BELLEFONTE, Pennsylvania — Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky pinned down a young foster child and performed oral sex on him, threatened to keep him from seeing his family if he reported what happened and then later told him he loved him, the accuser testified.
Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky leaves the Centre County Courthouse after the second day of testimony at his trial in Bellefonte, Pa., Monday, June 11, 2012. Sandusky is accused of 52 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 boys over a period of 15 years in Bellefonte, Pa., Monday, June 11, 2012. AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
The alleged victim is one of two who came forward after Sandusky was initially charged in November with assaulting eight boys, a scandal that jolted one of the most prestigious college sports programs in the country. Sandusky faces a total of 52 criminal counts involving alleged assaults over a 15-year span.
“He told me that if I ever told anyone that I’d never see my family again,” the former foster child said Wednesday, the third day of testimony in Sandusky’s child sexual abuse trial.
He said it terrified him when Sandusky uttered the threat after the coach pinned him while wrestling in the basement of the Sandusky home and performed oral sex on him.
Sandusky, 68, is charged with sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period, accusations he has denied. His arrest last fall rocked Penn State and led to the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno for not taking stronger action against Sandusky after allegations emerged a decade ago.
Three of Sandusky’s accusers testified Wednesday, bringing to five the number of them to take the stand.
Tom Kline, the lawyer for one of them, told reporters outside the courthouse: “It’s just remarkable how many children one man can shower with.”
The 25-year-old man who told jurors about the threat to keep him away from his biological family when he was younger said he believed Sandusky’s wife was inside the home, on a different floor, at the time. A foster child placed with another family, he occasionally stayed in the Sanduskys’ basement in State College in the late 1990s.
Speaking in a calm but sometimes hesitant voice, he said Sandusky later apologized for the threat: “He told me he didn’t mean it and that he loved me.”
The man, identified in court papers as Victim 10, said Sandusky also assaulted him on other occasions in 1998 and 1999, including once at a pool and another time in the basement. He said he was about 11 at the time.
An expressionless Sandusky sat mostly still at the defense table during his testimony, occasionally turning his head to look the accuser in the eye.
The accuser is one of two who came forward after Sandusky was initially charged in November with assaulting eight boys. Sandusky’s attorneys have suggested his accusers have financial reasons for coming forward.
Under cross-examination, the man testified that he was the roommate of another Sandusky accuser at a camp sponsored by Sandusky’s charity, The Second Mile. He also acknowledged spending nearly two years in prison for a robbery and involvement with drugs and alcohol but said he is doing better now.
“I’m married. I’m expecting” a child, he said.
Another boy, dubbed Victim 8, has never been located, and his identity is a mystery to prosecutors, but jurors heard about his alleged sexual abuse by Sandusky anyway.
Judge John Cleland ruled that a co-worker of Penn State janitor Jim Calhoun could testify about what Calhoun told him in November 2000. Calhoun is now suffering from dementia.
The co-worker, Ron “Buck” Petrosky, said that when he encountered Calhoun in a football team locker room, the janitor told him he had seen Sandusky — he didn’t realize it was a well-known coach — making a boy perform oral sex on him. Petrosky said Calhoun’s face was white and his hands were trembling.
“He said, ‘Buck, I just witnessed something in there I’ll never forget the rest of my life … that man that just left, he had the boy up against the shower wall, licking on (him),” Petrosky testified.
Also on Wednesday, another man, identified as Victim 5, said he met Sandusky at Second Mile Camp in 1999 and began attending Penn State games with Sandusky and others. In 2001, he said, Sandusky asked him to work out at a gym on campus and then groped him in the showers.
Fighting back tears, he testified that Sandusky “kept lurching forward, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. I felt his penis on my back.” He said Sandusky touched his genitals “and then he took my hand and placed it on his.”
Afterward, the 23-year-old man said, Sandusky drove him home and made “no eye contact” with him. They had no contact since.
Another witness, identified as Victim 7, said he was 10 when he met Sandusky through the charity in 1995. He said Sandusky showered with him repeatedly and embraced him during sleepovers.
Sandusky was “wrapping himself around me, holding me tightly” when he slept over at the man’s house, the 27-year-old man said. He said he now has an aversion to chest hair because of his contact with a sometimes-shirtless Sandusky, who has acknowledged he showered with boys but says he never molested them.
The accuser also described Sandusky rubbing his nipples and touching him beneath his shorts.
The man recalled attending Penn State football games with Sandusky’s family and receiving free tickets from Sandusky as recently as 2009.
“I was kind of ashamed about it. I didn’t want anybody to know,” he said. “Probably most importantly, I didn’t want my parents to keep me from going to games. I didn’t want them to sort of freak out.”
He said that he told his parents of the abuse only last year, after being approached by police, and that many of the details have only come to him in the past year or so. He likened blocking out the negative memories to “putting stuff in the attic.”
During cross-examination, defense attorney Joseph Amendola said the man’s testimony was more detailed than what he told a grand jury last year. The witness replied that he had started going to counseling.
“Talking about different events and through talking about things in my past, different things have triggered different memories,” he said.
Jurors also heard excerpts from a television interview Sandusky did on NBC’s “Rock Center” soon after his arrest in November. In the interview with Bob Costas, Sandusky said he’s not a pedophile but shouldn’t have showered with boys.
The judge said the prosecution’s case should wrap up by the end of the day on Friday.