Frank Parlato
In 1692, the colony of Massachusetts killed twenty people for witchcraft. The evidence was overwhelming. Confessions, eyewitness testimony, and young accusers whose bodies convulsed theatrically in the presence of the accused.
The community was certain. Everyone believed. The courts were certain. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who swore they had seen the Devil’s hand at work.
To question the proceedings was to risk being accused yourself. And so thinking became dangerous.
They hanged nineteen from the gallows. They stripped old Giles Corey naked, laid him on the ground, and crushed him slowly to death over two days beneath heavy stones. He said only, “more weight.”
Corey refused to enter a plea. Under the law, they couldn’t try him without a plea, so they used peine forte et dure — pressing — to force one out of him.
If he had pleaded and been convicted, his property would have been forfeited to the colony. His family would have lost everything. By refusing to plead — by dying under the stones without ever saying guilty or innocent — he preserved his estate for his heirs.
“More weight” was a man choosing slow, agonizing death rather than confess to something he didn’t do.
They buried Corey and the other witches in shallow graves. Families were forbidden to mourn.
It took three hundred years for Massachusetts to admit it was wrong.
Not because the truth was hidden, but because people did not want to admit what they had done.
The judges who presided in Salem believed, as their community believed, that evil had descended upon them. The judges did not imagine themselves as villains.
When doubts came, they pushed them aside. When the accused included people of prominence and good reputation, when the “spectral evidence” seemed unreliable, when evidence grew thin, and confessions felt forced, none of it mattered.
The trials went on.
To say they were wrong would admit people had died because of them. So the executions continued until public opinion shifted so dramatically that the courts had no choice but to stop.
Every jurisdiction has its landmark, its defining prosecution. The one that made headlines, the case that assured the public the system was vigilant and strong. In Pennsylvania, that case is Jerry Sandusky.
People say that name in Pennsylvania, and everyone knows what it means. The 2012 conviction was not merely a verdict. Penn State paid more than $100 million in settlements. The NCAA levied historic sanctions. A bronze statue was removed in the night.
Careers were destroyed, reputations annihilated, and an entire university system reorganized itself around the belief that a monster had operated in plain sight and the institution had failed to stop him.
Something terrible had gone unnoticed, and the narrative was fixed before the trial began.
The Slow Burn
Jerry Sandusky entered prison at 68. He is now eighty-one. He has spent 13 + years in Pennsylvania prisons. Five years in solitary confinement — twenty-three hours a day in a cell, minimal human contact, isolation that international human rights organizations classify as torture.
The witches of Salem at least had the mercy of a quick end.
Sandusky’s punishment is designed to stretch across decades — a slow incineration of a man’s years, witnessed by a public that believes he deserves worse.
Those Who Know
There is another kind of punishment, perhaps, reserved for those who know — the prosecutors who saw the evidence unraveling, judges who recognized the constitutional violations, journalists who understand the story has collapsed, Penn State administrators who paid settlements they knew were based on lies.
Then there are the accusers.
They cashed checks for millions of dollars in exchange for stories that grew more elaborate with each telling, stories that shifted to match what investigators needed to hear, that contradicted their prior statements and the physical record. Money changed hands. Stories changed, too.
They live in houses bought with that money, drive cars paid for with that money, raise families funded by the destruction of a man whose guilt they were taught—and taught themselves—to accept.
Every morning, they wake knowing. Every night they lie down with it. The money spends, but the knowledge compounds. It stays with a person long after the money is gone.
The witches were hanged on Gallows Hill. Maybe they found peace in eternity.
The question for those who participate in injustice — who know and do nothing, who profit and stay silent — is whether their judgment comes in this life or the next.
The question is whether judgment arrives now or later.
Why the Courts Resist
Now, thirteen years later, a post-conviction relief petition presents evidence that should trouble any honest observer. Witnesses whose accounts have collapsed under scrutiny. Financial incentives that preceded accusations. Prosecutorial conduct that, in any other case, would mandate reversal.
Twenty separate issues — any one of which, in a case without this cultural weight, would result in a new trial.
The Pennsylvania courts resist. The answer is human, not legal. If Sandusky is innocent — or even if his trial was fundamentally unfair — then every actor in the system faces a reckoning.
The prosecutors who built careers on the conviction were complicit in injustice. The judges who denied appeals failed their oaths. The university that paid $100 million in settlements did so for nothing — destroyed its legacy based on a lie. The media that canonized the narrative became instruments of a modern witch hunt. The public that demanded blood must confront its appetite for vengeance over truth.
And so the courts apply standards of review with unusual rigor. Procedural barriers materialize. The benefit of every doubt flows toward finality. Twenty issues become footnotes.
The Record We Are Building
This series will examine the Sandusky case with the same scrutiny we would apply to any criminal prosecution. We will review the evidence presented at trial. We will examine what has emerged. We will analyze the post-conviction proceedings and the Commonwealth’s responses.
A single brave judge did not overturn the courts of 1692. They were overturned by history — by a record so complete, so undeniable, that future generations could no longer look away.
Salem took three hundred years.
Sandusky has never confessed. Thirteen years, and he has never said the words they want him to say. He could have “admitted responsibility” when he was resentenced on November 22, 2019.
Sandusky choked up and said, “I apologize that I’m unable to admit remorse for this because it’s something that I didn’t do.”
Corey died protecting his family from a system that would have taken everything if he gave in. Sandusky is dying the same way — slowly, under the weight of a system that will crush him until he confesses or expires.
Corey could have stopped the stones with one word. Sandusky might have shortened his sentence with a few sentences of remorse at resentencing. Both men, given the opportunity to lessen or end their suffering by saying what the system demanded, refused.
But a man doesn’t express remorse for something he didn’t do. Even facing the stones. Even facing death in prison.
More weight.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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According to Paden’s mother, when Paden got arrested on marijuana-related charges, McGettigan and Fina arranged for Paden to move to Colorado.
He got ARD so what If this is him? Screenshot-2026-01-21-at-1-58-56-AM.png
Paden, Sabastian Brian
Penalty Satisfied
Sure about that you wanker
Raykovitz did not issue a personal, direct apology to a specific family by name in public statements, he issued a resignation statement acknowledging the impact on victims and focusing on their healing. .
Idiot thanks asshole
In 2012, O’Brien testified in the Sandusky case, arguing the former football coach could not have suffered from histrionic personality disorder, as the defense presented, because he was “extremely high functioning over the years.”
“The administration will ask Dr. O’Brien to commit to recusing himself from cases in which he had direct involvement or served as a witness,” Shapiro spokesperson Peterson said.
shapiro-pick-for-board-of-pardons-vacancy-opposed-by-clemency-advocates
I have very reliable information that Second Mile made payoffs to silence complaining parents.
Keep this between you and me.
Ok share that with me- I’ll keep it just between you and me.
Shubin added, “The real story is a pedophile was able to operate in the midst of a powerful institution for many, many years, and countless boys’ had their childhoods destroyed, and they struggle every day to put their lives together.”
Also, remember who the prosecution was in this case — not exactly law biding citizens. You saw what a sham the Sandusky trial was and you know that the charges against Spanier and Curley are a sham as well.
Another well placed source in the OAG’s office stated that they were told NOT to investigate Second Mile.
How else do you explain no charges for failure to report against Raykovitz.
The Feds aren’t playing by Linda Kelly’s rules anymore. Second Mile is on their plate. You can confirm that with Lubrano.
The Federal investigation will show the financial side of the scandal.
LOL! Allan Myers didn’t know he was a victim until Shubin told him he was. You know it, I know it, and Myers knows it.
Paid off after they were “victimized.” Sandusky told to stay away from them by Raykovitz and Genovese.
You can believe what you want to believe, but I can say without reservation that PSU has yet to see the worst of what’s coming at them.
And they have no idea what’s coming. Neither does Second Mile.
Ray man, you really confuse me. I thought you didn’t believe that Sandusky was really raping boys. If he wasn’t, then why the payoffs?
Payoffs: Even though Sandusky was not raping or even sexually assaulting these kids, the mere fact that he was showering with them was enough to make parents complain. The Second Mile didn’t want the complaints to be public knowledge because Sandusky was undoubtedly the top fund raiser from the charity. History has proven the viability of Second Mile with Jerry Sandusky’s reputation in the toilet. Way too much money at risk for Second Mile to let that happen. Second Mile paid off the families of these kids and they did it as cheaply as possible.
Where PSU comes into this is their financial arrangements with The Second Mile. Second Mile was essentially a money laundering operation that threw picnics and ran camps for kids. And they lied about how much money they spent doing those things. I won’t get into the details, but this involved some pretty shady stuff to make it work.
This is the side of the scandal that the Feds are investigating.
I believe as you do, that Sandusky is a pedophile, but of the non-sexual variety. I’m about 95% certain, but I really wished the state would have conducted an investigation by the rules in 1998. That investigation would have included a physical examination of Victim 6. Also, the 2008-2011 investigation should have included a physical examination of Victim 9. There are usually scars or skin tags from healing in the case of anal rapes. Also, with Victim 6, there would have been fissures if the exam was conducted early.
I think both exams would have turned out negative.
I think if you knew details you’d say that a different way. Hundreds of kids all reported Sandusky when driving, if he took his hand off the wheel, would put it on a knee (but no other time). This is in the 1 hour Morales interview of Probst, and Morales does mention that is safer than an arm around the shoulder if you have to grab the wheel again.
Secondly, strange as it is, there are the raspberries on the stomach, all witnesses say this is above the waistline and not often, but did happen a couple of times with each kid, as a sort of touch-football tackle, and sometimes at bedtime. This is among thousands of second mile kids, and all the adopted kids and all the foster kids. No one complained about it but it is written into witness statements in a way making it sound sexual when it is not.
Thirdly there is the showring. In the 4 hour podcast which is episode 18 of ‘benefit of hindsight’, Spanier mentions HE showered there 3 times per week when he worked out. There were school kids there because the funding had come from the state specifically for that purpose and the showers had no curtains or stalls. But there was never any issue or problem.
All other things that seem bad are like victim 6 (Konstas) being told to say he was too young to realize how indecent it would have been to accept Sandusky’s invitation to go to his house and work on his PC. But he never did go to Sandusky’s house and work on the PC and by the time it got to court, Sandusky’s house had been raided, and there was nothing indecent on his PC. But the prosecutor who raided his house (Fina) had soft porn on HIS laptop that he was jokingly sharing with police, judges and other lawyers. So even though the jury heard konstas say now that he is an adult he realizes how creepy it woudl have been to see Sandusky’s PC, in fact the prosecutors already knew there was nothing inappropriate on that PC, that Konstas had never in fact gone there, and the prosecutor himself was jokingly sharing porn while he was doing the investigation.
So it makes me angry when people latch onto one of these stories and say, well he must have been a mild sort of paedophile. No, he was not.
Right after the acrobatic Tice endured his alleged urinal attack in 1971, Tice got Paterno and another university official on a conference call to complain about being raped by Sandusky. This was another marvelous feat by Tice since it was years before Penn State had the technology to have conference calls.
According to Tice (or Shubin), Paterno threatened Tice, saying, “Stop this right now! We’ll call the authorities.”
Ray and has nothing to do with the truth of this matter.
In his latest postings (which have numerous blatant factual errors and distortions), Ray claims that Dottie (to whom he has never spoken and who thinks he is a joke) is delusional/lying when she says that she thinks Jerry is innocent. Ray also claims that Allan Myers, whom I revealed this week to be “Victim 2,” is probably not the McQueary victim.
Ray bet me $2,000 just after the Freeh Report that he would prove that Freeh faked emails. He never did that, and he did not pay me.
Ray claimed that Sandusky was always referred to as coach and Paterno as Joe, a claim needlessly and completely discredited by Sandusky to the point that I had to take this out of the second version of “The Framing of Joe Paterno.”
Ray claimed constantly that Rodney Erickson would be arrested, and yet all that has happened was that he has had things at PSU named after him.
Ray constantly claims that PSU “reported” the 2001 incident despite the fact that the administrators defense team has never made that claim in court, Sandusky was not informed of that as would have been required, and if that did happen it would back up Mike McQueary, who Ray has roundly mocked.
Ray claimed to have proven that the janitor who allegedly witnessed the “Victim 8” episode was not working at PSU at the time. When I proved to him that he was indeed working part-time, Ray was forced to admit that his only significant contribution to the factual record was false.
Ray constantly claimed that Kathleen Kane’s investigation was going to break open the political conspiracy he has been promising in this case (something I told him from day one was never going to happen), but her report was a complete dud on that front.
Ray has also lied to me personally on at least two occasions. The first was when he said he would give out the remainder of the “Hey Media” T-Shirts at the “Rally for Resignations” but ended up effectively selling them for his own expenses (something I wouldn’t have had a huge issue with if he had told me that was what he was going to do). The second was when he and Eileen Morgan agreed, in writing, to stop posting at PS4RS in protest of their censoring posts objecting to the PSU BOT (including the “Reform” members) voting for the absurd Sandusky settlements, only to immediately break that pledge without even telling me.
I have made a lot of mistakes in this crusade for the truth of this case, but one of my biggest was trusting Ray Blehar. I brought him into “Framing Paterno,” introduced him to Franco Harris, and put him in the original version of my film, “The Framing of Joe Paterno.” I did these things even though I quickly suspected that Ray was at least partly insane. I did this largely because he is a pretty good encyclopedia of the details of this case and because there were so few people who seemed willing to take a serious look at the other side of this story.
These results suggest that pedophiles are more socially alienated and less emotionally stable than most other people, traits commonly seen in patients with cluster A and B personality disorders (65). Many pedophiles also demonstrate narcissistic, sociopathic, and antisocial personality traits. They lack remorse and an understanding of the harm their actions cause
Defense Strategy:
In short, while Sandusky’s actions and some statements acknowledged involvement with young people, the idea that he explicitly framed them as “individual cases” in a sympathetic or legally strategic way isn’t a well-documented part of the public record from his trial or interviews.