Silent No More

by Aaron Fisher

  A shudder went up my spine. I got back in my car to leave and had difficulty turning around on that tight dead end. I didn’t want to back into anyone’s driveway or onto a neighbor’s lawn. That was when I noticed the signs stuck into the ground of two homes on either side of Sandusky’s. At first I thought they were “For Sale” signs, and figured, Wow, people no longer wanted to live on a street that was the scene of horrific crimes. But as I looked closer, I saw that the signs were sponsored by RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. Across the top they read, “Support Victims of Sexual Abuse.” There was poetry in that.

  Aaron

  IT’S FINALLY OVER. AT LEAST THE TRIAL IS OVER AND JERRY Sandusky will never see freedom again. Now the other victims and I have to fight for our freedom. I know there’s a long road ahead of me.

  Am I recognizable? Everyone in my town knows who I am because I ran track for the high school and represented my school in the States Competition. A lot of times, my picture was in the town paper on the front page of the sports section. Now, when I’m running around town and practicing, someone always stops and waves and calls out, “How’s it going, Aaron?” So, people know me as a runner, and although no one has come right out and asked me, I think they also know “who” I am in terms of Jerry Sandusky. Lock Haven is a small town. There’s talk about the most minor stuff, like what this neighbor is doing and who said what to whom. But this case was big talk. After the verdict came in, a teacher came up to me and shook my hand. He said that I was a hero for doing what I did. He didn’t go into any details or name names, but there was this silent understanding. I knew what he was congratulating me for and it wasn’t for running track. I just walked away and said thanks because I didn’t want him to see me cry.

  I don’t want people ever to see me cry and I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.

  So, am I recognizable? Yes. But the only thing that really matters is if I’m recognizable to me—because for a long time, I wasn’t.

  I want kids and adults to know that this can happen regardless of who you are or where you live. Whether it’s a big city or a small town, whether you’re a track star like me or not, whether it’s a guy like Jerry or the guy next door—this can happen. There are way too many people out there like Jerry Sandusky who will try to get into a little kid’s life. I’m not saying that kids shouldn’t trust people, but I am saying that they need to look around and keep a guard up.

  I want to hit the road with Mike and talk to kids and parents and teachers. It’s really important for parents to tell kids, remind them all the time, that if they ever feel strange vibes from someone, it’s okay to say so. There can be no shame or embarrassment in speaking up. It’s important for adults to let kids know that they can. Parents have got to have intuition about this kind of thing. And if parents feel a vibe from another adult, they have to speak up as well.

  It’s true that kids need to be trusted by their parents, but kids need to trust their parents too. Even if the parent is the type like my mom, who lets you be totally independent and trusts you completely, as a kid you have to know you can go to your parent and they’ll be there to help you. Parents need to let their kids know that they’re not alone out there. I want children and parents to feel empowered when it comes to this, because it exists.

  Even though something bad like this happened to me, I will not hold back on what I want to do. Yes, I wish that someone had intervened and done more for me so it wouldn’t have happened at all, but I have to let that go. Did Jerry Sandusky steal years of my life? He did. But I am moving forward. I will not wallow in self-pity. Do I think that maybe I “shoulda coulda woulda” done what I’ve told Mike a million times and just pushed Jerry away from me and run from his house screaming? Yes, I wish I had. But the thing is, I was just eleven when it started and a little kid doesn’t have that kind of courage. At almost fifteen, it was finally a different story. But I want to make sure that even the littlest kid has the courage to run from an adult like Jerry.

  Right now, I want to go to college. I’m being followed by a lot of schools for track scholarships and there’s one that’s my favorite. For the obvious reasons, a lot of things got put on hold—like my SATs. I still have to take those but they’re only given twice a year, in spring and fall. Fall was the arrest and spring was the trial. Like I said, obvious reasons. There’s also a lot of paperwork and applications that I have to get in order. Back in ninth grade, my grades slipped because of all this, but toward the end of my senior year, I came close to making the honor roll after I switched to the new school. I’m still thinking about being a state trooper, and even though you don’t have to go to college for that, they prefer it—and I want an education. I have no doubts about passing the physical test easily for trooper and maybe I could even ace the written one, but I really want to go to college and study criminal justice with a focus in law. If the college I like doesn’t have a law focus in criminal justice, then I want to major in history. If it doesn’t work out with the state troopers, then I want to teach history. I have a lot of plans, backup plans, and dreams. And I’m going to chase my dreams, and all the nightmares be damned.

  Aaron and Dawn celebrate his graduation from Sugar Valley Rural Charter School

  I am not a victim. Not anymore.

  Afterword

  Mike

  NEUROSCIENCE HAS YET TO UNEARTH THE REASON AND CAUSE FOR pedophilia. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines pedophilia as recurrent sexually arousing fantasies, impulsive desires, and/or behaviors involving sexual acts with a child. Although studies of the pedophile’s brain in the form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans have revealed certain abnormalities in the frontal and central regions, there is nothing conclusive from an organic point of view. Not only do many variables exist within each individual, but neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists differ among themselves as to the veracity and certainty of medical diagnoses as far as organic, forensic, and behavioral connections.

  What we do agree upon is that pedophiles and serial child molesters blend well into society and come from all walks of life. This alone muddies the waters in terms of sociological, psychological, and medical profiles. We also know that 90 percent of victims are more than familiar with their abusers, who are usually adult males or male teenagers, presenting under the guise of fathers, brothers, neighbors, teachers, family friends … the list goes on. We state male abusers because although women also sexually abuse children, the occurrence is rare.

  There are other firm statistics. For instance, often the abuser is a past victim of child molestation as well, and if so, seeks out children of the age he was when victimized.

  But in other ways, the findings are inconsistent. If he is a teenager, he often presents as one of the “cool kids on the block.” If an adult male, he is often married, responsible, well liked, respected, educated, and somewhat religious. He also enjoys being surrounded by children. Or the pedophile can be someone who appears to be socially awkward or somewhat maladjusted. In other words, there is no textbook profile. The “creepy” guy who likes to sit and watch kids in the playground may just be a harmless misfit, but the father pushing his own child on a swing may be a pedophile.

  It is clear from both law enforcement investigative interviews and therapy sessions that pedophiles do not consider the welfare or the feelings of others—in particular, the helpless child. The pedophile’s goal is to take total control and render the recipient powerless as they derive their own pleasure. In my opinion, throughout my more than twenty-five years of work with both abusers and their victims, it appears something is clearly missing in the superego or the conscience of the pedophile. Unfortunately, that “something” is yet to be identified.

  I believe that a person is born with this proclivity and that when it comes to the victim, the only “cure” right now is prevention and intervention. The prevention of child s
exual abuse and other forms of sexual coercion has been a public health concern for decades, its roots traceable to the nineteenth century, yet few validated prevention programs exist.

  Just after Jerry Sandusky was arrested, I got a call from a man named Peter S. Pelullo, who had seen my name in the press. At first, I was cautious. There were a lot of callers who came out of the woodwork—some of whom were credible and others who were jumping on a tragic bandwagon. I even got a call from a female former Penn State secretary who said she was fired some twenty years before—and she was convinced it was because she reported seeing Sandusky taking little boys into the dormitory. I turned that case over to state police and the attorney general’s office for further investigation. Pete told me about his recently established foundation, Let Go … Let Peace Come In (LGLPCI), an international outreach program directed at bringing adult men and women who were victims of child abuse to the recovery process. He explained that the foundation did not stand alone but, in fact, was aligned with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and had the goal of preventing child sexual abuse and the harm and suffering it inflicts, as well as improving treatment programs for adult survivors.

  Pete asked me to come on board, not only to give professional advice on matters concerning mental health care for survivors, but to help disseminate information and educate. He also told me that he had recently published a book, Betrayal and the Beast: A True Story of One Man’s Journey Through Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Addiction, and Recovery. The book was Pete’s autobiography.

  Pete was the founder of Philly World Records and the owner of a premier recording studio in the 1970s; he worked with musicians like the Rolling Stones, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Cashmere, and Eugene Wilde. A native of Philadelphia and one of six children from a stable family (his parents’ marriage lasted fifty-six years, until his father’s death in 2004), Pete is sixty years old, married, and the father of two sons. Throughout his life, he presented to the outside world an image of professional and financial success, as well as domestic stability. Yet he harbored a dark secret that took forty-eight years to exhume as he battled a habit of sexual addiction.

  In Pete’s self-described “Ozzie and Harriet” neighborhood, there was a teenage boy named “John” who was a “cool” mentor as he babysat for seven-year-old Pete, who wanted to grow up to be just like him. Once John gained Pete’s trust, he and his friend “Jimmy” repeatedly raped Pete over the course of several months. Jimmy’s mother was a friend of Pete’s mother, and Pete was not only afraid to ruin their friendship; under the threat of John and Jimmy, he was also afraid of retribution. After the publication of Pete’s book, more boys from Pete’s old neighborhood—now adult men—came forward to admit that they, too, had been abused by these neighborhood boys.

  It is all too familiar a story.

  Because neuroscience has yet to define medical/psychiatric reasons for this behavioral abnormality, one of the reasons that the LGLPCI foundation intrigued me was their wise alignment with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Child sexual abuse is a global public health problem and can no longer be considered a taboo that societies are reluctant to address. What is termed the Good Behavior Game came out of the Bloomberg Department of Mental Health more than twenty years ago. Targeting first- and second-grade children with an intervention by teachers to improve classroom behavior and reduce aggression, data are now being collected and analyzed in order to determine whether early intervention influences later adult sexual offending behaviors.

  The research continues in the hope that as a global society we can prevent abuse before it happens rather than dealing with it after the fact, when a sex offender merely registers. Sadly, it has been found that registering as an offender has been of little use and effectiveness. The compulsive and impulsive nature of the pedophile’s disorder does not dissuade the registered offender from abusing again—despite the court order. He may merely change the venue for his hunting ground, and slip through the cracks of a system where, although he is required to register, he does not. It is comparable to the ineffectiveness of a restraining order: How many times do we hear that an abusive boyfriend or husband has been found guilty of murder despite the restraining order in place?

  Aaron and I are now both on board with Pete. Although Aaron is determined to attend college, he is equally as determined to be a spokesperson, in the hope that what happened to him will one day become extinct. We all agree that efforts must take place on grassroots levels, beginning with all-level schools across the country. Educating children, parents, teachers, and youth officers in law enforcement about the prevalence of this health issue is essential when it comes to prevention and intervention.

  We want kids to know that if they are abused, it’s nothing to be ashamed of and not their fault. We want children to come forward so they can get help before it’s too late, and so that the abuser can be punished as well as removed. We want parents, teachers, and law enforcement to note the signs, have a full awareness of the grooming behavior in the pedophile, and respond to their own instincts. We will urge both children and adults to take responsible measures if and when they suspect that an adult is an abuser—regardless of that adult’s stature in their community.

  The obvious question that arises is one of trust. Aaron said it best: Parents have to trust their kids, but kids also have to trust their parents. As we go into the schools, we’re not teaching kids not to trust, but rather how and whom to trust. We will also educate adults and children about abnormal sexuality, developing programs where adults and children can readily and shamelessly identify potential perpetrators.

  We hope that the program will also encourage young active and potential pedophiles to seek help for what they can now identify as abnormal urges. Not only must the stigma of a victim’s reporting a crime of sexual abuse be removed, but the stigma of carrying the hallmarks of pedophilia as a teenager must be recognized and removed as well. Anger and sexual addiction rehabilitation programs have been mainstreamed into the psychological and social arenas. The same must happen for those who conceal what they know are abnormal sexual feelings toward a child. In other words, the forums have to open in a way that invites acceptable conversation when it comes to sexual abuse. The taboo must be removed.

  There can no longer exist what is termed “the bystander effect” or Genovese syndrome, where individuals do not offer assistance to a victim of a crime when other witnesses are present. There can no longer be the assumption that “someone else,” another witness, will assume responsibility for intervention or a call for help. This psychological terminology was coined in 1968 by social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané following the 1964 murder of twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese. Thirty-eight people watched from their windows as Kitty was stabbed to death near her home in a residential housing apartment complex in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. Since that time, we have learned that, in fact, people did try to help but were paralyzed as the deadly attack took place before their eyes. This bystander effect, also known as diffusion of responsibility, remains in the jargon. This was also the case with those who suspected—and those who knew for a fact—that Jerry Sandusky was an abuser. Whether it was born out of a fear of losing a job, merely sullying the reputation of an institution or an individual, or compromising their own political aspirations, people left the responsibility to someone else. No one came forward—until there was Aaron.

  The statistics are staggering. One in three girls and one in four boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen. There are currently more than 60 million adult survivors of child abuse in the United States. If that many survivors have been documented and entered into the database, how many still have not come forward and continue to live silently with their pain? Data tell us that more than eight hundred children are sexually abused in the United States every day. Again, keep in mind that those statistics are only gathered from those who tell.

  Furthermore, a
lthough length of time and depth of the abuse is a factor when it comes to the post-traumatic stress of the child, even if the abuse is only a single episode, the child is affected in one way or another and by varying degrees by that sexual exploitation. The effect continues well into his or her adult life. Left untreated, the trauma shapes the child’s adult behavior, which is all too often laced with lifelong challenges—among them anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, and sex addiction. Surprisingly, children of sexual abuse often lack physical evidence, which compromises their credibility both with themselves and criminal investigators: All too often the physical signs of trauma have healed by the time they come forward—and children tend to physically heal quickly. Even adolescent girls who were raped and subsequently become pregnant often do not present with medical evidence of trauma. Emotional signs of trauma, however, can remain locked within the victim’s psyche as they search for the magic bullet to mask their pain.

  In Aaron’s case, and in the cases of Jerry Sandusky’s other victims who came forward, we pulled off a miracle, and yet I still believe we’ve only just scratched the surface. Yes, Sandusky has been removed from society, but he is only one offender in an endless and murky sea of others—some of whom hold a similar stature and reputation to his and others who are more ordinary men with less political power. Again, the pedophile’s identity has no distinct fingerprint.

  If not for Aaron’s courage to come forward, Jerry Sandusky might never have been revealed as the serial pedophile that he was. Despite his trauma, Aaron persisted for nearly three years as he waged battle against his offender. He fought a bureaucracy that was all but allowing this crime to be swept under the rug. He rallied despite overwhelming panic attacks as his hopes for an arrest were repeatedly shattered. He endured constant disappointment resulting from false promises for swifter justice. He struggled with debilitating symptoms resulting from conversion disorder as he was forced to tell his agonizing story all too many times while at the same time he felt that his credibility was questioned.