Silent No More

by Aaron Fisher

  So a wiretap was just out of the question as far as I was concerned. I made myself clear to Rossman, Jonelle, and then to Dawn, who thought it might be a final way to break the case and prevent Aaron from having to give any more testimony.

  Rossman called me back to ask me to reconsider my professional opinion, but I said that any contact with Sandusky could escalate Aaron’s anxiety. I also asked him to consider the possibility that Sandusky was suicidal or homicidal. I was emphatic that no good could possibly come of this wiretap. End of story.

  But it wasn’t the end of the story. Not one week after Aaron’s testimony, and just days after my discussions with Rossman and Dawn about the wiretap, I called to check in with Dawn and see how Aaron was doing. Dawn said that she had agreed to do the wiretap. She explained that the police had contacted her and said that if they got additional and certain evidence through a wiretap, it might mean that Aaron would have to testify less or perhaps not at all in the future.

  I was stunned that law enforcement and the attorney general would deliberately go against my recommendations, circumvent me, and go to Dawn. I was angry that they had manipulated Dawn and disappointed that she allowed it, but she just kept going back to their promise that this would be easier on Aaron in the future. When I asked Aaron how he felt about the wiretap, it was obvious that he was caught between me, his mother, and the authorities. He said he was scared, but the authorities talked him into it and his mom said it would be the best thing to do. Aaron said that he was willing to bite the bullet since the police told him that if he could get Sandusky to admit what he did on tape, then he wouldn’t have to testify.

  No one asked me to be there on the day of the wiretap—for obvious reasons. I wasn’t even sure when it was going to be and just happened to call Dawn on June 22, 2009, late in the afternoon to see how everything was. Dawn said it wasn’t a good time to talk because the wiretap team was there along with Rossman and an agent from the attorney general’s office named Anthony “Tony” Sassano, who announced that he was now involved with the case.

  Dawn said their presence stirred up a lot of curiosity in the neighborhood because there was a big truck and no one was discreet about hauling in equipment. Katie and Bubby were there as well. I pictured that it must have looked like a scene out of CSI.

  Aaron placed the call to Sandusky from the landline in their apartment and spoke as instructed. Aaron said, “I want you to apologize to me for what you did to me.”

  Sandusky responded, “Well, we can’t talk about that stuff now.”

  The entire call lasted no more than one minute. Aaron wasn’t able to encourage more dialogue with Sandusky. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. How could they expect that of him?

  As Aaron recounted that one-minute call to me, I thought, now that was an acknowledgment from Sandusky. Sandusky didn’t say what an innocent man would have said if a call like that came in. An innocent man would have said, “How could you say that about me? Do you know that you’re ruining my life? What the hell is the matter with you?” Sandusky said exactly what I would have expected from a guilty abusive husband or boyfriend. His reaction was consistent with the behavior he exhibited that day at CYS with Amendola, where there was no outrage when faced with Aaron’s accusations. To me, his words to Aaron on that wiretap confirmed the sexual abuse.

  Now eight grueling months without justice had gone by since I first met Aaron; Sandusky was still a free man. Something wasn’t right. As a matter of fact, something was terribly wrong.

  19

  Conspiracy Theories

  Mike

  OVER THE NEXT FIVE MONTHS, NOT MUCH HAPPENED. IT FELT LIKE the game plan was changing, the promises were false, and now there was yet another player in the attorney general’s office. Along with Jonelle and Rossman, there was Agent Sassano. I was making phone calls almost daily to keep up with the case but was getting nowhere. The law enforcement players kept asking Aaron about other boys who might be victims and he was coming up empty. We’d been down that road before. Aaron was traumatized. He hadn’t been focused on other boys as victims during the three years that he endured Sandusky’s abuse. It didn’t even hit him that he was a victim until he was fifteen.

  On September 29, 2009, we were notified that Amendola had filed a second appeal to vacate the indication from CYS for Sandusky, but the appeal was once again denied. Except for that, there was just nothing. I was disheartened and wondered if the investigation was going flat, if somehow, slowly and with a hidden strategy on behalf of perhaps even law enforcement, it was just receding back into the landscape. I kept trying to bolster Aaron’s spirits as he dealt with his severe anxiety. He anticipated an arrest and hoped that this ordeal would soon be over.

  Although I was led to believe that they needed to keep collecting more and more evidence, I also knew that theoretically the first grand jury could have voted for an indictment, which would have meant a warrant could be issued and Sandusky arrested. Despite Aaron’s testimony and the evidence, Sandusky still disputed that there was sexual contact. Even when confronted with the names of venues like motels, Sandusky never denied that they had been there together for whatever outing they attended—a football game or a charity golf tournament. Sandusky’s answer when asked why they shared a room with only one bed was basically “So what? That was all that was available.” He was lying, out and out lying, and I was exasperated. Aaron, Dawn, and I were floored that in the wake of the first grand jury, Aaron’s torturous testimony, and the useless wiretap, Sandusky was still not even close to being arrested.

  Too much time was passing. We were now approaching a year since that first day when Aaron walked into CYS. Since then, Aaron had met with at least four state troopers and testified before a grand jury. Besides being anxious, he was discouraged, and that old feeling that no one believed him was rearing its head again. It was becoming increasingly difficult for all of us to believe that justice would prevail, but Aaron was the most despondent. He was also confused: If CYS believed him enough to indicate Sandusky, if I believed him, if it was true that law enforcement and Jonelle believed him, then why weren’t they making an arrest based upon his allegations? In Aaron’s mind, he wanted Sandusky arrested based upon what he alone reported, and then after that the other victims could be found.

  From my point of view, Aaron could have been right. He’d come forth; Sandusky could be arrested and then perhaps the fact that one victim had the courage to expose Sandusky as a pedophile would be an incentive for other boys to come forward. I was certain that once news of Sandusky’s arrest was splashed all over the papers, the case against him would elicit victims and evidence from all sides. The attorney general’s office and law enforcement argued that an arrest strategy wasn’t the right prescription. They needed a stronger case.

  Jonelle called. According to the attorney general’s office, the first grand jury said that Aaron had trouble responding clearly and didn’t elaborate as much as he could have or should have. They wanted a second round and hoped it could prove to be more valuable. The second grand jury would convene on November 16, 2009, although with the same cast, since the jury’s term had not yet expired. To say that I was frustrated is an understatement. I was glad that Sandusky lost the appeal, but I had assumed that whatever the first grand jury heard would have some weight and lead us somewhere.

  Some of the information that Rossman was able to verify was evidence that Aaron was indeed with Sandusky in motels. Rossman had receipts in hand to prove it. Thus other witnesses, such as desk clerks and waiters, might have seen them together. This should have been enough to ensure that Aaron was telling the truth. It was Aaron’s word against Sandusky’s as to what happened in that basement room, but a grown man taking a boy to motels and hotels reeked of decadence and sexual crime.

  Preparing Aaron for the second grand jury go-round wasn’t easy.

  The first time that Aaron testified, Jonelle would say something like “He then would touch you in a sexual way,” and Aaron
would answer yes or no. In the second grand jury, the jurors wanted Aaron to narrate the story in his own words. They wanted all the gory details despite the transparent frailty of this boy on the stand.

  I was convinced that they didn’t really need that kind of testimony, because the jury must have easily voted to indict the first time around in their hearts, yet they wanted another stab at the case to make certain. I was sure that the jury and law enforcement were really worried that if there was even an iota of reasonable doubt, they were going to get in serious trouble, because they were taking on Sandusky and possibly provoking Penn State and the Second Mile. When you got right down to it, what did they have but this one kid? He didn’t even have the moniker of Victim 1 yet. There were no other victims. I was positive that this second grand jury was a purely political move. How could they possibly think they would get an ideal testimony out of a victimized child?

  There is a legal measure called the Angel Act. It is also referred to as the Tender Years Exception to the hearsay rule. In this situation, the Angel Act would have allowed me as Aaron’s psychologist, who was privy to the entire scope of the case, to certify need for other testimony modes for Aaron. In other words, I could have testified as though I was the child if I deemed that the child was too fragile and the court concurred. But neither Jonelle nor the grand jury thought that my testimony would be as effective as Aaron’s. The grand jury wanted Aaron’s words and the details of his sexual abuse narrated solely by him, recorded by the court, and put down on paper.

  Aaron was so apprehensive and humiliated that I couldn’t conceive of a way that he would be able to describe anything in detail. Jonelle and I gave him some more coaching and emphasized that he had to state exactly what happened. Jonelle explained that she didn’t want anyone on the jury to say that she had been leading the witness.

  Once Aaron took the stand, Jonelle was true to her commitment for the grand jury. She pushed him a lot harder that second time. To Aaron’s credit, he managed through tears to be more of his own advocate and narrator, until he literally collapsed.

  Jonelle had called for a break during his testimony when he exhibited signs of untoward stress. He was pale and perspiring. Once outside the courtroom, he sank to the floor. I picked him up and carried him to the bathroom. He started to throw up a little bit and I brought him over to the sink, where he rinsed his face and mouth. Once I got him back into the hallway, Dawn just held him in her arms and stroked his back. We put him back together. Although we thought he would have to testify further, after that Aaron did not have to go back on the stand.

  Although Aaron and I were not present for their testimony, we were told that Agent Sassano and Trooper Rossman took the stand that day. That didn’t surprise me, and I thought it was probably something that would work favorably for our case.

  Now, there were lots of rumors floating around during the time before the second grand jury. People were dropping hints and the courthouse was buzzing that there were “other” witnesses, even perhaps another “key witness.” I didn’t probe. I knew that law enforcement had been questioning volunteers and employees from the Second Mile as well as people who lived in the towns of Lock Haven and State College. This was, after all, an investigation. At one point when I was standing outside the courtroom before the second grand jury assembled, an official dropped some papers. I could see there was a witness list. I thought I saw the name Matt Sandusky, Jerry’s adopted son. I thought that was pretty crazy. Were the papers dropped “accidentally on purpose”? I still don’t know.

  A few days later I found out that Matt Sandusky had indeed taken the stand. I was later told that Debra Long, Matt’s biological mother, had approached the police. I guess the rumor mill had reached her ears as well. As it turned out, Matt took the stand at that grand jury to defend Sandusky. I had wrongly assumed he was coming forward as another victim. I was confident that the attorney general and law enforcement were seeking out boys involved with the Second Mile and any boys whom Sandusky had taken a personal interest in either “rehabilitating or saving.” Much like Dawn, Matt’s mother was a single mom. Sandusky took Matt under his wing at the age of eleven, when the boy was a camper at the Second Mile. Sandusky assured Matt’s mother that he would keep him out of trouble. According to Long, Sandusky convinced her that she was fundamentally unfit to control her child, not only emotionally, because there was no father around, but also because she was in such dire financial distress. Sandusky could step in and make sure the child was cared for properly. Like Dawn, Debra Long trusted Sandusky, whose reputation was impeccable. Her son all but moved into the Sandusky home. From my perspective, it was all too familiar. Yet Matt defended Sandusky that day.

  After the second grand jury, Jonelle assured us that an arrest was imminent. In fact, she and I had a conversation on February 4, 2010, just three months after that grand jury, about how we would handle the announcement of the arrest, particularly with the press. Then a bombshell fell.

  The grand jury was meeting monthly to review the case, and law enforcement officials were still struggling when it came to getting information from the Second Mile and Penn State employees who knew Sandusky. The attorney general’s office finally subpoenaed records from the Second Mile. They wanted the box that contained everyone whose last name began with the letter S. Jonelle called to say the Second Mile’s personnel records beginning with S were lost. Oddly enough, it was the only box that was missing.

  It’s impossible to express how furious I was when I heard that. It’s equally as impossible to convey how maddening that was for Dawn and Aaron. We all felt the Second Mile didn’t “lose” it. In my opinion, they conveniently ditched it. And if that was so, then this was a pure case of obstruction of justice. Jonelle’s response was more than disappointing. “I know. It’s unfair,” she said. “But if we don’t have that record, then we don’t have it.”

  We wanted that box in the hope that the personnel records contained complaints, although I assumed those would have been scrapped anyway. We were also hoping that they would verify expense reports about trips taken with some of the other boys and other hotel stays, and maybe names of children in groups that were under Sandusky’s leadership at the Second Mile.

  Still, Jonelle promised that there would be an arrest in the middle to the third week of March. At that point, I was really pinning her down because this had gone on long enough. She said there would absolutely be an arrest unless one of her supervisors stopped the process.

  I asked who that supervisor would be.

  “You know who my supervisor is,” she said. “It’s Tom Corbett.”

  She was right: I did know. I knew that he was the same Tom Corbett who was running for governor.

  20

  Conversion Syndrome

  Mike

  AS SOON AS JONELLE SAID THERE WAS A STRONG PROBABILITY THAT an arrest would be made in March, I started to think that Aaron had to be placed someplace safe. Dawn thought that maybe she could take the kids to Virginia, where she knew the territory, or just hide out in some retreat up in the mountains. We had a plan: Gerald Rosamilia had already approved financial backing from the county in the event that Aaron and his family needed to be placed somewhere for witness protection. It was still February and the arrest was supposed to happen in March, so we had time to find a safe haven and talk to Aaron and his brother and sister so they could adjust without fear to the notion of being temporarily in hiding.

  I put in a call to Karen Probst, since Aaron was still at Central Mountain High. I wanted to make her aware that with an impending arrest of Jerry Sandusky, there could be some unpleasant publicity issues. I left her a voice mail simply saying that it was urgent for her to call me. Probst never returned my call.

  Although Aaron was excited about the impending arrest, and he had been doing fairly well emotionally for some time—really, since the second grand jury testimony—he suddenly started to have some issues. He was steady enough to allow himself to have girlfriends, but once he
confided his story to a girl, the girl shunned him. This happened repeatedly with three or four girls. He thought they could be trusted, and when they rejected him, he was left with a great deal of rage. Even among his peers, sexual abuse was one of the last taboo subjects.

  March came and I expected an arrest by the middle of the month, as Jonelle promised. When I hadn’t heard from Jonelle by the second week, I started to call her frequently—relentlessly, really. I also emailed her, but none of my voice mails or emails was returned. Between Jonelle and Probst, this was really bizarre.

  Finally Jonelle called and said that the second grand jury still didn’t feel that Aaron’s testimony was strong enough to make a case for an arrest. I didn’t say anything but I thought to myself that Matt Sandusky’s must not have been strong enough, either. As I said, at the time I thought Matt had turned on his adoptive father.

  Into the fourth week of March, Jonelle called again and said that the arrest was further delayed. She sounded uneasy as she explained that there was no reason other than that her presentment summarizing the evidence from the grand jury still had to be approved by her boss. There it was again: Tom Corbett, the guy at the highest level, running for governor.