Silent No More

by Aaron Fisher

  Looking back, I think Jerry was scared that day. I think he was afraid that he was going to be caught. I mean, he came to my house and apologized for chasing Aaron that day and admitted that he followed Aaron’s school bus home. He apologized in front of me and my father. He kept saying that he wasn’t trying to make anyone mad and insisting that he was just trying to help.

  After Jerry and I argued that whole time, I finally just said, You know what? I’m done. He’s almost fifteen and he wants to be with his friends. None of his friends are hanging out with a sixty-year-old guy. They’re with their friends and doing bike jumps. And Aaron is obligated to go to wrestling camp. My dad was quiet and he listened and then he said again how I also have to understand that Jerry is a busy man and it would help him if Aaron would schedule with him. I said that was fine but he’ll schedule when he’s ready because there are other things he wants to do. I said that my dad was a candyland grandfather and Jerry wanted to be one too, and that no one decides what’s best for Aaron except for me and that he doesn’t need another candyland grandfather type in his life.

  Jerry asked to talk to Aaron again, but I said he couldn’t because everyone needs to cool down and that Aaron will call when he’s ready. Jerry accepted that and then he left. Dad left after Jerry, but before he did I asked what he thought. He said it was all kind of strange, but he thought that Jerry was just a busy guy with good intentions.

  From that day forward, I had real suspicions about Jerry. I didn’t exactly know what they were, but I know now that they were all wrong.

  Aaron was still avoiding Jerry after that day and still not wanting to go with him. He saw him one time after that in my memory. It was a Sunday morning and Jerry took Aaron to church. As far as I knew, Aaron didn’t go to church, and when I asked him why he was going, he said because that’s what Jerry does. He said they’d gone to church before on Sundays.

  It wasn’t long after that when Aaron finally broke down.

  6

  Crying for Help

  Aaron

  JERRY WENT SO CRAZY WHEN I TRIED TO AVOID HIM THAT HE started coming to the school and telling the principal that he needed to talk to me about something or other. The principal would call me out of class even though school rules said you could only skip out if it was an emergency or during study period or lunch. But because Jerry was who he was, the teachers always let me go. Everyone bent the rules when it came to Jerry Sandusky.

  Sometimes when they called me down for Jerry, I went and hid in the bathroom. And no one asked me why. The worst part was that all the kids in school thought I was a problem kid. Why else was I called to the principal’s office? And my grades were slipping, too. No one asked me why that was happening, either.

  I’d get down to the office and Jerry would want to know why I wasn’t scheduling time with him. I knew that by coming to my school like that Jerry was stalking me, but I couldn’t say anything. I knew that if I said anything to the principal, I’d be asked a million questions, and I wasn’t ready to say anything about what he did to me. I was trying to avoid Jerry as best I could but he wasn’t giving up.

  One day I was taking the bus home and I noticed that a car pulled out into the bus lanes at the school as the buses were getting ready to leave. I saw that the security guard let the car through even though cars weren’t allowed in those lanes. Our bus had two other buses behind it, then this car, which I could have sworn was Jerry’s. I told myself that I was being paranoid; it’s just a car that looks like his and sometimes cars get in the bus lanes by accident.

  When the other buses pulled onto the highway for their usual routes, it was just our bus at the intersection with that familiar car again. I was talking to my friends on the bus and we were all fooling around, but now I was certain it was Jerry’s car.

  I had planned to get off at my buddy’s stop that day because he hadn’t been in school and I wanted to see what was going on. I thought maybe he was sick, and I just wanted to see if he was home. Even if he was sick, we could hang out. Anything was better than going home. When I got to my friend’s, no one was there, so I figured I’d just head home. As I was walking down the main street that leads straight to my house, Jerry’s car came around the corner, whipped into a side street where I had to cross, and stopped. Yes, it was that same car I saw in the bus lanes. See, Jerry Sandusky can go anywhere—even in bus lanes where no cars are allowed.

  I knew that Jerry had me cornered and wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to him. I had nothing to say to him. He rolled down the passenger window and commanded me to stop. He was all red in the face, like he was going to burst. So I stopped and talked to him. He said that he didn’t like that I was avoiding him. I said that I was just busy with my friends; I wanted to hang out with them and do the stuff that kids do. It seemed like he didn’t hear a word I was saying. He said that I still needed to schedule time with him. I told him I was going home. At that point he screamed at me to get in the car, but I just turned and started walking away.

  Jerry’s car made this whirring noise when it was in reverse gear. As I walked away, I heard his car start backing up and I knew he was trying to catch me. By the time he got close to me, I just took off running. I was on the track team at this point, a standout distance runner, so I could run fast. I cut through a little alley where cars can’t go; he cut through another street on the other side of the alley. I hoped I’d get home before he cornered me again. I guess my detour was a longer way home. When I got there, I saw Jerry’s car. He was standing in front of my house talking to my mom, so I hid behind a bush. My mom saw me hiding but didn’t let on to Jerry, who was obviously upset. Mom kind of jerked her head real slightly to the side and motioned to me to run around the back of the house. I sneaked back there fast while she kept Jerry distracted.

  Once I was inside, I started listening to their conversation from the window. My mom said she didn’t understand why Jerry was acting that way; I could see that she was pretty confused. Jerry told her he needed me to schedule time with him. He also said that he was paying me for some odd jobs and I was being irresponsible about doing them. At that point I came outside and said how I am a kid and I do things with my friends and there are other things I want to do instead of being with him. By that point Mom had gone back into the house. Later I learned it was to call Pap.

  Jerry just kept screaming at me. I said I was sorry but I wanted to do what kids do. I don’t know what finally gave me the courage to confront him. I’ve never liked being yelled at, but until then I was afraid of Jerry.

  Pap came over and asked Jerry what this was all about. Jerry toned it down and made it sound like he was just trying to schedule time with me because he was a busy man and I was a kid and I needed to go by his schedule. Because I was yelling at Jerry in front of Pap, Pap sort of agreed with Jerry that I shouldn’t get so worked up.

  Later, Pap told Mom and me that it was really just a big fuss over nothing. He’s old-school, I guess. Jerry was, after all, Jerry, and Pap figured I was just being a kid.

  After that day, I never went to Jerry’s house again and I tried to avoid him altogether. There was one Sunday when I agreed to go with him to church. Jerry went to church regularly every Sunday. The only reason I agreed to go was because after his outburst in our yard, I was still afraid that Jerry might hurt me or my family. Going with him to church that last time was like my saying, Okay. I’ll do this with you, but this is the last thing I will ever do with you. Another time, he had me pulled out of class to talk to me. And then one last time, even though I was about to get on the bus, he drove me home because I couldn’t turn down the ride with everyone watching. I didn’t want to make a scene in front of the other kids.

  He sent me gifts after that, like a set of golf clubs and a card with about forty dollars in it. Now that I think about it, he was like a clingy girlfriend asking, Why won’t you see me anymore? But I was too young to pick up on that at the time.

  I could see how desperate he was, and it
scared me to death. I knew he was out of control.

  But I think my mom was more curious than she was suspicious, until about a month after that afternoon when Jerry was at our house with Pap and Mom.

  I had recently taken a class in which they told us about websites where you can look up sex offenders. I’d also heard about those websites on TV, and I knew that Mom checked them out, because one time she looked up this creepy guy who was hanging around the playground, and sure enough, she found his picture on one of those websites and called the police.

  It was November and I was just about to turn fifteen. And suddenly something clicked in my head. When I went home that day, Mom and her friend Kathy were sitting and talking in the living room. The computer was on a small table in the corner by the kitchen door, but really in the same room as Mom and Kathy. As I sat down in front of it, I asked Mom what the website was where she read about people who did bad things to kids. I said, “You know, like people who are sexual weirdos.” She asked if I meant the website for Megan’s Law, and I said yeah, I want to look up someone on there. Mom started to laugh and asked me who I wanted to look up. I said I wanted to see if Jerry was on there. She said, “You want to look up Jerry Sandusky on a sex offender’s site?” She laughed again.

  I said that I just wondered whether he was on there. Mom told me that he wouldn’t be on that site unless he had been convicted, and Jerry wouldn’t be at the Second Mile if he was a convicted sex offender because a sex offender couldn’t be around kids. She asked me if I was saying that he’s a sex offender and I said I wasn’t saying that. I was just saying that he’s weird, that’s all. Then I got mad and shoved the keyboard and went outside to hang out with my friends.

  I was angry. To tell you the truth, I felt my mom wasn’t doing her part to protect and help me. How could she still let me keep going off with him? Why wasn’t she there to stop him? I said it to her in words once, after the fact. I told her exactly that one day when we were arguing. I said it was her fault that all this happened because she allowed me to go with him even when I didn’t want to go and she should have known or picked up on it somehow. We were always close, my mom and me, but during those three years, as Jerry’s abuse intensified, I went through a very bad phase with her.

  But that day after I wanted to look up what I called the sex weirdos, I was angrier than I’d ever been. How could no one see what was happening? All that rage that was pent up in me for years when I yelled at Mom for not having the right food in the house or not acting the way I wanted her to. When she would sit and talk to a friend or hang out with neighbors, like nothing at all was wrong. And now I was asking to look up sex offender websites and still nothing?

  After my little brother and sister went to sleep that night, Mom came into my room. I told her that I was just upset because Jerry was coming to the school and pulling me out of classes so he could talk to me about stuff and that the principal was allowing it because he was Jerry Sandusky. I said how the other kids thought I was in trouble because any kid who goes to the principal’s office must be there because he’s a bad kid.

  I didn’t have the guts to tell her what was really going on. At that point, she did ask me if Jerry had done anything to me that was sexual and I just said no. I couldn’t look her in the eye, and maybe that could have been a clue, but I stuck to my story about being pegged as a bad kid and not liking that.

  Mom said that she’d call the school in the morning and make sure that Jerry wouldn’t take me out of classes anymore. She said that she’d fix the problem. But I knew that she couldn’t possibly fix what was really happening to me. I didn’t think that anyone could.

  7

  Too Little, Too Late

  Dawn

  SO, THERE I WAS WITH KATHY AFTER AARON WANTED TO SEARCH the site for Megan’s Law. As soon as he left the apartment and slammed the door shut, I turned to her and said, “No way. Why would he ask that?” I had laughed when he told me. At first I thought he asked because he was in the park playing football and chase that day and there was this guy who hung out in the park who was on the website. He used to go to that park and I called the police on him once when we lived down there, because if you’re a registered sex offender you can’t be hanging out with kids or around kids. I assumed that was why he wanted to look at the website. I figured that creepy guy was there. But Jerry? On the Megan’s Law site?

  I sat there with Kathy and started thinking back; things were flashing in my mind. I was thinking, Oh my God. I started thinking about the relationship between Aaron and Jerry, and as I talked to Kathy, she said, “You’re really going to have to grill Aaron when he gets home.” I wondered how I could possibly ask him anything like that.

  That night, I waited until the other kids were in bed and then I went to Aaron’s room. I said that people don’t just ask stuff like that, about looking up someone on a sex offender website, for no reason. I told him that if something did happen to him, he needed to tell me. Aaron said it wasn’t like that, and that Jerry was just weird. I said if something is going on, I can’t help you unless you tell me. He said, “You can’t help me anyway,” and then he started to cry. He said that Jerry was taking him out of classes and teachers hated him now at school and the kids hated him because he wasn’t in class a lot because of Jerry. It almost didn’t make sense. But he said that was the reason he didn’t want to hang out with Jerry anymore. I said, “So that’s it? That’s the reason?” He said yes and then I asked him why the school allowed Jerry to pull him out of class. He said usually it was Assistant Principal Turchetta who called him out whenever Jerry wanted to see him because Jerry is Jerry. But all the kids thought it was because Aaron was trouble and a bad kid; why else would the principal want to see him?

  I told him that he wasn’t a bad kid and he should know that. He repeated again that the teachers and kids were giving him attitude, thinking maybe he was some kind of troublemaker. Then he got more worked up and said that because Jerry was constantly pulling him from class, he had missed lessons and that’s why his grades were slipping. And then I asked him why Jerry was pulling him from class. Aaron said that Jerry gave him money and wanted to schedule stuff with him but he didn’t want to schedule with Jerry anymore. We just kept going round and round.

  I told Aaron that there was no way that Jerry was getting a free pass from the principal and that I would call the school first thing in the morning and fix this. I said I am your mother and under no circumstances will Jerry be allowed to take you out of class anymore.

  Aaron just looked up at me and asked if I could really do that, and I told him that I could. Then I asked him, for sure, if that was what all this was about, and he said yes, and please let’s not talk about it anymore; he was beginning to get irritated. I dropped it.

  I still didn’t know what was going on, but at that point I had a sense that there was more to what Aaron had told me. I was up all night that night, going over everything in my mind. At that point, I was trying to shake off the notion that maybe Aaron had been molested. I still wasn’t sure if it was sexual or physical abuse but I had never noticed any physical evidence of anything on Aaron. I never saw any bruises or cuts. I was going nuts thinking about why he wanted to look up “sex weirdos.” Then I went through the call logs on my cellphone and thought how crazy this was until I saw that Jerry had called eighteen times in the week before. Everything seemed to be adding up in my head, but Aaron still hadn’t told me anything and this was a kid who I thought had always told me everything. I never figured that in a million years … But my mind kept coming back to a single, unbearable thought. Why wouldn’t he say something to me?

  I called the school first thing in the morning and spoke to the principal, Karen Probst, who said I really needed to talk to Mrs. Smith, the guidance counselor, as well. They put me on a speakerphone conference call so I could talk to them both at once, and I basically told them that Aaron expressed to me that Jerry Sandusky was taking him out of class, that Aaron didn’t like missing clas
ses, and that the other kids were thinking he was always in trouble.

  I said that something just didn’t feel right, and then I told them how Jerry had come to our house and argued with me and with Aaron because Aaron didn’t want to spend as much time with Jerry anymore now that he was getting older. He wanted to be with his friends.

  Finally, I said, look, I am going to lay it right out how I feel. I didn’t say that Jerry Sandusky was molesting my son but I did say that as a mother I was seeing some signs that I questioned. Here’s Jerry Sandusky coming to my house and arguing with me about seeing my son, and pulling him out of class, and here’s my son acting out—and then he comes home yesterday and wants to look up sex offenders?

  Karen Probst said, well, maybe Jerry Sandusky comes on a little too strong, but that man has a heart of gold and he would never do anything to any child.

  Heart of gold. That’s what everyone always said.

  I said that I wasn’t making any accusations but I just had a bad feeling, and Jerry shouldn’t be allowed to take Aaron out of class anymore. Karen said that it was not uncommon for Jerry to do that with some kids. I said, well, not with my kid. I insisted that Aaron was not to be taken out of classes unless it was at my request.

  I felt like I was getting resistance from both Karen and Mrs. Smith. Finally, they admitted that because Aaron’s grades were slipping as a result of missing class, they’d make sure that Jerry didn’t pull him out again. I asked them to call Aaron into the office during lunch period so that Mrs. Smith could talk to him and find out what was going on, because I just had a gut feeling that there was something Aaron wasn’t telling me. I said to just ask him how he feels about Jerry.

  Karen Probst called me a couple of hours later. She sounded like she was in tears. For sure, she was very upset. She said that I needed to come to the school right away. I started to cry and asked if Aaron was okay. All she said again was that I needed to get to the school right away.