BELLEFONTE - There are two sides to former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, a 28-year-old man testified Monday in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas in Bellefonte.
Sandusky publicly treated him well in many respects, but in private, the former coach treated him like a "girlfriend," the man, now known as Victim 4, told a Centre County jury hearing Sandusky's case on 52 counts of child sexual abuse.
The man said he finally came forward about the abuse after learning there were children other than himself who allegedly had been molested by Sandusky. Had he come forward earlier, the abuse of others might not have occurred, he said.
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Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky arrives at the Centre County Courthouse for opening statements in his trial on 52 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 boys over a period of 15 years, Monday, in Bellefonte.
Sandusky befriended him at age 12 while attending a Second Mile soccer camp at Penn State, and in the ensuing five years, the well-known defensive coach gave him many gifts, the accuser testified. He bought him golf clubs, a snow board and soccer equipment, the man said.
Sandusky played basketball and racquetball with the boy several times a week, he said.
He invited the boy to family picnics, took him to dinners and on golf outings and the youngster joined the Sandusky family entourage when Penn State played in the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla. in 1998 and the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas in 1999.
Sandusky introduced him to many of Penn State's football players such as Brandon Short and Lavar Arrington, Victim 4 said.
His picture was in Sports Illustrated with his mentor and in a newspaper feature article playing miniature golf with Sandusky.
Sandusky permitted him to don on Arrington's football uniform, and just being around the team - the man said he felt like the team mascot - caused him to become a rabid fan of college football, even to this day.
But the boy and now the man said he hesitated to talk about the purported other side of Sandusky.
He never wanted to talk about it until investigators for the state Attorney General's Office came to his door.
They had seen the pictures in Sports Illustrated, and spurred by other suspicions of child abuse, they searched for the man and found him in a small Centre County community.
Sandusky is accused of sexually abusing Victim 4 more than 50 times, acts he denies along with the other charges.
The first time he ever took the 12-year-old to an event, a picnic, Sandusky brushed him between the legs, Victim 4 testified, noting that he thought nothing of it at the time.
Sandusky's initial alleged advances also included putting his hand on the boy's thigh when they were driving.
"He's put his hand on my leg like I was his girlfriend. It freaked me out really bad. I couldn't stand it. ... That just drove me nuts," he said.
Sandusky would take him to various locations on the Penn State campus: Holuba Hall and the Lasch Football Building, he testified.
They would work out and then Sandusky would insist they take a shower, he said.
As time went on, Sandusky became more aggressive, rubbing the boy with soap and getting the boy to put soap on him, Victim 4 testified. Sandusky would wrestle with the boy, who weighed between 90 and 100 pounds, he said. The coach was well over 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. As a child, he said he couldn't stop what was happening.
Victim 4 remembered taking a shower while in the hotel at the Alamo Bowl. He said Sandusky walked into the bathroom, but suddenly Sandusky's wife, Dottie, entered the hotel room where they were staying.
Sandusky quickly left the shower, he said. The young man said he heard Dottie Sandusky ask her husband what was going on.
Before he left the shower, Victim 4 said Sandusky threatened to send the boy home from the Alamo Bowl if he revealed what was occurring in the shower.
Sandusky's lawyer, Joseph Amendola of State College, said in his opening remarks to the jury that Sandusky did not deny talking showers with young kids. Sandusky grew up in Washington, Pa., where his parents operated a youth recreation center.
Amendola told the jury that Sandusky will relate that where he grew up it was routine to take showers with other people, and it was routine in sports to take showers after working out.
"Jerry showers with kids - that does not prove the charges," Amendola said.
In his cross-examination of Victim 4, Amendola tried to shake the young man's story of abuse by focusing on what he considered an inconsistency.
The accuser testified he hated it when Sandusky touched his leg and that once he even hit Sandusky with a bottle when he touched his thigh in the car.
If he hated it so much, why didn't he ever reveal what was happening, Amendola pointed out. He never told anyone about the showers, the deviate sexual intercourse, a felony that could put Sandusky in jail for 10 years, and the other abuse, the touching, hugging and grabbing, Amendola said.
The accuser, who is now married and the father of a son, said nobody had ever shown him the attention that Sandusky gave him.
"I kind of loved Jerry as a father figure," he said. "I never got anything like this in my life. ... I don't want to lose the attention (he showed) to me."
So he remained silent.
But by age 16, the boy said he had enough of Sandusky's showers and his abuse and he began to pull away. He had a girlfriend, the mother of his child, and he admitted he wanted to spend time with her.
That's when Sandusky sent him letters and had him sign contracts that would supposedly tie him to Sandusky, he said.
Those contracts, in which Sandusky offered the boy a $1,000 toward his education, allegedly were part of a Second Mile program, but in reality were bogus, according to testimony from Second Mile program director Marc McCann.
Victim 4 and McCann testified after opening statements made by Amendola for the defense and Senior Deputy Attorney General Joseph McGettigan.
McGettigan, for the first time, gave the boys names and faces - previously they were known as Victims 1 through 10.
The Sentinel typically does not identify those who claim to be victims of sexually-related crimes.
Although the accusers will testify as adults, McGettigan showed the jury what they looked like when Sandusky began to mentor each one. They were fresh-faced, although troubled, children.
The prosecutor told the jurors these young people did not come forward when they were young because the humiliation of what they went through, the shame and fear experienced by victims of abuse.
Humiliation, plus shame, plus fear equals silence, McGettigan stated.
Jurors are often told to bring common sense and the wisdom they gain from everyday experiences to the jury room, but McGettigan cautioned the jurors what what they were about to hear was not part of the everyday experience of most people.
The victims included three boys who never knew their fathers, as well as three foster children.
"We did not select the victims. We discovered them," McGettigan said.
