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Jerry Sandusky Trial: Last Accuser Most Dramatic, Damaging

The prosecution in the Jerry Sandusky trial finished presenting its witnesses today with the most heart-rending tale of sexual abuse leveled against the former Penn State football coach.

A soft-spoken high school graduate recalled screaming for help in the basement of Sandusky’s home, but getting no response.

The courtroom was once again brought to tears today as the 18-year-old known as Victim 9 said that for four years Sandusky would come downstairs to the basement, drop his pants, and rape him and force him to perform oral sex.

“He started getting physical, like having me touch his penis and stuff,” he said. “He made me give him a, suck his penis is how you’d put it. He came in my room, pulled his pants down, laid on top of me, and kind of forced it in. What was I going to do? I mean look at him, he’s a big guy. He was bigger than me, at the time way bigger than me.”

Victim 9 said he weighed less than 70 pounds at the time and was helpless when Sandusky allegedly came for him.

“There was no fighting against it,” he said. “Sometimes (I’d) scream, sometimes tell him to get off me, but other than that, who was there? We were in the basement, no one could hear you down there. We were always down there.”

When asked to point out his alleged assailant, Victim 9 pointed at Sandusky without looking at him.

“Can you look at him?” the prosecutor asked. “I don’t want to look at him,” the witness replied.

Victim 9 was the eighth and final alleged victim to testify about being molested in the case against Sandusky, who is charged with 52 counts of child sex abuse. If convicted of the charges, Sandusky, 68, could be sentenced to life in prison.

The man said that his abuse by Sandusky lasted until he was about 16, in the year 2009. The time frame suggests that Sandusky may have continued to abuse boys while under investigation by a grand jury, since the investigation was launched in late 2008.

Victim 9 said his mother encouraged him to spend time with the coach and that he spent almost every weekend at Sandusky’s house for three years, between 100 and 150 times, and the acts occurred “often.”

The man said that around age 16 he refused to go over to Sandusky’s house any more, but Sandusky called him once more in 2011 to ask him to “stick up for him” if anyone came to ask questions, he testified.

Upon cross-examination, the man admitted that he went on one more outing with Sandusky shortly before the coach’s arrest to a football game in September 2011. He said that he wanted to take his friend, who had never been to a football game, to the Penn State stadium.

“The only reason I went that time was I had a friend with me, and my friend didn’t like him anyway. If anything went down, my friend had my back,” he said.

The cross-examination was also graphic as defense attorney Joseph Amendola asked the boy repeatedly whether he bled from the anal rape and whether his mother saw blood on his underwear. He calmly responded that he had bled, but his mother did not discover it on his underwear.

“I just dealt with it. I never told anybody, I didn’t even tell my own mom,” he said. “I just deal with things in my own way.”

Victim 9 said he never told his mother or anyone until he spoke to police, and he only told prosecutor Joseph McGettigan the whole truth before his testimony today.

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