOME FROM THOSE NIGHTS WITH JERRY, EVEN though I had a room to go to at home, I had a real hard time hanging out there. I needed to be outside and doing things. I needed to be in constant motion. I was always an athlete and loved wrestling and running track—really just about any kind of sports—but this feeling of needing movement was different.

  I needed to get away from all the questions that I was asking myself. Sometimes I’d just go outside in the yard, but it was really best when I went to hang out with my friends and make things feel normal. I did whatever I could to get my mind off Jerry and all the guilt, shame, disgust, and embarrassment that kept welling up inside me after those weekends spent with him. I was good at pushing it all away. Or at least I thought I was good at it. Once the weekends were over, I managed to lock it all deep inside my mind somehow. That was how I dealt with it until the next time.

  Mike has explained a lot of things to me since all this happened. He said that what I was doing is called compartmentalizing, and that physical exercise helps a lot, especially when it comes to anger. He said that a lot of kids do that with anger—even kids who weren’t in my kind of situation. He said that was the reason that some kids throw snowballs at cars and then run and hide. It’s a way of coping with stuff that’s bothering you and making you frustrated and mad.

  I remember one night when I went snowboarding with my friends through an old graveyard in town. We were weaving in and out on the hill where there were no tombstones so we wouldn’t smash into anything, and it just felt so great. I felt safe that night, like my secret was tucked away; it felt good to know that in between the times with Jerry I could just act like it never happened and wouldn’t happen again.

  But it kept on happening. I was in such denial about everything. I didn’t want to feel anything when it came to what was going on, and the more time went by, the more I knew that I couldn’t get away from the fact that this was going on all the time and it shouldn’t be.

  I even started peeing in my bed when I was about twelve or so. Mom took me to the doctor, who said that was typical for a lot of boys my age and gave me a nasal spray he said would keep me from wetting. The doctor didn’t ask me any questions about anything. If he had, I don’t know if I could have answered them anyway.

  I felt gross and just knew I couldn’t tell anyone. And I don’t think anyone could tell by looking at me. You couldn’t tell by my actions until I was older when I couldn’t take it anymore; that was when I really started acting out. I know now from Mike that Jerry had this routine. I know about all the textbook stuff that Mike has explained to me, but as the years with Jerry went by, I hurt so bad. Beyond Jerry scaring me with all the things he was doing to me, when I got older I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I felt myself changing and that scared me as much as Jerry did. You have to understand that those years with Jerry blur together in my head.

  Maybe it was because my mom and my teachers told me so or maybe it was because I felt that way myself, but in any case I was always considered to be that perfect child. I always did what I was told. I always listened to my mom and my teachers and my coaches. I was a good kid. There were other kids who smoked pot and used alcohol but I didn’t. I didn’t even smoke a cigarette, mostly because I was a runner. But all of a sudden as I got closer to fifteen, something changed in me.

  I started being really disrespectful. I used bad language to my mom and sometimes just stormed out of the house for no reason at all, going wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted, no matter what my mom said to try to stop me.

  Since I wasn’t driving yet, I would just take off on foot and either walk the streets or go to a friend’s house, or any other place that wasn’t home. I even started acting out with Katie and Bubby; the three of us had this sort of deal that we could beat each other up, but if anybody outside of the three of us beat one of us up, that didn’t fly. Not that I beat them up, but I wasn’t nice to them. And that wasn’t me. That’s what I mean about those changes that I saw in myself. I was angry.

  I was especially angry at my mom. I yelled at her when dinner wasn’t on the table and told her that she didn’t do anything all day long, so why didn’t she have food there for me the minute I wanted it and how come she didn’t have the foods that I liked? I criticized her when she was with her friends. Once the argument was done, and even if we both said we were sorry for fighting, I’d start up with something else and pick a new fight. I might tell her that I thought the house was a wreck and she was neglecting me and my siblings.

  Mike explained that to me, too. He said that most teenagers get mad at their mothers for no reason at all. He said that’s normal in adolescents anyway. Because he said that in some ways that behavior was typical, it felt good to know that back then at least a part of me was still typical, too. Jerry had taken most of the normal stuff away from me. Of course, Mike understood that I was also angry at Mom for different reasons. Mike and I have talked about that a lot and I get it.

  On those nights and weekends when Jerry took me away, I wasn’t computing it in my head as abuse. But deep down, I was angry at my mom because she wasn’t stopping him. She didn’t know what was going on but I wished that somehow she did.

  Mom sent me to see a psychologist after months of my acting out. The psychologist told Mom that the reason I was acting out was that I was coming into puberty and also didn’t have a man in the house. Mom’s always been straight with me about everything, and she told me what that specialist said. I knew that was all wrong. The truth is, I felt like I was being neglected, and that no one was paying attention. No one would see what was happening.

  I also came from a place where my mom and I used to do everything together. When she was sending me off with Jerry, I felt like she was having him do all the stuff with me instead of her. Then when I wanted her and needed her, I felt she wasn’t around. I felt abandoned by her. It’s like I was screaming that you have to see what is happening to me because look at how I’m acting and this isn’t me and this isn’t puberty and I don’t need a father in my life so that’s not it! I wanted to say how that behavioral therapist got it all wrong. But I couldn’t.

  So no one saw, or maybe no one wanted to see because it was the kind of stuff that would have been hard to believe, especially with a guy like Jerry Sandusky. One time when Jerry and I were in that basement room and he was the middle of what he did to me, a table broke upstairs. Sarge called down to the basement for Jerry and asked if he would come up and fix it. Jerry said he was fixing the air hockey table and couldn’t help her right then. She just let it go. In my memory, she never called to him again when he was in the basement with me.

  Sarge never went down to the basement. No matter what. Maybe she went down there when no one was home, but she sure didn’t go when other kids and I were there. At first I tried to figure out why, and then as I got older and was trying to stay away from him, I thought, What if his whole family was in on what was happening to me? What if they all just know that he brings kids like me here and they let him get away with what he does to kids like me? I wondered if that was how it worked in Jerry’s family—a kind of conspiracy. So many things were running through my head and I didn’t want to believe half of what I thought, but then I started to believe that Sarge wasn’t coming down to the basement for the very reason that she knew. Somewhere deep inside me, I thought she had to know.

  The lawyers asked me at the trial and at the grand juries how many times Jerry had molested me. They asked me how many times oral sex happened between us, and when I couldn’t answer that question because it just made me sick, they asked me in terms of numbers: Was it more than ten times? Was it upwards of twenty-four times? Finally I said yes to upwards of twenty-four times; they accepted that answer and didn’t ask anymore. I guess that general number of times was good enough. Well, i
t was actually hundreds of times, but that’s upwards of twenty-four, right?

  When it started getting clearer that something really bad was going on, I was afraid that no one would ever believe me if I had the nerve to say what he was doing to me. He wasn’t just any man. This was Jerry Sandusky, the man who had done all this great stuff for Penn State football and started the camp for kids like me. He’d even written a book. He was famous and everyone looked up to him like he was God. I knew that. So who would possibly believe me? I knew even then that I would be one small person going up against him. But when I was about to turn fifteen, I was old enough to know how sick it all was, and it made me want to throw up. I wanted to stay away from him. This was after three years of abuse. It took that long, but there’s a big difference between twelve and almost fifteen. At some point I snapped; it was like my mind said, “Look, you get out or we’re shutting you down.”

  Sure, he took me places and introduced me to athletes like the Philadelphia Eagles and we went on a trip for some charity golf tournament in Maryland, but I didn’t care anymore about what he’d done for me. Suddenly I cared about what he was doing to me. I had to get out but I wasn’t sure how.

  I also wasn’t sure how was I going to explain to my mom the reason I didn’t want to go with Jerry anymore. I was afraid to tell her.

  When I first told Jerry that I didn’t want to do this anymore, we were in that basement room and he got rough with me. He got in my face and started screaming at me and grabbed my arms so hard that he left bruises on me. It was the first time I rejected him and he was mad. At first, I had just gone and hid in one of the other little rooms in the basement, and he thought we were playing some sort of game. When he realized that I wasn’t playing and that I meant it, he grabbed me and said something like I needed to behave since he does all kinds of nice things for me; I was being ungrateful and needed to cooperate with him.