BELLEFONTE - The litany of Jerry Sandusky's alleged abuse of children was punctuated Wednesday by tears and expressions of fear and horror from several of his accusers and a janitor who didn't see the abuse but who repeated what a co-worker told him.
Outside the presence of the jury, a hearing was held at the Centre County Court of Common Please in Bellefonte about the admissibility of statements of a janitor whose co-worker told him he witnessed Sandusky's abuse of a child in a shower at the Lasch Football Building in the fall of 2000.
The man who claims to have witnessed the incident is in a nursing home, no longer able to testify, Senior Deputy Attorney General Joseph McGettigan said.
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AP photos/Centre Daily Times, Nabil K. Mark
Attorney for Jerry Sandusky, Joe Amendola arrives for the third day of Sandusky's trial at the Centre County Courthouse Wednesday in Bellefonte. Sandusky faces 52 counts of child sex-abuse involving 10 boys over a 15-year span.
McGettigan argued the story told by Jim Calhoun should be presented to the jury by citing an exception to the hearsay rule that allows someone to repeat in court an "excited utterance," or a statement made immediately after a shocking event.
The defense objected but Senior Judge John Cleland ruled Calhoun's statements to co-worker Ronald Petrosky would be permitted, and what followed was some of the most dramatic testimony of the trial so far.
Petrosky and Calhoun were part of a crew cleaning one of the locker rooms at the Lasch Football Building one evening. Calhoun came to Petrosky shortly after Sandusky and a small child left the Lasch Football Building hand-in-hand that night.
Petrosky said Calhoun's face was "white" and he was crying and shaking.
The janitor said Sandusky had pinned the child against a wall of the shower, Petrosky said.
Calhoun addressed Petrosky by his nickname, stating, "Buck, I just witnessed something I'll never forget the rest of my life - a man licking a boy's privates."
"Do you know who that is?" Petrosky said.
He informed Calhoun that the man he saw was Sandusky, a person Petrosky said he always addressed as "Coach."
Petrosky said the incident was reported to their supervisor but it was never forwarded to university officials or police.
Another witness, known only as Victim 5, presented another powerful story of abuse to the jury.
Victim 5 attended a Second Mile summer camp at Penn State. The Second Mile is the charity organization founded by Sandusky to aid underprivileged children, and the young man said Sandusky acted in a skit presented during the camp.
Sandusky played a "Polish gangster" in the skit and afterward the boy introduced himself and said his parents were from Poland.
The retired Penn State coach said his heritage was Polish and he said something in Polish.
In a rare moment of levity during the trial, McGettigan asked, "Good Polish?"
The young man shook his head and replied, "No."
His demeanor then turned somber and tearful as told of his experiences with the coach.
Sandusky took him to a Penn State tailgate and football game, he said. As a boy, he was excited about Penn State football.
Then the abuse began, he said.
Victim 5 said when he and Sandusky were riding in the car one day, the former Penn State assistant football coach grabbed his thigh. The witness said he didn't think much about that.
On another occasion, the alleged victim said Sandusky convinced him to "work out."
He said he had never exercised in a gym and agreed to go.
Victim 5 said the two briefly lifted weights and then Sandusky suggested it was time to take a shower. The boy noted he wasn't sweaty.
He said the first thing the two did was go into a sauna, wearing nothing but towels. In the sauna, the boy said Sandusky parted his towel, exposing himself.
The boy said they then went to the showers and he had never been naked in a shower with a stranger so he said, "I tried to face the wall as much as I could."
He said he felt "uncomfortable," telling the jury, "I felt he was looking at me."
Victim 5 said he soon became horrified as Sandusky, ready for sex, came in his direction. He threw soap at the boy. He rubbed the boy's body and touched him. He took the boy's hand and wanted the child to touch him.
"I felt his body on my back," he said.
He said he struggled but the much larger Sandusky had him pinned. He stated, "I had nowhere to go."
The young man cried and said, "I just remember drying off."
When the two were back in the locker room, Victim 5 said Sandusky wouldn't acknowledge him.
"He didn't talk to me," he said.
He said he never told anybody about the assault because, "I wanted to forget. I was embarrassed."
He eventually told his girlfriend a year ago when the news of the Sandusky case began to break and police were then contacted.
Another young man, now 27, known as Victim 7, told a similar story, how he met Sandusky at a Second Mile camp when he was 10 years old. He, too, was introduced to Penn State football and like many of the other victims, ended up loving to go to the games.
He said he would spend Friday nights with Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, and sometimes attend high school football games when one of Sandusky's children played ball.
Victim 7 said Sandusky began his abuse by touching the boy's leg. That led to Sandusky coming to the boy's bed when he stayed at the Sandusky home, Victim 7 said. He remembered Sandusky's chest hairs against his small body.
He said he tried to avoid the abuse by rolling over in bed and telling Sandusky, "I was ready to go to sleep."
He told of how Sandusky tried to soap him up in the showers at Penn State's football building.
Like the others, the youngster never told anyone about the abuse.
Police sought him out last year, at which point he told his parents what had occurred.
Defense attorney Joe Amendola, pointed out the young man used Sandusky as a reference when he was applying for a school grant and said Sandusky was a "kind and loving gentleman, and I will never forget him."
McGettigan countered by asking the boy if he really felt that way.
He said he didn't. He described his feelings now toward Sandusky as a "disappointment."
Still another victim, Victim 10, now 25, said Sandusky abused him when he lived with his mother and stepfather and later with a foster mother.
He described how Sandusky molested him in a bedroom at the Sandusky home. Victim 10 said Sandusky pinned him, removed his shorts and tried to commit oral sex on him. He said he "freaked out."
When Sandusky asked for oral sex in a car one day, Victim 10 testified that he said "No," at which point Sandusky threatened him, stating if he ever told anybody about the sexual relationship, "I'd never see my family again."
Sandusky later apologized and told the boy he "loved" him.
That young man said he also never told anybody about Sandusky's abuse because "I was scared. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed."
The prosecution also presented a 10-minute audio of a November 2011 interview Sandusky had with Bob Costas of NBC's "Rock Center" television program.
In the interview, Sandusky admitted he did many of the things his accusers have outlined in three days of testimony but said there was nothing sexual involved.
In retrospect, Sandusky told Costas, "I shouldn't have showered with those kids. That's what hits me the most."
Attorney Tom Kline, of Philadelphia, an attorney for Victim 5, commented Wednesday afternoon that the thought the testimony so far has shown a "seamless pattern of abuse" by Sandusky. He spoke to reporters just prior to his client taking the witness stand.
Cleland said the trial was moving faster than expected and predicted the prosecution could complete its case by Friday.
