by Aaron Fisher
I thought about teachers and principals who let me down and didn’t take me seriously enough. The ones who didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me. They were the same ones who turned their eyes away when Jerry came to my school and took me out of classes. Like Coach Turchetta. Didn’t he ever wonder what Jerry was doing? Didn’t he want to ask him why? What would have been different if, just once, he’d asked Jerry why?
After Jerry’s arrest, and for sure by the time of the trial, when everything was all over the news, a lot of my friends suspected that I was “Victim 1” and fell away from me. There were also the friends who stayed and were still very cool with me. I’ve learned a lot over the last few years when it comes to whom to trust and admire. I’ve learned a lot about who my friends are.
Mom and I left the house early in the morning for the state police barracks, where we met Mike before the trial. I showered and put on a pair of khaki pants, a yellow and orange button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and my loafers. I thought how I had to have the same kind of determination as I did when I ran track. I’d start out slow and hold my head high and then pick up the pace. I remembered what my distance coach taught me about running through pain.
I was as ready as I could be.
Mike
IT WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE THAT THE TRIAL DATE WAS here. The pressure in the days before was excruciating in more ways than one. Not long before the trial, in May, my sister Sue died of a heart attack. It was out of the blue and left her husband, children, and the remaining three of us siblings in shock. We were still trying to recover from the loss of our brother. I wanted to be there for my nieces and nephew and yet I was consumed with this case. I had put my personal life on hold for Aaron. Some people might see it as a sacrifice, but it wasn’t. It felt necessary. Even though I had dealt with victims of child sexual abuse for years, Aaron’s case was the most ruthless I’d ever seen. And I’ve seen bad cases with children whose bones were broken and females who were raped by multiple perpetrators. Still, Aaron’s was far worse because he was mentally manipulated and betrayed for so long during a critical stage in his development. I felt an enormous responsibility to make certain this broken boy didn’t fall apart and also to put him back together. The care of Aaron nearly usurped time spent with my own children. And it wasn’t because the perpetrator was Jerry Sandusky; it was because the perpetrator happened to be a powerful and well-connected man who could all too easily get away with it. I was hell-bent on not letting that happen.
June 15, 2011, was a warm, beautiful summer day—and yet it felt surreal. I took my shower, put on my suit and tie, packed up my briefcases filled with papers and notes, and hit the road.
It was about a forty-five-minute drive to the state police barracks. I didn’t listen to any news stations as I drove to the courthouse. I knew that all the stations would be buzzing with Sandusky’s trial and I didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say. I wasn’t interested in listening to all the editorializing and the predictions and the opinions. I put on the classic rock station on XM radio and cranked it loud. There were a string of songs by the Who and the Rolling Stones. Whenever I listen to music from my youth, I can remember where and when I first listened to it. Each song seems to hold some sort of significance for me. That day, there was one that held a new meaning. When they played the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes,” even though I’d heard that song my whole life, I had never heard the lyric the way I did as I drove down Interstate 80 to the barracks.
No one knows what it’s like … And I blame you.
I thought back to when I was kid and first heard so many of those songs and life was so innocent. Now, here I was going to this trial—this incredible, national deal—and I was in the thick of it along with a boy whose life had accidentally fallen into my hands. Some thirty years before, back when I was in college, I never would have dreamed that something like this would happen. I remembered visiting Penn State when I was around eighteen or nineteen, just hanging out there with friends while we listened to our rock music with hardly a care in the world. I wondered how much of me was the same guy who put himself through college and grad school. I wanted to retain the ideals from my younger years, but I knew they’d been chipped away a little. I thought how much life had changed—my parents were gone, two of my siblings were gone, and whatever faith I had in our justice system had eroded in the last few years. As I drove, I felt an urgency to move on and to recapture what was lost. We needed to win this case. There had to be justice for Aaron and for the other boys who were abused by Sandusky—and for all the children out there who needed to be protected from predators like him. There was so much on the line as I drove through the mountains on Interstate 80.
My tension level was profound as I worried about Aaron. I wondered what he needed and if he was all right. I knew that he was being brave, determined not to let that stiff upper lip tremble, but I also knew that he was still hesitant and afraid. I had tried to bolster his spirits in the months before the trial. I reminded him how many boys he was saving going forward, repeating over and over that he wasn’t just instrumental in bringing Sandusky’s past victims out of the shadows, he was preventing this from happening to potential victims. If Sandusky remained at the Second Mile, if he hadn’t been indicated by CYS years before when Aaron told his painful story, how many other children might have fallen prey to Sandusky? And going forward, how many countless others would there be?
On the day that Sandusky was arrested, if Aaron had his way, they would have put him in jail and thrown away the key. From the moment Aaron walked into CYS, and particularly after Sandusky’s arrest, this trial loomed—alternately the most dreaded and anticipated day on Aaron’s calendar. As my cellphone lay beside me in the car, I thought, Please don’t let it ring and be Dawn or an emergency room telling me that Aaron has had an anxiety attack that has landed him in the hospital again.
Dawn and Aaron arrived at the barracks right after I did, and we were escorted to a small conference room. The barracks itself was a madhouse. I couldn’t believe the crowds. The place was buzzing with the most intensely concentrated energy. There were victims and witnesses, and even though there wasn’t supposed to be any mingling, there was, for the simple reason that the barracks was just too jam-packed to keep everyone away from each other. In the commotion, Aaron and one of the boys who had been at the aborted preliminary hearing recognized each other. Aaron went over to him and shook his hand and Dawn hugged him. That was the first time that Aaron and the boy said each other’s names out loud, and in that moment there was a profound sense of liberation from the strange burden of the anonymous signature “victim,” attached to a number. Aaron and this boy were the two primary witnesses, since the abuse they endured had been for the longest periods of time. With their secrecy momentarily lifted, an accidental bond was shared.
There were other familiar faces at the barracks as well. There was, once again, Scott Rossman, like a ghost from the past, and some other troopers whom I’d met before when I was at the barracks with McGettigan. Kelly, Jonelle, and Fina were already at the courthouse. There were a lot of plainclothes troopers from all over the state who were brought in for witness protection. Their job was to accompany witnesses and victims for the ten-minute drive to the courthouse in the county seat of Bellefonte. Just like it was at the preliminary hearing, the town of Bellefonte was shut down. The state police transported the witnesses in unmarked cars, vans, or SUVs—all with blacked-out windows. The main concern was avoiding an assault from the press as victims and witnesses entered the courthouse.
I hoped I wasn’t overdoing it as a one-man rally around Aaron, repeating, “You’re going to do great. Everyone is on your side now.” He was nodding and saying, “I know,” but I wasn’t convinced of his certainty. I wasn’t sure if he really believed that everyone was on his side. I just wanted to keep Aaron’s spirits up.
I understood the process of jury selection known as voir dire, which means “to say what is true.” Un
der the circumstances, the phrase was exceptionally compelling. Voir dire called for some standard questions requiring honesty: Do you have a personal connection to the case? Do you have any bias? How much do you think you know based upon public opinion? This case was all over the news, and the venue wasn’t changed as it might have been in a similar situation where counsel felt either the plaintiff or defendant could be unjustly compromised by public opinion. It was also nerve-racking to know that the prosecution and defense each had the ability to reject a certain number of prospective jurors, of the roughly twenty citizens total, without having to give a specific reason. To think that a single group would determine the fate of this man I knew to be guilty.
After the selection, McGettigan admitted that we had a strong Penn State presence on the jury. There were employees, faculty, and alumni. How could we not? The courthouse was only ten miles from State College. This was Sandusky country. When Penn State people were chosen as jurors by Amendola, however, McGettigan did not exercise his right to object, and I wondered if that was wise. He insisted, however, that he had faith that the jury consisted of the right people despite their university affiliations. He felt that he had an ironclad case. McGettigan is a very wily coyote and the smartest guy in the room even though he comes off as a regular Joe. I was assured that he not only had a plan but in fact a carefully mapped-out strategy. But then I started thinking, What if one, just one, of those jurors says this is a bunch of bullshit, and then we have a mistrial? What if, because of just one juror, everything we worked for goes down the toilet and we have to go through all of this again? I didn’t think Aaron could handle that at all. I wasn’t sure if I could, either.
Dawn, Aaron, and I were transported separately, since I had to be in the courtroom earlier for my seat assignment. Two state troopers were assigned to me from the Pittsburgh jurisdiction, and with little warning, they rushed me from the barracks to Bellefonte. Every access road was blocked by local police and sheriff’s deputies. Each time we came to a roadblock, the troopers showed their badges to get passage. Security was even tighter than they anticipated, with a lot of blockades, and we were all worried that we might not get there on time for my designated seating.
The street was cordoned off with steel barriers but the media stood in a horseshoe shape just on the other side, ready to pounce. On the other side of the barriers, hundreds of media vehicles and people—satellite trucks, photographers, reporters—lined the narrow streets of Bellefonte. Finally, we pulled in around the back and drove up the steep hill to a white tent, which doubled as a corridor extending from the rear entrance of the courthouse, where I was escorted from the car and then whisked inside. Most of the courtroom gallery was filled with media. There was a lottery system to score seats, but even with the press presence inside, it was astounding how many media were outside and fighting to get past the barricades to the front lines.
A mid-nineteenth-century structure, the Bellefonte Courthouse anchors the center of town in an area known as the Diamond. The courtroom itself is small; close quarters are relieved only by the high ceilings hung with elaborate chandeliers. The windows are framed with red brocade draperies. It is staid and suggests simpler times. I doubted that courtroom had ever seen a trial like the one that was to come. For sure, the sleepy town of Bellefonte never expected an invasion such as this one.
Once inside the door, the troopers handed me over to the sheriff’s deputies who were in charge of the interior and chaperoned me to the courtroom. They were young, fairly big guys in black uniforms—and not particularly polite. As a matter of fact, they were downright irritable and seemed aggravated that they had to deal with all the controlled chaos. Back at the barracks, I had heard from some of the troopers that cooperation from the sheriff’s office with the state police had been poor as they tried to plan the transportation and security logistics surrounding the trial. I could definitely sense the friction that day. I think it was because of all the fallout on Penn State. We were, after all, in the lion’s mouth. The state of Pennsylvania was prosecuting the case and here we all were in Bellefonte, a ten-minute drive from Penn State. Obviously, the sheriff and the deputies all knew Jerry Sandusky. He probably even gave some of them tickets to games at Beaver Stadium. For sure, a lot of those sheriffs and deputies had worked traffic detail when the cars were backed up for fifteen miles before a Penn State football game.
I took my seat on a bench with Jonelle, Linda Kelly, and a couple of other officials from the attorney general’s office, directly behind Joe McGettigan and Frank Fina, who sat together at the prosecution desk.
During one of the breaks, a sheriff gave me a hard time when I came back up to take my seat. Even after I presented my ID from Clinton County, he questioned the credential. He didn’t believe me when I said that I was there with the attorney general. Fortunately, there was a woman already seated who was watching this ridiculous display. She asked if I needed help and then called over to Jonelle, who told the sheriff to let me through. It was like we were the away team at a homecoming game.
29
Testimony
Aaron
WHEN MOM AND I GOT TO THE COURTHOUSE, THE SHERIFF BROUGHT us to a back room where I waited to be called to the stand. I was only in the courtroom during my own testimony. None of the witnesses or the victims heard one another’s testimony. Mom wasn’t in the courtroom, because I didn’t want her there. I still couldn’t bear the thought of her listening to my story, even though she knew some of it at that point. I figured she guessed a lot of it as well, but I still wouldn’t discuss it with her and I did not want her to know any details. In some ways, I guess I was protecting us both. I knew that Mom was frustrated because she couldn’t be inside, but I said that having Mike in there and having her out there made me feel like I had a good tag team supporting me.
Joe McGettigan and Frank were seated directly across from the witness stand and Mike was sitting right behind them with Jonelle. To the left was the jury and to my right was the judge. At a diagonal to the judge, about nine feet from me, were the defense team and Jerry, who was sitting at a table with Amendola. Sarge and some other people sat behind them. It was weird being so close to Jerry. It shook me up. There was no way for me to avoid seeing him unless I looked straight ahead. McGettigan coached me to make eye contact with the judge and the jury, and because of where everyone was positioned and because the room was so tight, it seemed like Jerry was everywhere I looked. Even when I managed to avoid Jerry’s eyes because my hands were over my own, at one point as I told my story, I could feel his stare go right through me.
Jerry actually smiled during my testimony. Every time I caught his eye, he had a grin on his face. It was crazy. When I answered a question on the stand that had to do with what Jerry did to me, his smile turned into a smirk, like he was shrugging off everything I said. He acted like he didn’t care that he was on trial; he was letting me know that he’d get off scot-free because he was untouchable and no one was ever going to get him.
A part of me wanted to get up, walk over, and just hit him. Honestly, that’s what I wished I could do. He was smiling as if to say that he was going to get away with it. I knew that he was trying to mess with my head. Even when he was on TV, after he was arrested, he was always smiling for the camera. I thought, This is exactly what he did when I was a little boy. He was acting like everything was all right when it wasn’t, and he knew I’d never tell because who would believe my word against his?
Amendola’s cross-examination felt like an attack. I like to think of myself as a cocky guy who won’t put up with people who are all over me and trying to get in my face. Before all this happened with Jerry, I was like that for sure. I was a track star in high school and could confidently outrun anyone. I am protective, a real big brother when it comes to Bubby and Katie. But I knew that I couldn’t be cocky on the stand. I just had to answer the questions and keep down my anxiety and anger, even though I was also embarrassed and humiliated. My testimony was only about a half h
our but it felt like it lasted forever. Amendola was a guy I couldn’t outrun.
At the end of the day, one of Jerry’s victims came over to me and asked if we could speak alone. He looked like he was about ten years older than me. We went off to the side and then he apologized for not coming forward when “it” first happened to him years before with Jerry. He felt real bad and said that if he had spoken up at the time Jerry was abusing him, maybe it might not have happened to the rest of us. I told him that I understood why he couldn’t come forward at the time. I said that I didn’t want to say anything for the longest time. I even told him that if Jerry would have just left me alone when I said I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore, instead of his acting like a clingy girlfriend and going crazy the way he did, I might not have said anything, either. What Jerry did to me and those other boys is the kind of stuff you just want to bury.
Dawn
MY OTHER CHILDREN KNEW WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR BROTHER by the time the trial came around. Even though Katie is pretty fragile emotionally, I needed to be up front with her. I wanted her to know from me and not from someone else or from rumors. Bubby, as young as he is, had already figured out everything. I was shocked. He actually came up to me after Jerry was arrested and said that he thought that Jerry Sandusky molested Aaron. Bubby said that he heard kids talking in school about some kid in Lock Haven who had been sexually abused. When he saw Jerry’s picture in the paper, he was positive that the boy they were now calling Victim 1 was his brother. I recalled the times that Jerry had been in our apartment and also the night that Jerry and Sarge babysat for Katie and Bubby. I asked Bubby if Jerry ever did anything to him and he said that he would have told me if he had.