Silent No More

by Aaron Fisher

  Aaron eventually found out about the Ray Gricar story after his accident, and the story really flipped him out. You see, the story that I had read about Gricar a few months before had evolved. Now the blogs and message boards were saying that Gricar had been investigating a child sexual abuse case, and even though Gricar’s case wasn’t tied to Sandusky, Gricar’s disappearance in 2005, coupled with the allegations against Sandusky, was becoming fodder for sensationalism.

  The rumor mills and blogs were endless and Dawn became obsessed with them. She was on the computer 24/7, downloading these blog items and giving them to me. Dawn was searching for witnesses and victims, but she also wanted to make sure that Aaron’s name didn’t show up. I forwarded dozens upon dozens of them to Jonelle, as well as to Tony Sassano, who was now a key player. I didn’t just send the blogs; I also sent the comments, which were far more revealing. Most of the comments defended Sandusky as the iconic figure that he was, but then there were plenty of anonymous comments from people who were saying that they knew for a fact that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

  There was one comment to a blog that I remember well, and which really hit me later on, once we were in trial. It was from an anonymous Penn State employee who had witnessed Sandusky engaging in anal sex with a little boy.

  It was one thing to read the blogs and comments, but then I started getting phone calls from people as far away as Florida saying that Jerry Sandusky had abused them when they were kids. I asked why they were calling me and how they got my name in the first place. Someone on the Internet had pointed to CYS’s involvement, and as the sole psychologist, it was easy to find my name and number.

  The blogs were hitting too close to home now. Not only was it evident that other victims were out there; we were concerned that it was just a matter of time before Aaron’s identity would be revealed. We worried that Aaron, as the first victim to come forward, the one who inspired others to purge secrets they’d hidden for years, could be a target of those who supported Sandusky. CYS was convinced that we had to move Dawn and her children so they would be protected.

  It was early November 2010, and before we had a plan in place to move Dawn and the kids, the holidays came again, and we just hadn’t gotten the plan off the ground yet.

  There was still no talk of an arrest but those blogs and websites had altered the landscape. It was nearing the end of 2010 and Jonelle called to say that they had a witness who was a Penn State employee and was willing to testify that he witnessed a naked Jerry Sandusky in the locker room in a sexual position with a boy who looked to be around ten years old. The witness turned out to be Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary. The attorney general’s office intervened, and within twenty-four hours of our hearing the news that there was a second victim, many of the unauthorized blogs coming out of Penn State’s student, alumni, faculty, and fan-based populations were taken down by the attorney general’s office. The boy whom McQueary had seen would become known as Victim 2: the boy in the shower.

  In February 2011, Sara Ganim knocked on Dawn’s door. She asked if Dawn’s son Aaron—shockingly using his name—was the boy who started the allegations against Sandusky. Dawn said she didn’t know what the reporter was talking about. Ganim was determined and didn’t stop there. She asked if Aaron ran on the school track team. Evidently Ganim had some solid sources. Dawn just turned her away and shut the door, then called me. Ganim must have somehow gotten her hands on the police report with all of our names on it. The fact that she found Dawn’s address and knew Aaron’s name was a major leak from the top. This was not just a blogger’s guess. Ganim told Dawn she was going to run a story with or without Dawn’s cooperation.

  February might well be the cruelest month. It was for me. On February 22, 2011, while all this was happening in my world with Aaron, my brother Harold died of pancreatic cancer. Harold had told me his diagnosis just months before and I’d made a quick trip to visit him in California, but I had no idea his death would come so quickly.

  I went to Harold’s funeral and came back with a very heavy heart. But as it turned out, I barely had time to mourn.

  23

  Round Three

  Mike

  I HARDLY THOUGHT IT WAS A COINCIDENCE THAT AFTER ELECTION Day, November 2, 2010, when Tom Corbett won his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, we suddenly heard that witnesses were coming forward. There was also a whole new flurry of activity and a lot of noise when it came to Sandusky and this case that had been bandied about for years. Corbett was securely in office and there was a new attorney general, Linda Kelly.

  Finally, sometime in March 2011, four arduous months after the fall, when the blogs began to appear and witnesses and victims of Sandusky’s crimes came forward, Jonelle called to say that there would be another grand jury on April 11, 2011. Think about it: Aaron first appeared in my office in November 2008. Not only was there another grand jury, but now the jurors were different. The terms of the last thirty jurors expired and this was a brand-new group of people who wanted to hear testimony. Aaron had to take it from the top again.

  When Aaron heard that he had to testify in front of an entirely new grand jury, he hit a real low. The kid had had a horrible year—cruelly rejected by girlfriends, waiting for an arrest that seemed like it would never come, suffering through a terrible car accident. He was extremely anxious and there was no consoling him when it came to any belief in the justice system. He felt betrayed, completely let down, all but abandoned.

  About a month before the grand jury convened, Trooper Rossman came in for a meeting with Aaron. I was of course present. Rossman wanted to know if Aaron was ever molested in the shower with Sandusky. Aaron responded strongly and said that he did not take showers with Sandusky. Rossman insisted that they had a report that a witness saw a boy who looked to be around Aaron’s age with blond hair and a slim build just like Aaron. He said that the witness saw Sandusky molesting the boy in the athletic building’s shower.

  “We’re not clear on the exact year,” Rossman said. “Are you sure that boy wasn’t you? We need to know whether we have another victim out there or not.”

  Aaron said over and over that it wasn’t him. For days after that, Rossman and I were on the phone trying to pin down a timeline. When we finally realized that the witness, McQueary, saw the incident in March 2001, we did the math and realized that for sure we had another victim. This made Aaron feel better because there was a witness who was a credible adult. He felt better, vindicated in some ways, but still he was worn down and disillusioned. Vindicated is different from relieved. He was still unconvinced that the other witness and the other victim would make a difference. He was out of hope when it came to an arrest.

  On March 31, 2011, one month after Ganim’s surprise visit to Dawn and less than two weeks before the third grand jury, The Patriot News ran a front-page article by Sara Ganim: “Sandusky Faces Grand Jury Probe.” Ganim kept her promise to Dawn that her story would run regardless of Dawn’s cooperation. In the first paragraph, Ganim said that Sandusky was the subject of an investigation resulting from allegations that he indecently assaulted a teenage boy. Later in the piece, she identified the boy as a resident of Clinton County. Further down, after much background about Penn State officials and a history of the illustrious Jerry Sandusky as someone once considered Paterno’s likely successor, she quoted John DiNunzio, the interim superintendent of the school district at the time of her story. Based upon DiNunzio’s information, Ganim patched together an accounting of a mother and child making a report to the Bellefonte Area School District. The facts were vague and erroneous when it came to the mother and child account. Although she had already been to Dawn’s house and had Aaron’s name, she had the decency not to release it in the article. Or perhaps it wasn’t released because laws are in place to protect the identity of a minor. Ganim, however, was dogged and we knew it. The headline piece was unsettling. Besides, this was becoming a game of who do you trust—and at that point, trust was a pretty tou
gh call.

  We were all worried that the press would be waiting for us when we got to the secret grand jury on April 11. Just like the last two times, we stayed overnight in Harrisburg the night before, but unlike the last two times, when secrecy was ensured, we were concerned that reporters would be waiting for us. The attorney general’s office is in an area of Harrisburg called Strawberry Square, right across the street from the capitol building. There are shops and restaurants, and even though the attorney general’s office is in a nondescript building, it’s almost too nondescript as it stands there with no name. It simply doesn’t fit in with the rest of the area and sticks out like a sore thumb. There were lots of people milling about, and although we didn’t see anyone obvious—no one with a camera or tape recorder or a notebook—we wondered if any of the people were reporters incognito. Because there were leaks and the press was sniffing around, this time we were picked up at our motel in a van with blacked-out windows and we entered the building through an underground garage. Agents took us through a secret entrance and we were whisked into the grand jury room. It was like something out of a movie.

  As Dawn, Aaron, and I were escorted to the waiting area, I caught a glimpse of an adult male who was waiting in a pre-testimony room. Jonelle and Tony had verified prior to this that they had another victim who was now an adult and was there to testify. I wondered if the door to the room where he waited had been intentionally or accidentally left open. Typically, the witnesses are sequestered behind a closed door. Aaron saw the young man as well. He was in his mid-twenties, fidgety, and then he looked up and made eye contact with us. Even if I hadn’t been told that there would be another of Sandusky’s victims at the grand jury, I would have known by the look in that young man’s hollow eyes that he was a victim. He also had a similar physical presentation to Aaron, if Aaron were ten years older. It hit me hard how long this had been going on with Sandusky. I figured for a good fifteen years—if not more.

  Aaron

  THIS NEW GRAND JURY ALLOWED ME TO READ MY TESTIMONY, SINCE I had given it twice before. I thought that might make it easier, but as it turned out, it was worse to read my own words out loud. I almost felt like it would have been better if I’d been cross-examined. They gave me shorter pauses in between my readings than in the previous times, when I was on the stand for a long time and then they gave me a longer break. I was so nervous. I could have taken some meds to calm myself down, but Mike said that I really needed to be alert. But as I read my own words, it made me feel as though someone was beating me up. It was like living through everything Jerry had done to me. I couldn’t stop crying when I was reading, and when it was finally over and I walked out of that courtroom, I literally cried on my mom’s shoulder. It was like I was that little kid again who wanted someone to know what was happening and save me, but this time I could tell the truth.

  Other than what happened to me with Jerry, those three grand juries were the worst experiences of my life. Each time, I could barely get through them and wasn’t sure that I would. It was no surprise that after the third one, the nightmares started picking up speed again, but this time I was also sleepwalking. Mom would catch me walking around the apartment in the middle of the night, and when she came up to me, she said I would just start yelling and screaming stuff like “get away” and “leave me alone,” like someone was trying to hurt me. Even when I was asleep, I never rested. I still felt threatened.

  All little kids go through this time when they think there are monsters out to get them and then if you’re lucky, your mom leaves a light on and she checks behind the curtains and under the bed and you figure if the monsters were there, they’re gone now. My monster was real, and even after that third grand jury I had my doubts about people believing me. I figured that the other guy who was there that day was also one of Sandusky’s victims and I wondered whether the grand jury would believe him, either.

  24

  Going the Distance

  Mike

  AFTER THE THIRD GRAND JURY, TROOPER ROSSMAN WAS GONE. Jonelle said that Rossman was simply no longer on the case because her new boss, Linda Kelly, had decided to form a brand-new task force which consisted of six agents working with her from the attorney general’s office as well as law enforcement from the state police.

  My first reaction was that they should have had that all along, and Jonelle said that it really wasn’t until the last couple of months that the boss, Kelly, realized the enormity of the case. She started to tell me about yet another witness, someone other than McQueary, as well as a third victim, but she still wasn’t naming anyone. Honestly, I had a million questions that I didn’t ask, because I was fuming. I wanted to ask her why Corbett had dragged his feet but I knew the obvious answer. Now that Corbett was governor and there was no risk of antagonizing anyone who might have interfered with his election, there was a whole new mindset in the attorney general’s office. Now Kelly was tackling the case, as opposed to Corbett, who had been willing to just let it roll.

  Jonelle said that Kelly wanted to complete the investigation and really invest all the time and resources into the case that it deserved. And once again, Jonelle told me they were moving toward an arrest. Now it was the end of May 2011. Suffice it to say that there was a huge credibility gap between me and Jonelle at that point. I’d believe an arrest when it happened.

  By three months later, come August 2011, I’d had it. I demanded to talk with Linda Kelly personally. We’d already called the FBI and knew they couldn’t do a thing unless the case was closed without an arrest; there was no action that I could see. I just decided that I needed to go right to the top in order to get to the bottom of it all.

  Jonelle said that a meeting with Kelly wasn’t possible, but I could meet with her and Frank Fina, whose position in the hierarchy was somewhere in between Jonelle and Kelly. Jonelle referred to Fina as her boss, so I assumed he had some sort of seniority, although this was the first time I’d heard his name. We made arrangements for the meeting and the night before, near the end of August, I drove the three of us—Dawn, Aaron, and myself—to Harrisburg. In the morning, we were picked up in the van with the blacked-out windows and whisked secretly into Fina’s office in the secret building in Strawberry Square. This time the media presence outside was obvious. So much for secrets. Reporters were hanging around ready to pounce, but agents got us into that underground garage and up to the offices without any problem.

  The meeting lasted three hours and it wasn’t just Jonelle and Fina. Tony Sassano was there as well. Since I’d requested the meeting, I assumed the lead without asking. I told them I was tired of all the false promises when it came to an arrest. I said that we had a depressed and anxious boy here who had been hospitalized three times for panic attacks and conversion syndrome. I said that we had a mother who feared for her entire family. I was really angry. I asked them to come clean and tell me precisely what gives, since I knew they had witnesses and other victims.

  It was the same old song and dance in reply. “This is a big case and we could be severely scrutinized so we have to do things properly.”

  When I argued that they had had ample time to do things “properly” and now had witnesses and other victims, Fina threw the state police under the bus and said they didn’t do the greatest investigation. Fina said they all had to go back and clean up some “stuff” before an arrest could be made.

  I demanded an arrest date. Fina was getting steamed, too. He said he wasn’t going to arrest Sandusky tomorrow and I said, I’m not saying to arrest him tomorrow, but it’s got to happen soon and with an exact date. I went so far as to say that if they didn’t give me a date and stick to it, we were just going to take the story to the media.

  Now, we all knew that the media already had wind of what was happening, but I had the real facts. I wished I had a real plan, but I knew there were too many constraints on me. The grand jury was secret and if I said anything to the media about their proceedings, as someone who had been subpoenaed, I could get arrest
ed. If I got arrested, I could lose my license. Damned if I was going to get arrested before Sandusky did, but I swear, at that point the possibility of my arrest was the only thing that stopped me from going to the media.

  Dawn said that she could go to the media, and then I said that they were all just covering their butts again at Aaron’s expense. This kid is going to end up dying from all of this, so what’s the point of your task force and investigation?

  That was when Aaron stood up. Until that moment, he was just sitting there, seemingly taking it all in. Now he looked them all in the eye and said, “I’m out.”

  They sang like a chorus: “What do you mean?”

  “That’s it,” Aaron said. “I’m not going to be your witness anymore.”

  Fina was saying stuff like “You just wait a minute” and “Hang on there,” but Aaron said he meant it. He’d had it at that point. If not for my pushing him along, he might have backed out a long time before this, and to this day I still question myself about how much I pushed him.

  When Aaron said he was out, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing for him. We had come so far and things were breaking in the papers, and on one hand I wanted that bastard Sandusky in jail and for other children to be safe, but on the other hand, all we had were broken promises, and what would happen if Aaron refused to testify and cooperate?

  In that moment, Aaron went from a frightened little boy to a young man with incredible courage.

  Fina said they’d have Sandusky arrested by the end of the year, but he was pissed off. Not at Aaron or Dawn—he was pissed off at me because I still didn’t believe him. I can’t remember whether I said it out loud but for sure I thought, “Okay, twenty percent he’ll keep his word, but eighty percent it’s probably bullshit.”