By Orson Voss

A jury convicted Sandusky of abusing ten boys. Eight of those 10 boys testified in the courtroom to confront Sandusky.

There were two boys whom the prosecution couldn’t locate. Only God knows where they are. Or who they are. 

Eight victims dared to testify against the atrocity. They received compensation from Penn State ranging from $1.5 million to $20 million each.

Innocence lost?

None of the eight victims who testified were boys when they testified. They were adult men at the time who recalled abuse when they were teens. And so when they got thier money, maybe the did not spend it wisely.

Do not criticize them for spending their money on fast cars, drugs, and gambling. If one knows anything about victims, one would know that these boys came from poverty and did not know how to manage their millions. 

In their grief and depression, they spent it all trying to forget what Sandusky had done. Now that the money is gone, they have two bitter memories – Sandusky’s abuse and the memory of having been millionaires no more.

It would have been almost better had their attorneys not arranged for them to have repressed memory therapists bring back the memories of Sandusky abuse they forgot.  But it was necessary to stop this serial predator from his 40-year run in this small community.

Fisher Remembers

Of the eight, Aaron Fisher—’Victim Number One’—stands out as a hero. He was only 18 when he testified at Sandusky’s criminal trial that Sandusky performed oral sex on him when he was 13-15 years old, when he went to stay in the basement of Sandusky’s house.

 It is unfair that Penn State paid him only $7.5 million when some of the other victims got more money. Without Fisher, none of the others would have made any money whatsoever. All of them had forgotten Sandusky had abused them. Fisher led the way with two years of repressed recovered memory therapy to remember.

The others remembered quicker once he led the way.

At age 15, Fisher did not remember Sandusky had abused him for three years ending just a month earlier. He told his mother that Sandusky, who had been a mentor through his charity to thousands of boys, never abused him. He had buried the memories. But his mother brought him to Mike Gillum, a memory therapist.

Over six months of therapy, Gillum guided Fisher into the deeper layers of the mind, which he compared to peeling away the layers like an onion, where Fisher began to recall the horrible abuse Sandusky had done to him just months before.

The Gillum Method

People do not understand what Mike Gillum accomplished or how much it took.

Gillum explained his approach plainly. “If I’m lucky, they just acknowledge spontaneously without too much prodding.” 

When that didn’t happen, he asked yes or no questions. He compared it to a children’s game — Hide the Button. You get warmer. You get colder. The patient simply nods when you’re close.

Fisher confirmed how it worked.

“As long as I told him that something happened, I didn’t need to go into any detail. I just needed to tell him if something sexual happened, like touching or oral sex, and he would ask me so all I had to do was say yes or no.”

This was the mercy of it. Fisher never had to find words for unspeakable things. Gillum found the words. Fisher confirmed them.

“I was very blunt with him when I asked questions,” Gillum said, “but gave him the ability to answer with a yes or a no. That relieved him of a lot of burden.”

Gillum was honest about his method. “Although they give me information, they don’t feel held accountable because I’m guessing. But my guesses are educated.”

Educated guesses. Yes or no. A nod. That is how a predator was stopped

Mother and Money

Fisher’s mother, a woman of steely resolve, knew her son needed more than therapeutic help. She sought the services of one of the finest civil attorneys, Slade McLaughlin, who helped the boy realize that while nothing can take the pain away from the abuse he had buried in the onion-like layers of the mind, the addition of millions (minus a third for Slade), would go a long way toward healing.

Sadly, the money was unable to heal the terrible trauma. After testifying against Sandusky, he collected his millions. He went on an unhealthy spree, buying expensive cars and indulging in excesses with fast, greedy women who took him for lots of cash. He blew through his money.

 His mother, a noble lady, made plans to secure her own financial future. But she, too, was left destitute after she was taken advantage of by a gigolo.

The Suicidal Attorney

As for Slade, the attorney, the pioneer who helped launch the case that ended Sandusky’s career as a predator, he was overcome with the sorrows of his victim clients and took his own life. Despite the millions he made, he somehow could not overcome the burdens of his client’s misery.

He had gotten millions for a false accuser of a priest, collected his third from the Church, and Slade felt bad that he had taken millions and destroyed the life of an innocent priest. In his guilt-stricken world, he might have believed that Fisher had made up the story and had sent another innocent man, Sandusky, to prison. 

But this was a terrible mindset, and it led him to suicide. We tried to explain to him during our many late-night calls that repressed memory recovery is real.

Dichotomy of Memory

Imagine Fisher, who was an unusually sexually active heterosexual teenage boy, forced to endure the vile predations of a man who should have been a mentor every weekend for three years.

 Fisher testified that Sandusky performed oral sex on him, and he had forgotten. Fisher pushed it out of his mind. He watched porn and had sex with girls.

He had made a list of 300 girls and women he had sex with during that period when Sandusky was abusing him. 

The sex he had with girls was during the weekdays because he went to visit Sandusky every weekend, he testified.

Imagine the conflicted youth.

During the week, he would have sex with teenage girls, which he would remember by writing down the names of the girls. Then he went to Sandusky’s house, and he would be forced to give Sandusky oral sex, and he did not remember it until the therapist and the lawyer helped him remember.

But for the work of Gillum, he might never have recalled what Sandusky did to him.

He thought he was just a healthy, sexually active heterosexual boy until Gillum peeled back the layers of the onion into the deeper unconscious. 

The Martyr Gillum

Gillum suffered for his pioneering work. No one appreciates a prophet in his own community. Gillum had hardly any clients before Fisher. He was forced into bankruptcy. When the county agreed to pay him $65 per hour for every hour he spent with Fisher, some people criticized him for using Fisher to get back on his feet.

But Gillum braved through. Gillum spent years with Fisher, sometimes daily and sometimes three times per week. 

It was not all about money.  To show the man’s generosity, when Gillum had the chance to get a book deal from his work to recover memories, he shared co-authorship with Fisher and his mom.

Read the book Silent No More – it is a masterpiece of how a therapist enters a patient’s mind and peels back the onionesque layers of memories of abuse that the patient would otherwise have forgotten.

Before Gillum drew them out, Fisher was a happy teenager. What you don’t remember can’t haunt you.

Bringing out repressed memories nearly destroyed this young man’s life. 

Fisher tried to commit suicide. He began to imagine people following him around. He got reckless and was involved in a car accident.

All the kids he knew from school and town who had given him the reputation as the town liar said it behind his back. Aaron is making this up for the money.

His neighbor Josh Fravel remembered how Fisher would brag that he was going to get a new jeep after he testified about Sandusky.

So when this happy-go-lucky kid, known as a liar, started to stop bragging and making things up, whose life took a real nose dive, some heartless people say it was guilt that haunted Fisher. They said that for once, he did not want to lie.

Sandusky, after all, had only helped the lad, even though Slade had promised he would be a millionaire, which would help the kid a lot more.

Hard Times

In the end, it was not easy.

Aaron had to go to the grand jury three times. The first time, he said Sandusky did not abuse him. The second time, he tried to get words out, but sadly, he collapsed on the floor in front of a room full of jurors, prosevutors and his disappointed therapist, Mike Gillum.

Then he vomited.

 Gillum offered to testify instead of Aaron in the third grand jury. After all, Gillum had been Aaron’s therapist. He knew about Aaron’s abuse better than Aaron did. 

Aaron would not have even remembered he was abused except for Gillum’s therapy.

But the prosecutors were worried that Sansuky would get some tricky lawyer and get the whole thing tossed out. They had to have Fisher.

Gillum came up with an idea. He would write out Fisher’s testimony, and then the prosecutors would read it and just ask him one question – is it true?

The third time, with Gillum right by his side and his faithful attorney Slade comforting his mother, assuring her that the family would get a chance at healing once Penn State made its payment, Fisher was able to nod his head and utter the word, “yes.”

And a predator was stopped,

 Then he held his head down and wept.

Other Stories Featuring Fisher and Gillum

Frank Report

• DUI Arrest of Aaron Fisher, Victim #1: https://frankreport.com/2024/05/05/dui-arrest-of-aaron-fisher-victim-1-adds-new-twists-to-sandusky-case/
• A Conviction Built on Recovered Memories: https://frankreport.com/2025/09/26/a-conviction-built-on-recovered-memories-an-overview-of-the-sandusky-case/
• Misled Justice Part 1: https://frankreport.com/2024/05/13/misled-justice-how-sandusky-became-a-scapegoat-in-a-flawed-system-part-1/
• Frederick Crews — Saint Sandusky?: https://frankreport.com/2024/04/27/frederick-crews-saint-sandusky/
• Three Liars Destroy Joe Paterno: https://frankreport.com/2024/03/02/three-liars-destroy-joe-paterno-fisher-mcqueary-and-sergeant-allan-myers-usmc/
• Changing Memories — Repressed Memory Overview: https://frankreport.com/2023/12/21/changing-memories-the-impact-of-repressed-recovered-memories-in-the-sandusky-case/
• Sabastian Paden — Trailer Park to Millions: https://frankreport.com/2024/01/12/from-trailer-park-to-millions-sabastian-padens-rise-to-wealth-through-testifying-in-jerry-sandusky-trial/
• Aaron Fisher tag page: https://frankreport.com/tag/aaron-fisher/

Artvoice

• The Sandusky Trial — How American Justice Fails: https://artvoice.com/2026/01/20/the-sandusky-trial-a-study-in-how-american-justice-fails/
• Prosecutors Built a Trap — Paden Trust: https://artvoice.com/2026/01/22/the-sandusky-prosecutors-built-a-trap-and-put-their-star-witness-inside-it/
• Did Aaron Fisher Mislead Authorities?: https://artvoice.com/2024/01/16/did-aaron-fisher-mislead-authorities-in-sandusky-case-looks-like-he-did/
• The Unheard Side — Did Aaron Fisher Lie?: https://artvoice.com/2024/01/15/the-unheard-side-of-the-sandusky-story-did-aaron-fisher-lie/
• Fisher vs. Paden — Unequal Pay for Equal Lies: https://artvoice.com/2024/02/01/fisher-vs-paden-unequal-pay-for-equal-lies-in-false-conviction-of-jerry-sandusky/
• Questioning Millionaire Victims: https://artvoice.com/2024/01/11/questioning-millionaire-victims-doubts-arise-in-sandusky-trial/
• All the World’s a Stage: https://artvoice.com/2024/03/28/all-the-worlds-a-stage-and-penn-state-had-some-pretty-bad-actors-in-sandusky-case-2/
• Letter to Penn State Trustees: https://artvoice.com/2024/05/penn-state-and-the-price-of-silence-reopening-the-sandusky-case-a-letter-to-penn-state-trustees/

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