Frank Parlato
Eleven Years On, Doubts Cast on Fair Trial
Following a conversation about why I believed the conviction was wrongful, I prepared a memo for an influential publisher on the Jerry Sandusky case.
Here is my memo:
Million-Dollar Stories: Repressed Memories or Coached Testimonies?
Thank you for reviewing and offering to present the following summary to your investigative team.
Like many others, I thought justice was served in 2012, only to become convinced, 11 years after Jerry Sandusky was imprisoned, that he did not get a fair trial.
There were corrupt actors, from “victims,” to prosecutors, to at least one judge.
Much of the case was based on the junk science of repressed, recalled memories.
Every so-called victim who was an actual, identified human being later walked away with more than a million dollars.
And it seemed the more extravagant the fiction about Sandusky’s crimes, the greater the reward.
Sabastian Paden, the greatest beneficiary, collected $20 million for a story that was incredible and ridiculous on its face.
Paden’s Payout: $20 Million Tale Undermines Sandusky’s Conviction
Paden claimed Sandusky had raped him and forced him to fellate him while locked in a soundproofed basement for several days, screaming for help.
But the basement was not soundproofed, and the doors didn’t lock from the outside. Paden could have gotten out at any time.
Sandusky’s basement
Instead of escaping and never returning, he went home, went to school, and told no one about his horrible ordeals. Then, at ages 13-15, he’d go back for more – for years. Why?
No human being, much less a sexually maturing adolescent, would have behaved in that robotic manner.
It is also curious that another accuser, Aaron Fisher, said he was in the same basement, being molested on the same bed during the same weekends over the same three years, yet he and Paden testified that they were unacquainted.
The prosecution presented ten “victims” at trial.
Two of them remained unidentified, and one may never have lived at all. Yet, astonishingly, Sandusky was convicted on the charge of having molested that possibly imaginary boy.
Not a single “victim” made a report contemporary to the time of abuse. Nor did any of them confide in anyone––a friend or classmate, a family member, or a counselor.
The case was a journalistic travesty.
The prosecution and media were a conjoined force. The media functioned as credulous stenographers, reporting whatever the prosecution cared to tell them.
And, significantly, the campaign to portray Sandusky as a monster began seven months before his indictment and continued through his trial, rendering the guilty verdict all but inevitable.
There were other factors.
Paterno’s Fall: Collateral Damage in the Rush to Judgement
Joe Paterno, then dying of cancer, was just two football games away from ending the most distinguished career of any American coach.
He had worked a lifetime to deserve a reputation as a man of goodwill, who put honesty over immediate gain and integrity over the quick win.
But the media that convicted Sandusky in advance also convicted Paterno as a supposed accomplice to atrocities.
It was the “shower boy” story that destroyed Paterno’s reputation and led to the conviction of three top officials at Penn State – for not reporting an alleged rape of a ten-year-old boy by Sandusky in the locker room showers of a Penn State athletic facility some ten years earlier.
Contrary to what the media reported, Paterno or Penn State officials did not cover up a reported crime.
We now know for certain that the rape in the showers never occurred. The “victim” himself, Allan Myers, swore under oath that nothing more than innocent horseplay had been involved.
Yet the country was shocked by the media’s frenzied reports of Sandusky’s rape of a 10-year-old boy that never happened.
Even without Myers’s exoneration of Sandusky, the story made no sense.
Six foot five, 230 pounds Mike McQueary, a former Penn State quarterback whose job on the field was to avoid giant defensive linemen, goes into the Penn State locker room and allegedly sees a naked, wet, defenseless 57-year-old Sandusky with a child and doesn’t do anything?
As John Snedden, the most qualified investigator ever involved in this case, asked, “Where’s your moral compass? Or did it even happen?”
Sandusky was actually acquitted on the flimsy “shower boy” charge, yet the public continues to recall it as the most vivid proof of his villainy.
As for the trial as a whole, it featured corruption, railroading, and a rush to judgment.
The presiding judge met with the prosecutors and the defense attorney secretly in a motel, where they agreed (without Sandusky present) to waive Sandusky’s preliminary hearing. There, he would have learned who his accusers were and heard their fantastic stories (instead of learning about them at trial).
The defense could have challenged the scientific validity of repressed recalled memory––a key aspect of the prosecution, which rested on that pseudoscientific concept to explain why none of the “victims” had initially remembered their “molestation.”
Repressed memory should have been challenged as inadmissible evidence under the “Frye” standard, whereby Pennsylvania courts require that testimony invoking disputed science be excluded from consideration. There would have been no case against Sandusky without such tainted testimony.
Every alleged victim dramatically changed his story.
Most began with the statement to police that Sandusky had never abused them.
The prosecutors cheated at every turn, beginning with their felonious leaking to the media of their own false “information” in grand jury minutes.
The media mania started with the illegal leaking of grand jury minutes of a witness saying he witnessed the “shower boy” incident.
But at no point, though his testimony shifted more than once, did Mike McQueary ever declare he had witnessed a rape. The prosecutors unilaterally altered his testimony and then leaked the doctored version.
And when McQueary complained, Senior Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach sent him an email warning him to keep his objections to himself. In other words, she was suborning perjury.
That came out after the trial, during one of Sandusky’s several summarily dismissed hearings for a retrial.
The judge, James Cleland, perhaps with Penn State’s jeopardized 2012 football season on his mind, seemed determined to get Sandusky’s conviction over with.
After his secret motel meeting, he rushed the trial. He demanded it go forward a mere seven months after the indictment. He also permitted the prosecution to dump 12,000 pages of discovery less than ten days before the trial. He ignored the defense’s plea for time to look at the discovery, which contained exculpatory evidence that could have proven Sandusky was innocent. And he denied the request of Sandusky’s lead attorney to resign from the case, arguing that he was incapable of offering a fair defense of his client.
Sandusky’s Smiling Lawyer: Legal Defense or Media Performance?
Still, that attorney, Joe Amendola, was not motivated to win. His opening statement all but conceded Sandusky’s guilt. And his conduct throughout the trial suggested he was less interested in defending Sandusky than in dissociating himself from an unpopular cause.
The Sandusky Jury: Compromised by Preconceived Guilt?
The jury was as compromised as Amendola.
Several potential jurors admitted they knew Sandusky was guilty based on what they had read in the media.
One juror was friendly with a witness who was to testify against Sandusky.
Another man who worked at Penn State said his wife was “totally convinced of Mr. Sandusky’s guilt,” and that if he found him not guilty, “I would have to do a lot of explaining.”
One juror said he and his friends had already decided Sandusky was guilty. When asked whether he could face his friends if he voted not guilty, the young man said, “I wouldn’t tell them if that’s how I felt, because that’s not how I feel.”
The judge accepted every one of them as jurors.
Dottie Sandusky’s Steadfast Fight for Her Husband
Curiously, Sandusky’s wife of 60 years, Dottie, still lives in State College, Pennsylvania. She could have moved and made her life easier if she thought her husband was guilty. But she’s in the same house, still visits him every time she can, and is committed to proving his innocence.
And Jerry Sandusky himself has shown incredible resilience. He’s a strong man. Very few people could hold up against the universal hatred he has experienced. His innocence, combined with his strong Methodist faith, has carried him this far. Incidentally, it appears evident that no one who has gotten to know him––neither his guards nor his fellow prisoners––believes him to be a criminal.
An actual child molester has numerous victims who cannot forget their abuse. They eventually come forward, and they testify. But every single one of Sandusky’s accusers was recruited, either by a greedy parent or by prosecutors or by “child abuse” attorneys who looked forward to sharing enormous settlements.
These attorneys referred their new clients to memory therapists, who helped them “remember” what they had forgotten to tell police when they first interviewed them – that Sandusky had abused them.
The therapists brought them their memories of abuse recovered in graphic and vivid detail, yet with dreamlike features and absurd inconsistencies that typify therapeutically induced “recollections.”
Sandusky’s Physical Condition Revealed: The Overlooked Evidence
But one detail, an all-important one, was never mentioned even once. And all by itself, it proves that the stories of rape, and indeed of any sex acts whatever, were fictitious.
The smoking gun is Sandusky had only vestigial testicles. He was born that way, as part of a condition that also featured an inability to generate enough testosterone to father a child.
Yet not one of the eight trial accusers, looking forward to their millions from Penn State, ever mentioned this conspicuous fact.
Aaron Fisher claimed 100 episodes of fellatio, but he never said, “By the way, Jerry has no testicles worth mentioning.”
Brett Swisher Houtz, who claimed Sandusky turned him upside down and stuck his penis and testicles in his face, never noticed it.
Nor did anyone else. These were not seven, eight-year-old boys. The men who made the allegations at trial claim Sandusky abused them when they were 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
Boys this age are aware of their genitals and what’s happening to them. Not one of them ever noticed Sandusky had shrunken testicles. That fact alone ought to have sufficed for acquittal on all charges. (Yet for reasons unknown Sandusky’s attorney chose not to present this extraordinarily important medical information either from Sandusky or physicians- who provided medical records to the defense before the trial.)
Jerry Sandusky was never a plausible candidate for the role of homosexual pedophile. Insofar as he was sexual at all, there was never a hint of gayness about him. By all accounts, he was conventional and prudish in his attitude toward sexual matters.
In addition, abusers, by the very nature of their crime, are generally furtive and sly; Jerry was boisterous and fun-loving, with his playfulness and kindness toward neglected children out in the open for all to see. He was, and still is, an extremely devout Christian. Again, abusers wallow in pornography, but there was no pornography found on Sandusky’s computers or phones.
On the other hand, the lead prosecutor, Frank Fina, was fired from his job for using his state computer to share porn with judges. Later he was suspended from the practice of law for lying to a judge about his plan to intimidate a witness in the case.
Finally, consider the level of guile and intimidation that would have allowed Sandusky to abuse hundreds of boys (as the prosecution alleged) over decades, in a small town, rural community, without anyone ever noticing his conduct, and without a single incident being mentioned, even in private. No one familiar with Sandusky, including his family members and oldest friends, regards him as capable of such deceit. He is an innocent man in both senses of the term: innocent of malicious charges and innocent of temperament. It is because he actively cared about helping the underprivileged that people with less innocent minds regarded him as peculiar or worse.
Financial Windfall: The Big Winners in Sandusky’s Legal Tragedy
As for the ‘victims,” they all cashed in as follows:
1.Aaron Fisher, $7.5 million
Allan Myers, $6.9 million. (He didn’t testify.)
3. Jason Simcisko $7.25 million
4. Brett Swisher-Houtz, $7.25 million
5. Michal Kajak, $8.1 million
6. Zachary Konstas, $1.5 million
7. Dustin Struble, $3.25 million
8. Unknown, unnamed, never-identified “victim,” no payment because he never materialized
9. Sabastian Paden, $20 million
10. Ryan Rittmeyer, $5.5 million
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
Frank, do you know if Sarah Edmonson has any interest of covering this story on her podcast A little Bit Culty?”
I do not know. But bog media is taking an interest.
I was a fan of Joe Paterno. I defended him fiercely when they called him a pedophile enabler. I could not believe the hatred of him by the media. ESPN started the attack and made hundreds of millions, and soon after, the other media joined in. They all wanted to make the juiciest story with little regard for the truth. I can’t believe how the propaganda turned many at PSU against Joe, saying Joe was guilty. One issue that was accepted was that Jerry was guilty. After a couple of years of study, the truth, IMO, is that Jerry was guilty of going beyond boundaries, period.
Another interesting fact is that many of these boys had the same lawyer, and IMO, he harmonized their stories together as best he could, but there were still holes in them.
The only good that came out of this for me was that I realized the media attack on Donald Trump. I am still amazed that people in PA hate Trump even after he revised the sluggish economy, curtailed terrorism, secured the border, orchestrated peace accords, stopped sending aid to countries that were chanting “death to America, and kept Putin and the Middle East in check (no wars).
BTW, what do Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller have in common?
The man is innocent. Find the truth out by studying this case.
Truth will prevail.
Thanks Frank for publishing all these. The truth will be out soon. The accusers better watch out.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
So delusional.
From Penn State’s own website. Read it you delusional imbeciles.
https://sites.psu.edu/jsandusky141/timeline-of-events/
I don’t know who published this, but lots of mistakes. You need to find out who publishes these things.
Penn State published it.
It has been proven that Penn State had a problem all along. They gave out money without even talking to any of the accusers.
Tragic story.
Yes tragic for so many boys whose assaults could have been prevented by so many adults along the way.
You really don’t get it. There were no assaults here. You need to read up on these men.
I hope nothing like this happens to your family. You will have a different story. Don’t think it can happen to you, it can.
No my husband doesn’t feel the need to hug naked little boys in showers or take them on overnight trips to hotel rooms alone so I’m pretty confident it will not happen to us.
I hope if you have children you don’t allow them to spend time with someone like Jerry, because if some random guy is spending naked shower time with your little boy, more likely than not it could happen to him.
It was only in the late 1990’s that people started getting all prudish about communal showers. When I was growing up, communal showering was not looked upon as weird at all. They had communal showers in almost every public swimming pool locker room. And, believe it or not, most people who used them were not weird or gay. Boys showered with men who were not pedophiles. Just people trying to get clean!
Did the men hug naked little boys from behind while also naked in the shower? Jerry admitted to this you know. Were they warned not to shower with boys again after admitting to doing this? Jerry was you know. Hmm, wonder what would compel someone to continue doing something like this after they had already been warned by police not to do it? Let me think on that…
All of you “showering with kids was normal” in my day people never have any answers to this.
My theory on this is that Jerry’s father ran a YMCA in his hometown and looked after disadvantaged boys. IMO, Jerry wanted to emulate and expand this. This is why he hugged boys, and explains why, when doing this, he never had an erection,
Thank you, Frank, for picking up the torch from John Ziegler’s herculean efforts, which we gladly shared on his latest visit to my All Over the Place podcast! God speed on your continuing journey to help shed light on the truth of this SCAMdal.
I was a big admirer of John. But can you explain why he attacked several people who were big supporters?
Wish I knew the answer to that and would hate to presume on Zig’s behalf. He’s active on X, so I recommend posing the question to him.
Thanks. I brought it up to him several years ago, and he never answered.
The basis of your belief in Sandusky’s innocence is this “recovered memory” stuff, which might explain some fraudulent hangers-on to the case looking to make a buck. It doesn’t explain the numerous accusations about Jerry that predate any recovered memories or your alleged conspiracy participants. And the simple fact that a man who had been accused of being inappropriate with kids, to the point that police were involved and he was told never to shower with kids again, continued to shower NAKED WITH NAKED KIDS and take them on overnight trips to hotel rooms alone. When this is pointed out repeatedly none of you Penn State fanboys has an answer, except “back in my day showering with kids was normal”. No it wasn’t, and certainly not after one has already been accused of inappropriately touching kids in a shower.
Showerboy Allan Myers describes it is mentoring and nothing nefarious. You views are warped by a lying media, prosecutors and perhaps some personal sickness:
“none of you Penn State fanboys”
Like who? The most ardent Sandusky defenders include Frank Parlato (upstate NY, Florida), Mark Pendergrast (Atlanta, New England), Fred Crews (California), Christopher Barden (Minnesota).
These investigators have no ties to anything Pennsylvania. They simply smell a rat in areas where rats have been known to dwell–cases with potential reputational or monetary rewards, if sexual molestation is presumed upon the defendants.
Group showers are everywhere, and using them with whoever happens through or with workout buddies/teammates is not a sexual act. It may not be wise if one is under suspicion, that is far short of criminal predation.
How much are each of these “ardent Sandusky defenders” getting paid, I wonder?
As far as I know, these men don’t work for free.
I know I am not getting paid in advance. But when Jerry Sandusky is freed, which I think will be soon, I anticipate I will write a book, make a documentary, and cash in big. So how much am I getting paid? – it will be millions. And if you don’t like it, show me the evidence that I am wrong.
There are however some things more important than money. For instance that an innocent man is in prison.
My theory on this is that Jerry’s father ran a YMCA in his hometown and looked after disadvantaged boys. IMO, Jerry wanted to emulate and expand this. This is why he hugged boys and explains why, when doing this, he never had an erection.
Hmmmm…..I wonder where all of the naysayers are.
Outside of prison, laughing at your chomo messiah getting his cheeks clapped by Bubba
Not getting past the moderator. Only pedophile apologists allowed now apparently.
Actually, I think many of us would like to read some rebuttals to what Frank is reporting. Watcha got? Anononymous above us went to the the “it’s inapporpriate to shower with boys” card. I get his point and don’t disagree. But I don’t know that it’s a rebuttal to the slew of facts that Frank is dropping.
Frank can’t even find the screw out of the hard drive from missing DA.’s laptop. Matt Sandusky said he was chosen to milk ducks. Dr. Raykovitz got himself a bra n under model. Mike Tyson could molest you with fists of furry. Judge farmer Brown said he wanted to put structure into children of Jer’s second mile. Howard stern thought Sandusky had a modeling agency next door a school playground. https://youtu.be/7daTQHsahc0?si=-hQBCpzAZRuqN7pu
Well again, Aaron Fisher told his mother and his school principal that Sandusky abused him long before he talked to anyone about “recovered memories”. Did he share all the details during that first confession? Probably not and there is nothing unusual about that. And the boy that accused a naked Jerry of hugging him in the shower was not “recovered memories” either. He went right to his mother. Police investigated. Because there was no evidence of anything sexual Jerry was not arrested but the police warned him not to shower with boys again. Jerry was acquitted of rape of the boy in the shower only because McQueary could not see penetration. McQueary was inconsistent with how much detail he shared with different people. But he was consistent from day one that he had observed something sexual going on. Believe what you want about that but the grand jury found his testimony credible and did not find the testimony of Penn State administrators credible. Why would McQueary report anything if he had seen nothing amiss? What could his motivation have possibly been? Why would the janitor’s co-worker make up a story about Sandusky? Poor old Jerry, unlucky that this guy who everyone thought had a heart of gold seemed to have such a diverse group of enemies who would make up similar stories about him through the years for no apparent reason.
Thank you. Good breakdown.
“But he was consistent from day one that he had observed something sexual going on.”
Not so! On the very night of the Incident”, McQueary was interviewed by Dr. Dranov, a mandated reporter. Three times Dr. Dranov asked if McQueary saw sexual activity; three times McQueary said ‘No.” Dranov testified specifically to this in court. It was not reported in the mainstream media.
McQueary first was interviewed by police in late 2010. At that time, he reported seeing only a calm-looking boy in a
Thank you. Frank’s done a great job breaking down many of the lies. To me, the next step is to breakdown things like this. The anonymous we’re replying to, laid out a solid “yeah, but” rebuttal. Taking the “yeah buts” and looking at each of them (as you are doing here) seems to be the next step. In other words, accept the low hanging fruit as wins, and address the things that may be more difficult to explain.
Very good suggestion.
mirror. Sandusky was not even identified as being in the shower room with the boy. (Pendergrast, p. 14)
It took 11 months for McQueary’s testimony to morph into something more suggestive, which still wasn’t enough for prosecutors. McQueary’s email chain with Jonell Eshbaugh demonstrates the accusation of rape was a fiction concocted for an illegally-leaked testimony to the mainstream press. If they had a solid case to start with, none of this should have been necessary.
In the fall of 2010, McQueary was recruited by investigators, who at that point had only Aaron Fisher’s contradictory testimony, twice failed to convince any grand jury. McQueary had potential troubles of his own with the police, who were happy to “encourage” his cooperation.
Did you hear that Aaron’s mother was either married or living with a man who was convicted of raping his two young daughters? Or that his mother told people how she was going to get plenty of money from Aaron’s story? And I am so glad you brought up the hearsay testimony from the janitor, which was the only evidence outside the paid boy’s testimony that the jury accepted as fact. Further investigation proved that the janitor told the police he witnessed a rape at the time. The police asked if the man was Jerry, and the janitor said it definitely was NOT Jerry.
🤨 Wow, Ginzo!
You’ve really been shitting the bed in the NXIVM topic lately, haven’t you?!
Now you can’t shut the fuck up about this boring Sandusky case, when all you need to do to simplify it is acknowledge that the Jews run the court systems and be done!
This is just a lot of unnecessary words for a case that is merely just a drop in the bucket of injustice from the so-called “justice system” run by Jews!
You could be a good patriot and help join the fight by being man enough to call out the real issue instead of focusing on individual cases to deceive your readers as you beat around the bush to distract them from the true tumor of it all!
Stop your bullshit, call out the Jews and get back to what you do best, shitting on NXIVM!
THAT’S AN ORDER, NIGGER!!!!!!
ON THE DOUBLE, MOVE YOUR SLOTHY NIGGER ASS!!!! NOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!
Not that it was any big secret, but whiney sadrags, the guy who elevated stupidity to a new level, has just outed himself as a multi-profiler in one of his own post We expect the mods to leap into action any year now and tell him he’s been a very naughty boy.
Raykovitz & wife made $2.2M in salary since ’98 Jack Raykovitz, CEO of Sandusky charity, just resigned
Hey! Captain Dipshit!
I’m not a “multi-profiler” and I didn’t post that! Prove that it was me! I DARE YOU, PUNK!!!!!
You idiots always find random shit and then blame it all on the hallowed patriots without a single shred of evidence!
You’re just trolling to because you’re a pathetic loser who have no life outside of it! I wasn’t talking to you, but you decided to be a rude little shit and think you can poke your one inch dick in this! Ok, you little worthless piece of shit! Your pathetic ass needs some attention! No need to bait me! I’ll just give it to you!
You honestly want talk about “elevated stupidity to a whole new level” when you’re the one randomly pulling shit out of your ass with no evidence!
You’re the “whiney sadrags” who cry like little bitches when the patriots dare try to shed any light on political and anthropological truth and shit your diapers and sob hysterically until Ginzo pacifies you with a pacifier of censorship against me!
And since I wasn’t even talking to you and you decided to whine about some random post that you’ve decided to pin on me shows how even more of a pathetic beta male bitch that you are! You’re the epitome of a fucking “whiney sadrag” along with all the other fucking worthless pieces of shit on this website because Ginzo, being a loser, attracts losers like all of you who have nothing to do but randomly troll people like this!
And before you try to throw it back into the patriot’s faces for being here as well, let me just stop your dumbass there from making the the billion and one blunder in your life and point out that we are on many websites trying to save everybody from the inferiors trying to destroy us and wake them up to the IWB and TABW Movements to help stop it!
So yes! We do come on here with all you losers not as one of you, but as superiors over you like an angelic visitation to human or a Holy Night Rider speaking to a non-member of the clan and enlightening them, trying to save them from their own stupidity and themselves!
You’re all of the idiots being manipulated and taken advantage of by some of the lowest subspecies on this earth and laugh and mock the ones who point out your chains of enslavement and censor them so that you don’t offend your monkey overlords!
You could all be free because these inferiors can’t outfight you, but you choose to kiss the hands of your oppressors and lick the chains they put on you, all so that you can be avoided from being called a term they coined to emotionally manipulate you, a “racist”!
You want to about “elevated stupidity to a new level” when you’re all living out the roles of human slaves in a real live “Planet of The Apes” movie and when you’re given the keys to freedom, you all screech “racist” and cry for the gatekeeper, Ginzo, to lock you back in your cages?!
Speak for yourself, Captain Dickface!
Good God! The projection never ends around here, does it?! 🤦🏻🙄
I am surprised you allow Biden backers to post here.
I don’t know who this person is but he has the worst mouth that any human being could have.
I sure hope a juror will do an interview. They have to be upset at how they were manipulated by Sarah Ganim, Jonelle Eschbach and other prosecutors in this case. The way prosecutors were able to use an illegal leak of a bogus pronouncement to taint the jury pool is beyond words.
Thank you Frank. We know JS is innocent. I am so ashamed of Penn States handling of this issue. I did not know JS before this happened but have gotten to know him the past few years. He and Dottie are a tremendous inspiration. I write to JS every week. Hear from him weekly. I have followed all the facts. The facts tell the truth. JS is Innocent . A terrible injustice was done. I am ashamed of Penn State and the Pennsylvania Judicial System. Frank, you give me hope.
I guess you don’t have little boys who hung out with Jerry Carol. Gross.
Once again a factual and knowledgeable summary of FACTS regarding the Sandusky case. This case is a sham and all ‘players’ need to be exposed and prosecuted. There are five ethical upstanding men who were/are persecuted for the lies and unethical practices of the so-called ‘victims,’ Cleland, Fina, McGettigan, eschbach, Corbett, and others. These unethical and despicable characters need to be brought to justice for their part in this unforgivable travesty.
Let’s hope your efforts get mainstream traction. This case poured gasoline on the false accusation industry.