Penn State and the Price of Silence: Reopening the Sandusky Case: A Letter to Penn State Trustees

The following is a letter endorsed by over 60 people and sent by email to every one of the Penn State Board of Trustees. The board comprises thirty-six voting members and two ex-officio non-voting members—the President of the University and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The letter asks the Trustees to accept and review evidence of the University’s role in the wrongful conviction of Jerry Sandusky.

The letter speaks for itself. 

Questioning the Conviction: A Call for Reevaluation

Dear Trustee;

There’s a man who sits in prison today, a man, we believe, who is innocent, and Penn State drove him to his fate.

Penn State set the tone and pace for allowing a combination of greed, avarice, opportunism, and fear to railroad a man. He dealt in truth, and all around him dealt in lies.

Penn State allowed lies to win.

We believe Jerry Sandusky is innocent. We believe those who accused him did so for the money they knew Penn State would unabashedly pay to protect an undeserved reputation. In doing so, Penn State threw away their treasures.

Joe Paterno is a national treasure kicked to the curb by Penn State just before he died. After death, he was a man who should have been revered for the things he did for the nation, the university, and the people who played for him. Jerry Sandusky was at his side for 30 years and helped build a great reputation. After he retired, Sandusky went out and tried to help wayward children. He set up a charity. It wasn’t to groom, rape, or abuse children. He did not do these things, as we shall prove.

A Clash of Truth and Lies: The Role of Penn State

He was railroaded. Liars and manipulated accusers, shyster lawyers, reckless prosecutors, a lawless judge who dared conduct a pivotal hearing in a hotel outside the defendant’s presence, and a governor hell-bent on vendetta combined without regard to justice—not in a conspiratorial way; each for his own.

A million here, three million there, $20 million of Penn State money paid to Sabastian Paden for telling a howling lie, a preposterous lie, that somebody should have challenged for its utter implausibility: a soundproof basement that never was, blood-curdling screams never heard, locked in by a door that unlocks from the inside on a bed upon which he claimed he was raped every weekend from 2005-2008 – more than 100 times.

On the same bed, in the same basement, the same weekends from 2005-2008 – that the liar who started it, Aaron Fisher, claims he was abused.

Both men testified about the time and place but never met. The visitations must have been spectral, the same kind of spectral evidence used in Salem to prove the witchery. Penn State paid Fisher $7.5 million.

“Victims” kept expanding their stories from the police report to the grand jury to the trial to the gross fabrications their lawyers told gullible Penn State Trustees. It was like the fisherman who caught a minnow, which grew larger with each retelling and became a whale.

Penn State responded by handing a parade of liars $120 million.

Rushing to Judgment: The Speed of the Legal Process

Then, there was the rush to trial in seven months. His attorney begged the judge, “Give me time. It’s been only ten days. I’ve had 12,000 pages of discovery, and you’re rushing me to trial. I can’t defend this man.”  The judge refused. Jerry Sandusky had to be convicted before the NCAA canceled Penn State’s football season.

Penn State had only one thing on its mind: save our football team. Let’s grovel before the NCAA; let’s hire Louis Freeh to betray us. Let’s kick Joe Paterno to the curb, bury him with ignominy, and spit on his grave (to save our precious money-making team). Let’s ruin the lives of our loyal administrators, the innocent Graham Spanier, Gary Shultz, and Tim Curley. And let’s cancel Jerry Sandusky’s presumption of innocence and send him to prison for life. Let him die there.”

It is a human sacrifice, and nobody cares. Nobody looked at the evidence. Nobody had time by the time of the rushed trial to realize that every one of the accusers either lied or was manipulated by their attorneys (with their handy memory therapists) to believe the deception of their mind, to pretend or claim they forgot abuse that never happened and suddenly these men — they were not boys – testified that Jerry Sandusky abused them.

We want to present evidence in a package where anyone who will take the time to read it will understand that Jerry Sandusky was rushed to an unfair trial, that his attorney did not adequately represent him, that the police investigators used improper interviewing techniques, and that the prosecutors pulled every trick in the book, from illegally leaking grand jury minutes to suborning perjury in their coaching accusers to bury a man who only tried to help this community, this university, and the accusers themselves.

A Plea for Integrity: The Request to the Trustees

If you agree, we will submit such evidence before your next board meeting that will unequivocally show that Jerry Sandusky is innocent. He is the victim of one of the greatest travesties and miscarriages of justice in American history.

The question that remains is, will Penn State continue to perpetuate the injustice it occasioned? Trustees back then said, “In three or four years—let’s sweep it under the rug—Jerry Sandusky and all that he was accused of will be forgotten.” Now, it’s been 12 years, and it’s not forgotten. A growing number of people will not forget.

We put it before you as people of conscience, the representatives of Penn State today, not of 2012, to look at the evidence.

He’s walked a second mile. Now it’s time for him to return. It’s time for him to be restored to his wife and family while he lives because he’s innocent.

The story has one of two endings. One is that he was exonerated through the good offices of Penn State trustees who cared enough 12 years later to look at the evidence and pierce through one of the phenomenal travesties of our time: that when a pack of liars comes together to accuse innocence, it is as a pack of jackals descended on a lamb. They devour him, and the people will say that a whole pack cannot be wrong — the lamb deserved it. But not this time. This time, it’s different, and we will fight for Jerry Sandusky with or without the help of Penn State.

We cannot allow innocence to be punished when we have the power to rectify it. And so, we await your decision on whether the Penn State Board of Trustees will accept and review evidence of Jerry Sandusky’s innocence and the role Penn State played in his wrongful conviction.

Signed,

Frank Parlato, Investigative Journalist

Dottie Sandusky

Sandusky Family

John Ziegler, Broadcaster & Journalist

Dick Anderson, Former Penn State Student-Athlete and Football Coach

Jon Snedden, NCIS Special Agent (Ret)

Ralph Cipriano, Former LA Times & Philly Inquirer Staff Writer, Journalist

Derrick Jacobs, Homicide Detective (Ret)

Dr. Robert Oksenholt, Physician

Anna Mydlarz, Buffalo Police Detective (Ret)

Tony Farina, TV News Reporter

John R. Baronas, DMD, MAGD, Co-Captain Penn State Football ‘74

Bob Logan, PSU BS ‘81

Bruce K Heim

Jason Maas, PSU ’99

Gary K. Johnson, Director of Washington-Greene County MH/MR Program (Ret)

Gigi Gross

Andrew Shaffer

Buddy Tesner, Orthopedic Surgeon, PSU Letterman ‘71-’75

Sanford G. Thatcher, Former Director, Penn State University Press, 1989-2009

Richard C. Baer, Risk Analyst (Ret)

John Atwell Moody, Mathematician

John Galluppi

Patti Galluppi

William R. Fleagle

Jacob Mitchell, Academic Counselor

Barbara Breon

Rev. Joseph R. Stains, United Methodist Pastor (Recently Retired)

Jane Miller, PSU BS Chem ‘80

Justin Theodorou, Funeral Director

Barbara Taylor, 20+ years in Penn State Financial Aid Office (Ret)

Joseph V. Carlozo, PSU ‘74

Edward G. Detzel, Cincinnati Real Estate Broker

Rodman Holmes, Property Manager

Carol Holmes, Property Manager

Guy Montecalvo, Retired Athletic Administrator, Head Football & Track & Field Coach

John Wetzler, PSU ‘83

Ed O’Neil, PSU Co-Captain ‘73 Team

Lane Hurley

Gail Rexrode/Brown, PSU Master’s in Health Admin. ‘92 & Mother of Second Mile participant

Chad Rexroad

Rich Kuzy, PSU Letterman

Alan Cameron, Professor Emeritus

Greg Elinsky

Sandra C. Lane

Darrell Lane, MD

Cheryl J. Fleagle

Jack Willenbrock

Marsha Willenbrock

Kevin Wynn, CPA

Scott Brown, Retired Attorney

Carla Brown, Friend of Family

Chad A. Dubin, PSU ’91, Wrestler ’86-’91

Ron Louder, PSU Alum

Scott Bordinger, PSU ’91

Robin Norwood

Andrew Favor, CPA

Donald Steinbacher

Elaine Steinbacher

George Setman, PSU BS Accounting ’82, Retired Airline Pilot

Kurt Allerman, PSU Football Letterman, Co-captain ’76

Joyce Rochowiak

Greg Deegan, PSU BS ’91

Michael Scheel, MD, FAAOS, Penn State University ’94

Donna McKee Stemski

Carol McKee Martz

Tom McKee

Neil Hutton PSU letterman ’77

Albert L. Lord, Former Penn State Trustee and Former CEO of Sallie Mae, the nation’s leading source of funding for higher education

Doug Bressler PSU Mech Eng ’90

Dean Salvucci

If you would like to add your name to the above letter, send me an email at frankreport76@gmail.com.

Frank Parlato