Artist sketch of unidentified witness on stand.
Day 1 of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation trial did not go so well for the former Penn Sate assistant coach.
The first person to testify, known as Victim No. 4 in court documents, was a strong, convincing witness who encountered Sandusky when he was 13. Now, a confident man at 28, he painted a vivid picture of Sandusky as predator was one person in public and quite another in private.
“He treated me like a son in front of other people,” the witness said, sternly.
“Aside from that, he treated me like his girlfriend.”
As gasps were audibly heard in the courtroom for a line straight off a movie script, according to Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel. Sandusky’s attorney Joe Amendola paused, shuffled his notes and kept fumbling as the witness maintained his steely posture.
The witness vividly detailed what he estimated were at least 40 acts of inappropriate sexual contact in the Penn State football locker room showers alone – games of “soap battles” and wrestling matches turning into repeated attempts at oral and anal sex.
Amendola didn’t even attempt to counter those accusations, which were equal parts powerful and painful to hear.
Sandusky, 68, is facing 52 counts based on using his Second Mile charity and his stature within Penn State football to sexual molest 10 children over a 15-year period. He’s maintained his innocence, although even Amendola acknowledged in his opening arguments Monday morning that the state possessed “overwhelming evidence.”
And that was before the jury of 12 heard from Victim No. 4, clad in crew cut, white dress shirt and a dark tie. Over nearly five hours Victim No. 4 recapped how Sandusky first met him when he was a somewhat troubled teenager at a Second Mile charity picnic. When a bunch of kids went swimming in a lake, Sandusky joined them, and during a game where he’d throw the children in the air, the witness first realized something was wrong.
“[He’d] kind of [pretend] like he was having trouble getting a good grip,” the witness said. “And as he was grabbing you he would brush your genitals and then throw you.”
Unless the defense has a plan to later recall the witness and catch him in multiple lies, there were almost no positives to the day for Sandusky. It was a bludgeoning, as if the witness had been waiting 15 years to rain down these stories on his alleged perpetrator and wasn’t going to miss a single opportunity to go for the throat.
The witness vividly detailed what he estimated were at least 40 acts of inappropriate sexual contact in the Penn State football locker room showers alone – games of “soap battles” and wrestling matches turning into repeated attempts at oral and anal sex.
Amendola didn’t even attempt to counter those accusations, which were equal parts powerful and painful to hear.
Sandusky, 68, is facing 52 counts based on using his Second Mile charity and his stature within Penn State football to sexual molest 10 children over a 15-year period. He plans to testify in the trial that is being covered by more than 300 journalists
