06-13-2012, 07:47 PM
lengthy, today's testimony.
Phila.com
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Moments after running into Jerry Sandusky and a young boy in a campus shower in 2000, a Penn State janitor emerged visibly shaken, one of his co-workers testified Wednesday afternoon.
"He looked at me and said, 'I just witnessed something that I'll never forget for the rest of my life," said Ronald Petrosky, recalling the words of former colleague Jim Calhoun. "That man that just left - Sandusky - I saw him licking on that boy's privates."
Petrosky was the sixth witness to take the stand Wednesday during the third day of testimony in the trial of the former Penn State assistant football coach now accused of 52 counts of sexual abuse. But he almost did not have a chance to tell his story.
Calhoun, who told his co-workers at the time that he witnessed Sandusky giving oral sex to an 11- to 13-year-old boy, now suffers from dementia and was not available to testify.
Prosecutors offered testimony from two of his co-workers at the time - Petrosky and another janitor Jay Witherite -- hoping to present the story of a boy identified in court documents as "Victim 8."
But Sandusky's defense pressed once again for Judge Calhoun prosecutors were relying solely on hearsay evidence to prove their case.
Cleland seemed skeptical at times of prosecutors' claims that Petrosky and Witherite were reliable because their testimony was based upon Calhoun's spur-of-the-moment utterances moments after witnessing the alleged scene. However, he ultimately let the janitors take the stand, leaving it up to jurors to weigh their accounts against the other evidence in the case.
Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors played the now infamous TV interview, in which the former Penn State football coach struggled to answer the question "Are you sexually attracted to young boys."
Taped days after his November 2011 arrest, the conversation with NBC's Bob Costas came at a time when questions over who knew what and when still swirled around Penn State and a nation waited to hear Sandusky's response to his accusers.
"Am I sexually attracted to young boys? Am I sexually attracted to young boys?" Sandusky repeated twice in the interview, as if mulling the question. "Sexually attracted? No, I enjoy young people. I enjoy to be around them. No, I'm not sexually attracted to young boys."
Throughout the playing of the tape, Sandusky sat in court Wednesday finger to his ear, head turned away from the projector.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man became the fifth witness to testify this week that Sandusky molested him in a locker room shower on campus.
Choking back tears, the man identified in court documents as Victim 5 described feeling pressured to strip down and shower with the Sandusky in 2001 while the two were working out at a campus facility.
The man, then 11, told jurors he cowered in a corner and watched in trepidation as a nude Sandusky crept closer and closer.
"I crept forward a little bit more as did he, and then I felt his body on my back," said the man, who has been identified in court documents as Victim 5. "I kept lurching forward, but I didn't have anywhere to go. I just felt his penis on my back."
Eventually, the man said, Sandusky reached around his waist and touched the boy's genitals and then placed the boy's hands on his own. The teenager bolted from the shower room, dried off and met Sandusky later at his car.
The elder man said nothing, Victim 5 testified.
"I thought he was upset with me," he said. "He didn't talk to me. No eye contact."
That followed earlier testimony from a man, now 27, who said he was 10 when Sandusky began touching his knee, his crotch and then putting his hand inside his pants, "touching my penis."
"I'm sure I did say, 'No,' or, 'Stop that,' but I don't remember for sure," the man said.
However, on cross-examination by defense counsel, the man conceded he never provided certain specific allegations to authorities until after he had hired an attorney. The defense has suggested that some alleged victims are seeking to get money, houses or cars or other riches by falsely accusing Sandusky in court.
For years in the mid- and late-1990s, the man testified, Sandusky took him to Penn State football games. He stayed at the Sandusky home. He said that Sandusky "had this habit of putting his hand on my leg and squeezing," almost to the point of pain.
In the passenger seat of Sandusky's car, the man said, he would scoot to the far side of the passenger seat, not wanting to be touched but also not wanting "to upset Mr. Sandusky in any way. I didn't want to make him angry."
Why not? Because, the man said, he enjoyed going to the football games, getting access he couldn't otherwise have had or afford. "Going to games was very, very special to me."
The man, known in court records as "Victim 7," said he never told anyone what was happening.
But to this day, he said, he's repulsed by chest hair - because it reminds him how Sandusky would "cuddle," pressing close to the boy in bed in the coach's home.
"It felt very uncomfortable to me, but I wasn't sure how to handle it," he said, recalling how he decided to "push it to the back of my mind."
The man spoke clearly, calmly and directly, frequently referring to the defendant as "Jerry."
In the car, at Sandusky's house, in a campus locker room - touching occurred in all those places, he said. He said that in 1995 when he was 11, and after tossing a football around at Penn State, Sandusky said they needed to go take a shower, even though they had not gotten sweaty.
"He pushed the issue. 'You're sweaty, I'm sweaty, we need to take a shower,'" he said. "I was extremely uncomfortable."
Both disrobed and got into the shower, where Sandusky washed the boy's hair and attempted the wash the boy's body, the man testified, relating his discomfort at the coach's behavior. After the shower, he said, Sandusky tried to dry him with a towel - the boy said he could dry himself.
He showered with Sandusky at least five more times, the man testified, and the same thing happened - "trying to soap me up, I would move away." One time, Sandusky grabbed the boy from behind in a bear hug, his front to the boy's back.
"I don't remember him saying anything. I just remember him sort of grunting. . . . I had cried out. I don't remember what I said, probably, 'Put me down' or something like that."
Still, he said, he didn't tell his parents, believing they would get mad and he would be cut off from going to football games.
There came a point, the man testified, that "the relationship with Jerry had kind of changed. . . . He had stopped calling me to go to games, he had stopped offering tickets and things. I thought I had done something wrong and was very, very upset by it."
His mother called the Sandusky home to ask if something was wrong - and Sandusky began giving the boy football tickets again, he testified.
From 1995 on, he got tickets from Sandusky, he said. But it was clear Sandusky had "favorites," and he was not among them.
Prosecutors showed the boy a series of photographs -- "a younger me," the man said, looking at a photo of himself in a soccer uniform when he was 12. In another, he identified himself in a group photo, where Sandusky stood at the center of eight boys, his arms casually draped over two of the youths' shoulders.
The man said that after initial conversations with the police, he hired an attorney, to "help me through this" and to maintain his privacy.
On cross-examination, defense counsel Joseph Amendola asked about the hiring of that attorney, whom he said represents at least one other alleged victim.
The man said in response to questions that he's never paid the attorney, whom he has seen about 10 or 15 times. They never discussed his court testimony, he said. He signed some sort of legal agreement with the attorney, but wasn't clear on what it was, he testified.
He conceded he never told prosecutors that Sandusky put his hand down his pants until after he had signed an agreement with the attorney. In his grand jury testimony, Amendola said, reading from a transcript, the man said Sandusky put his hands inside his pants, but "he never went the whole way down and grabbed anything."
He denied being touched or fondled to the grand jury. Until a couple months ago, after he had retained counsel, he never mentioned Sandusky hugging him in the shower. In fact, according to a transcript, he said he did not remember Sandusky pulling him close in the shower.
The man said that at that time, in 2011, he was trying to block memories of what occurred, and did not tell the whole story of events.
"Different things have brought back different memories. . . . I had everything negative blocked out. The grand jury testimony was when I was just staring to open that door, so to speak."
Earlier, a third young man swore in court this morning that he was sexually abused by Sandusky when he was a boy.
The 25-year-old man, described in court documents as "Victim 10," said he met Sandusky through the coach's Second Mile Charity, and later was invited to his home. He recalled being in the basement recreation area in 1998, when he was about 11:
"We were wrestling. The defendant pinned me to the ground, pulled my shorts down and began performing oral sex on me. I freaked out."
Sandusky stopped the sex after a few minutes and went upstairs, but later "told me that if I told anybody, I'd never see my family again."
Later, Sandusky apologized for saying that, and said "that he loved me," the witness testified.
The man described a troubled home life at the time, his father absent, and said he never told anyone about the abuse because he was frightened and embarrassed. He testified to having had trouble with drugs and alcohol, and to a criminal history - 23 months in state prison for robbery, time in jail for theft before that. Now he's doing better, married and expecting a baby, he said.
On cross examination, defense attorney Amendola asked what other contact might have occurred. While driving, the man said, Sandusky put his hand on his thigh. Other contact occurred too.
"Did you tell anybody up until you contacted the police in this situation that that happened?" Amendola said.
No, the witness said.
Another time, the man said under Amendola's questioning, Sandusky performed oral sex on him, in the basement, and the alleged victim reciprocated.
The man, who contacted authorities after Sandusky's initial arrest, spoke quietly and sadly on the stand. He conceded he went to the Second Mile camp in 1999, even after the abuse had begun.
The witness struggled to recall the dates and timing of events, but said Sandusky regularly took him to football games, basketball games, cookouts and Second Mile events. He couldn't remember the names of other children who were often present.
"I can't recall. I can't recall," he said several times in response to questions.
Before Victim 10 took the stand, the father of former Penn State assistant football coach Michael McQueary testified that his son, distraught and struggling to speak, phoned him from the campus in 2001 to say he had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room showers with a young boy - an incident that has come to symbolize the case.
The testimony from John McQueary largely corroborated what his son said on the witness stand on Tuesday.
In court this morning, Sandusky smiled as he chatted with members of the defense team before the trial resumed, but looked tired after two days of brutal testimony from two other young men who swore he victimized them as boys.
Phila.com
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Moments after running into Jerry Sandusky and a young boy in a campus shower in 2000, a Penn State janitor emerged visibly shaken, one of his co-workers testified Wednesday afternoon.
"He looked at me and said, 'I just witnessed something that I'll never forget for the rest of my life," said Ronald Petrosky, recalling the words of former colleague Jim Calhoun. "That man that just left - Sandusky - I saw him licking on that boy's privates."
Petrosky was the sixth witness to take the stand Wednesday during the third day of testimony in the trial of the former Penn State assistant football coach now accused of 52 counts of sexual abuse. But he almost did not have a chance to tell his story.
Calhoun, who told his co-workers at the time that he witnessed Sandusky giving oral sex to an 11- to 13-year-old boy, now suffers from dementia and was not available to testify.
Prosecutors offered testimony from two of his co-workers at the time - Petrosky and another janitor Jay Witherite -- hoping to present the story of a boy identified in court documents as "Victim 8."
But Sandusky's defense pressed once again for Judge Calhoun prosecutors were relying solely on hearsay evidence to prove their case.
Cleland seemed skeptical at times of prosecutors' claims that Petrosky and Witherite were reliable because their testimony was based upon Calhoun's spur-of-the-moment utterances moments after witnessing the alleged scene. However, he ultimately let the janitors take the stand, leaving it up to jurors to weigh their accounts against the other evidence in the case.
Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors played the now infamous TV interview, in which the former Penn State football coach struggled to answer the question "Are you sexually attracted to young boys."
Taped days after his November 2011 arrest, the conversation with NBC's Bob Costas came at a time when questions over who knew what and when still swirled around Penn State and a nation waited to hear Sandusky's response to his accusers.
"Am I sexually attracted to young boys? Am I sexually attracted to young boys?" Sandusky repeated twice in the interview, as if mulling the question. "Sexually attracted? No, I enjoy young people. I enjoy to be around them. No, I'm not sexually attracted to young boys."
Throughout the playing of the tape, Sandusky sat in court Wednesday finger to his ear, head turned away from the projector.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man became the fifth witness to testify this week that Sandusky molested him in a locker room shower on campus.
Choking back tears, the man identified in court documents as Victim 5 described feeling pressured to strip down and shower with the Sandusky in 2001 while the two were working out at a campus facility.
The man, then 11, told jurors he cowered in a corner and watched in trepidation as a nude Sandusky crept closer and closer.
"I crept forward a little bit more as did he, and then I felt his body on my back," said the man, who has been identified in court documents as Victim 5. "I kept lurching forward, but I didn't have anywhere to go. I just felt his penis on my back."
Eventually, the man said, Sandusky reached around his waist and touched the boy's genitals and then placed the boy's hands on his own. The teenager bolted from the shower room, dried off and met Sandusky later at his car.
The elder man said nothing, Victim 5 testified.
"I thought he was upset with me," he said. "He didn't talk to me. No eye contact."
That followed earlier testimony from a man, now 27, who said he was 10 when Sandusky began touching his knee, his crotch and then putting his hand inside his pants, "touching my penis."
"I'm sure I did say, 'No,' or, 'Stop that,' but I don't remember for sure," the man said.
However, on cross-examination by defense counsel, the man conceded he never provided certain specific allegations to authorities until after he had hired an attorney. The defense has suggested that some alleged victims are seeking to get money, houses or cars or other riches by falsely accusing Sandusky in court.
For years in the mid- and late-1990s, the man testified, Sandusky took him to Penn State football games. He stayed at the Sandusky home. He said that Sandusky "had this habit of putting his hand on my leg and squeezing," almost to the point of pain.
In the passenger seat of Sandusky's car, the man said, he would scoot to the far side of the passenger seat, not wanting to be touched but also not wanting "to upset Mr. Sandusky in any way. I didn't want to make him angry."
Why not? Because, the man said, he enjoyed going to the football games, getting access he couldn't otherwise have had or afford. "Going to games was very, very special to me."
The man, known in court records as "Victim 7," said he never told anyone what was happening.
But to this day, he said, he's repulsed by chest hair - because it reminds him how Sandusky would "cuddle," pressing close to the boy in bed in the coach's home.
"It felt very uncomfortable to me, but I wasn't sure how to handle it," he said, recalling how he decided to "push it to the back of my mind."
The man spoke clearly, calmly and directly, frequently referring to the defendant as "Jerry."
In the car, at Sandusky's house, in a campus locker room - touching occurred in all those places, he said. He said that in 1995 when he was 11, and after tossing a football around at Penn State, Sandusky said they needed to go take a shower, even though they had not gotten sweaty.
"He pushed the issue. 'You're sweaty, I'm sweaty, we need to take a shower,'" he said. "I was extremely uncomfortable."
Both disrobed and got into the shower, where Sandusky washed the boy's hair and attempted the wash the boy's body, the man testified, relating his discomfort at the coach's behavior. After the shower, he said, Sandusky tried to dry him with a towel - the boy said he could dry himself.
He showered with Sandusky at least five more times, the man testified, and the same thing happened - "trying to soap me up, I would move away." One time, Sandusky grabbed the boy from behind in a bear hug, his front to the boy's back.
"I don't remember him saying anything. I just remember him sort of grunting. . . . I had cried out. I don't remember what I said, probably, 'Put me down' or something like that."
Still, he said, he didn't tell his parents, believing they would get mad and he would be cut off from going to football games.
There came a point, the man testified, that "the relationship with Jerry had kind of changed. . . . He had stopped calling me to go to games, he had stopped offering tickets and things. I thought I had done something wrong and was very, very upset by it."
His mother called the Sandusky home to ask if something was wrong - and Sandusky began giving the boy football tickets again, he testified.
From 1995 on, he got tickets from Sandusky, he said. But it was clear Sandusky had "favorites," and he was not among them.
Prosecutors showed the boy a series of photographs -- "a younger me," the man said, looking at a photo of himself in a soccer uniform when he was 12. In another, he identified himself in a group photo, where Sandusky stood at the center of eight boys, his arms casually draped over two of the youths' shoulders.
The man said that after initial conversations with the police, he hired an attorney, to "help me through this" and to maintain his privacy.
On cross-examination, defense counsel Joseph Amendola asked about the hiring of that attorney, whom he said represents at least one other alleged victim.
The man said in response to questions that he's never paid the attorney, whom he has seen about 10 or 15 times. They never discussed his court testimony, he said. He signed some sort of legal agreement with the attorney, but wasn't clear on what it was, he testified.
He conceded he never told prosecutors that Sandusky put his hand down his pants until after he had signed an agreement with the attorney. In his grand jury testimony, Amendola said, reading from a transcript, the man said Sandusky put his hands inside his pants, but "he never went the whole way down and grabbed anything."
He denied being touched or fondled to the grand jury. Until a couple months ago, after he had retained counsel, he never mentioned Sandusky hugging him in the shower. In fact, according to a transcript, he said he did not remember Sandusky pulling him close in the shower.
The man said that at that time, in 2011, he was trying to block memories of what occurred, and did not tell the whole story of events.
"Different things have brought back different memories. . . . I had everything negative blocked out. The grand jury testimony was when I was just staring to open that door, so to speak."
Earlier, a third young man swore in court this morning that he was sexually abused by Sandusky when he was a boy.
The 25-year-old man, described in court documents as "Victim 10," said he met Sandusky through the coach's Second Mile Charity, and later was invited to his home. He recalled being in the basement recreation area in 1998, when he was about 11:
"We were wrestling. The defendant pinned me to the ground, pulled my shorts down and began performing oral sex on me. I freaked out."
Sandusky stopped the sex after a few minutes and went upstairs, but later "told me that if I told anybody, I'd never see my family again."
Later, Sandusky apologized for saying that, and said "that he loved me," the witness testified.
The man described a troubled home life at the time, his father absent, and said he never told anyone about the abuse because he was frightened and embarrassed. He testified to having had trouble with drugs and alcohol, and to a criminal history - 23 months in state prison for robbery, time in jail for theft before that. Now he's doing better, married and expecting a baby, he said.
On cross examination, defense attorney Amendola asked what other contact might have occurred. While driving, the man said, Sandusky put his hand on his thigh. Other contact occurred too.
"Did you tell anybody up until you contacted the police in this situation that that happened?" Amendola said.
No, the witness said.
Another time, the man said under Amendola's questioning, Sandusky performed oral sex on him, in the basement, and the alleged victim reciprocated.
The man, who contacted authorities after Sandusky's initial arrest, spoke quietly and sadly on the stand. He conceded he went to the Second Mile camp in 1999, even after the abuse had begun.
The witness struggled to recall the dates and timing of events, but said Sandusky regularly took him to football games, basketball games, cookouts and Second Mile events. He couldn't remember the names of other children who were often present.
"I can't recall. I can't recall," he said several times in response to questions.
Before Victim 10 took the stand, the father of former Penn State assistant football coach Michael McQueary testified that his son, distraught and struggling to speak, phoned him from the campus in 2001 to say he had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room showers with a young boy - an incident that has come to symbolize the case.
The testimony from John McQueary largely corroborated what his son said on the witness stand on Tuesday.
In court this morning, Sandusky smiled as he chatted with members of the defense team before the trial resumed, but looked tired after two days of brutal testimony from two other young men who swore he victimized them as boys.