Cult Deprogrammer Says Jerry Sandusky is Innocent, Compares Case to McMartin Trial

More and more people are coming out in support of Jerry Sandusky.

On Thursday, renowned cult intervention specialist Joseph Szimhart published a video on his YouTube channel discussing the Sandusky case. He says he was inspired after re-reading Mark Pendergrast’s book, “The Most Hated Man in America. Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.”

Szimhart is a recognized expert in the field of cult dynamics, thought reform, and spiritual abuse and has spent much of his career helping individuals and families affected by coercive or high-control groups. He is also an artist and author of two books: “Sante Fe, Bill Tate, and Me: How an Artist Became a Cult Interventionist” and a novel, “Mushroom Satori and the Cult Diary.”

Like many professionals who have advocated for Sandusky’s exoneration, Szimhart has no connection to Penn State or its football program. Szimhart is concerned with the implications of taking repressed recovered memories at face value, and how moral panic can lead to innocent people going to prison.

In his decades of helping people escape and heal from cults, Szimhart says he often saw pressure from gurus, teachers, or fellow members to “recall” memories of childhood sexual abuse that were not true. He acknowledges the uncomfortable truth that there are people willing to lie for money and approval, perhaps many more than we’d like to admit.

In addition to the video, Szimhart wrote a comment regarding the McMartin Daycare Trial as an egregious example of moral panic and its destructive effects. FR previously published an article comparing the two cases: McMartin Case Resembles Sandusky Case in Many Eerie Ways.

Below is a slightly abridged transcript of Szimhart’s video, which can be viewed in full here:

Jerry Sandusky: “Innocence” in prison—A case of moral panic and grift.

Joseph Szimhart

This may be one of the most controversial and more difficult ones I’ve done because of the topic, and I’m going to be in the minority as to my conclusion. This time, I’m going to concentrate on a book I reread. It came out in 2017 and looks at Jerry Sandusky, who’s still in jail for alleged pedophilia and sexual abuse of young men. This book is written by Mark Pendergrast: “The Most Hated Man in America. Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment.”

Sandusky was imprisoned after a jury trial in June 22nd, 2012. So who is he? Gerald Sandusky was born in 1944, so he’s 80 years old now.

He was convicted of serial child molestation and he’s a retired college football coach. He served mostly at Penn State University under Joe Paterno. He was his assistant at Penn State from 1969 to 1999, serving as defensive coordinator for the final 22 years of his career.

In 1977, Sandusky and his wife founded the Second Mile, a nonprofit charity serving Pennsylvania’s underprivileged at risk youth. Following his 1999 retirement from Penn State, he continued working with the Second Mile at Penn State and maintained an office at the university until 2011. So in 2011, after a two year grand jury investigation, Sandusky was arrested and charged with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15 year period from 1994 to 2009. Sandusky met his molestation victims through the Second Mile. Several of his victims later testified against Sandusky in his sexual abuse trial. Four of the charges were subsequently dropped.

In 2012, he was found guilty of 45 of the 48 remaining charges. Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. He has been incarcerated in the Pennsylvania system since October 31st, 2012. So on the face of it, you would think they had a jury trial, plenty of evidence, and he’s probably guilty, and people like him need to be taken out of society as quickly as possible.

When I worked as an art instructor in a maximum security prison in New Mexico, I learned clearly that the people most targeted for abuse and perhaps killing inside a prison were men who had harmed children and women. So they are the lowest on the totem pole, even among prisoners. So that’s why the title, Most Hated Men in America, I think was appropriate here.

Pendergrast concludes Sandusky is innocent.

..

“Satanic Panic” came out in 1992 by Jeffrey Victor, and it clearly shows… how people can get crazy with beliefs and then find circumstantial evidence to circle around their beliefs or their feelings and think they have proof when they don’t.

What Pendergrast does with the Most Hated Man in America regarding Sandusky is more or less the same thing: show that belief and not proof was guiding the entire trial of Sandusky and how the alleged victims that had nothing to say before this started coming up, about being abused by Sandusky, suddenly from pressure from the lawyer and others, changed their story. And now because it’s this very well-known university, millions of dollars were at stake. In fact, I think somebody estimated about a billion dollars were spent on this trial and its rewards that were sent out. So money was a motivating factor for people to lie, is what it comes down to.

Today, Sandusky still maintains his innocence. His wife maintains his innocence. She was with him throughout this whole thing. There was never any evidence in her experience of any of these young boys complaining about Jerry other than he was like a big kid that liked to horse around with kids. One of the main complaints was that he fooled around with these teenagers in showers. Well, it was very common back then for men and boys to shower together. I mean, I did it as a football player in high school.

Our coaches and all the guys would be naked in one big group shower and we’d horse around and some people would tickle one another… It was all fun.

Nobody complained about abuse, but this was just the atmosphere at the time, and Sandusky was part of that. His father was part of that, and Sandusky was raised in that kind of a horsing around culture among athletes and showers and so forth.

But as far as any kind of sexual boundaries being crossed, that was never an issue. And people that knew him intimately, like his wife and others, could see that. Joe Paterno was fired because of this. He was the head coach of Penn State, a well-known head coach, and he died soon after he got fired. His whole image was disgraced. The statue that was put up to honor Paterno was taken down from Penn State and has never been restored.

This whole thing is based on a kind of a moral panic is what Pendergrast would call it, and there was a lot at stake. There was political wrangling going on between the governor and the head of the university, as he brings up.

I’d suggest reading the book and reading it carefully, because the statement by Pendergrast is quite strong that Sandusky’s innocent and I think he is.

But here’s something that, let me take a look at this. Other than Sandusky being very clear, even in his appeals up to this year, which were denied by the court that they wouldn’t allow a retrial as of September, he claims he was innocent and he’s been a model prisoner.

So I’m going to read this part out of Pendergrast’s book.

“On October 23rd, 2012, Sandusky was moved to the CSCI Camp Hill for eight days of psychological and medical evaluations. The cell was filthy and cold. One of the doctors who examined him was Arif Shaik, a Pakistani immigrant who was impressed with Sandusky’s decency and intelligence. ‘As a physician, I really look at my patients,’ he recalled, ‘I really see them, and I believe the accusations against Jerry Sandusky have been blown out of proportion. People want to see evil in others, even in the likes of a Mother, Teresa. In Jerry’s case, people have gone for the drama, not for the reality.’ …

“Shaik gave Sandusky a copy of his book, Healing Tips for the Mind Body, and Soul, one of the many inspirational books that have helped him endure life in prison.”

Okay, so another investigator, FBI expert here. I’ll read what Pendergrast says.

“Former federal investigator, John Snedden, who interviewed players in the Penn State drama soon after the trial concluded that there was no coverup because there was nothing to cover up.

“Mike McQueary” — who was one of the star witnesses and kept changing his story, he was a coach at Penn State at one time — “had only heard slapping sounds in the shower. If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, said he would’ve intervened to stop a wet, defenseless, naked 57-year-old guy in the shower.”

The other thing that Pendergrast brings up is it’s almost impossible that someone becomes a pedophile in their fifties, which is what they’re accusing Sandusky of. There was absolutely no evidence of that kind of behavior in him when he was younger.

So here we go,

“Snedden said, so if someone that big like McQueary had thought he witnessed a sexual assault, wouldn’t he have intervened to stop a wet defenseless 57-year-old guy in a shower? Snedden’s boss told him as a rookie agent that the first question to ask an investigation is, where is the crime? In this case, there didn’t appear to be one. ‘I’ve never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based on only sounds and without credible victims and witnesses.'” And that was the incident that sparked this whole thing.

 “Snedden concluded that then Governor Tom Corbett orchestrated the Sandusky investigation because Graham Spanier, who was associated with Penn State, had defeated his attempt to slash the Penn State budget.

‘It’s a political vendetta by somebody who had an epic degree of vindictiveness and would apparently stop at nothing.”

“Then mass hysteria took over. 99% of what happened at Penn State boiled down to people running around yelling, ‘oh my God, we’ve got to do something immediately.’

“There was no investigation, no determination of facts. Instead, the officials running the show at Penn State wanted to move as fast as possible from the scandal by sacrificing a few scapegoats. Snedden said, ‘The media immediately jumped on board with abuse narrative train. Sadly,’ he concluded, ‘I think they demonstrated that investigative journalism is dead.'”

So that’s a little bit from the book. Again, I emailed the author and he had met with Sandusky. He believes the guy is innocent. You can’t say a hundred percent, but in my experience working with cult victims and cult members who accused parents of abuse when nothing went on, I understand how people can be influenced to please a guru or to grift for millions of dollars.

We are human. We will lie to get money, and I think that’s what happened in this Sandusky case. It’s a shame he’s still in jail at age 80. I wish him well.

And I’m sure that some people listening to this video that would just read the Wikipedia entry on Sandusky would think I’m crazy for trying to defend him, but that’s what I’ve done here.

So you can make up your own mind. Look at the facts, read Pendergrast’s book, read it carefully. Also, I’d say, read Satanic Panic and read Unmask Alice, and I think you’ll get a clear idea how people can go into a moral panic and convict an innocent man.

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