Penn State Alleged Rape Case: Sandusky’s Deranged Defense

Answering a question by a reporter, his own lawyer said Sandusky "may well be innocent" and "certainly deserving of his day in court."

[Black Star News Editorial]

Yesterday just before he was scheduled to face his accusers at a pretrial hearing in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Jerry Sandusky the accused sexual predator of young boys waived his right and developed cold feet.

An attorney for one of his accusers denounced him as a “coward” since he had been denying the charges against him for weeks and yesterday he could have stared down his accusers.

Joseph Amendola, Sandusky’s accuser claimed the move was a tactical decision. That it was just better to move to trial next year. He said he had concluded that his client had nothing to gain through today’s hearing. That the 11 accusers who had lined up to speak would provide the media with more information to convict his client in the public arena. On the other hand, he would not be able to discredit the credibility of the accusers since the rules of the pretrial hearing did not permit that, Amendola claimed.

Amendola also used his subsequent long session with the media, in front of the court house, to attack the credibility of one of the state’s main witnesses, a Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary, as well as the alleged victims themselves.

McQueary, while a graduate coaching assistant in 2002 claimed he witnessed Sandusky anally rape a boy who appeared to be 10 years old inside a shower at Penn State’s facilities.

According to media accounts McQueary reported the crime to his father who then told him to report the matter to Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. The coach then reported the matter to the athletic director Tim Curley, who in turn alerted the school’s Vice President Gary Schultz, who then went to the top man, Penn State President Graham Spanier.

Yesterday, Amendola told the media that anyone who believed that the senior Penn State administrators –Curley, Schultz and Spanier– decided not to tell police about the alleged witnessed rape needed a “reality” check. He suggests that whatever McQueary reported witnessing had not been rape. That was the reason why Penn State’s only penalty against Sandusky was that he stop bringing young boys to the school’s showers.

Weak and preposterous defense by Amendola. It falls in line with the absurd argument that Sandusky has been publicizing in several media interviews–That while Sandusky did touch young boys and even showered naked with them and wrestled with them, he actually was not sexually attracted to them.

Amendola also forgot to mention that Curley and Schultz were actually indicted for lying about what they said McQueary told them. Meaning the authorities found the witnessed-rape account more credible.

Beyond McQueary’s testimony about the one boy, there remains 11 other boys, and more are reportedly being interviewed (11 of the 12 had been ready to testify yesterday).

Amendola also tested other areas of possible defense. He claimed that Sandusky recently drove to a football game with one of the victims, identified as accuser #9. Experienced sexual predators go out of their way to create such conditions in order to raise doubts about their accusers. Given his power –through intimidation, coercion and dependency syndrome he created– it’s not surprising that an alleged victim could still socialize with Sandusky.

Here in New York for example, another alleged pedophile, The Gauchos’s Lou d’Almeida, allegedly created jobs for, and continued to offer inducements to, past alleged victims just to maintain a semblance of “normalcy” and make it difficult to later be exposed.

Amendola also claimed that the man who may have reportedly been anally raped by Sandusky met with defense counsel and provided exculpatory information. Yet, in the same breath, he noted that the accuser has since hired an attorney and made it clear that he’s an alleged victim.

Without any doubt, Amendola’s claim that all the accusers are motivated by money may come back to haunt him and his client Sandusky. “What greater motivation folks could there be but financial gain?” Amendola asked the journalists gathered.

Well, let’s start with just one: what about justice, Amendola?

How could 12 unrelated boys all collectively decide to accuse Sandusky of rape? These 12 boys did not compare notes and did not coordinate anything. Yet during interviews with the authorities, separately, they all provided consistent information showing a similar pattern by Sandusky: he won the trust of the young boys with gifts and trips to Penn State football games; he opened bank accounts for the young boys and deposited money into the accounts; he started the assaults by touching the boys on their thighs while driving with them; he eventually progressed to performing oral sex or anal sex on the boys, or; he demanded that they perform oral sex on him.

Amendola now suggests that these boys all concocted these diabolical incidents so that one day they could each make huge sums of money through a lawsuit, from Sandusky, and The Second Mile foundation that he founded, and from Penn State university. This is either science fiction or the work of a deranged mind. Perhaps it’s also a measure of Sandusky’s and Amendola’s desperation.

Many of the reporters gathered in Bellefonte may have missed some critical and damning words Amendola uttered. Answering a question by a reporter, in reference to his client, the lawyer said Sandusky “may well be innocent” and “certainly deserving of his day in court.”

“May well be innocent”?  Hardly a full-throated defense. Even Amendola seems weighed down by the evidence mounting against his client.


“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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