As you probably know if you read my diaries, I'm in Bellefonte attending the trial of Jerry Sandusky. And every night, or sometimes in the early morning, I post a synopsis of the days events. Last night I had planned on posting not just a synopsis of the day-but of the entire trial. Each of the victims, each of the charges, all of the testimony, defense arguments, evidence, and predictions. A detailed account of the closing. But I'm not going to do it today. I'm not even going to finish it, let alone post it. If you want to know about the closing, Diane Dimond said it better than I ever could.
The truth is, I have no clue what the verdict will be. You can never predict what will happen when 12 people go inside of a room to decide fates. The cynic in me fears that he will walk-because he is too powerful, and when we hear of the unspeakable, it is our natural inclination to deny it's existence. Bearing witness to a crime like this forces the bystander into the uncomfortable position of choosing sides-and it is always easier to side with the perpetrator. All he asks is that you do nothing. Look no further than the actions of Mike McQueary, Gary Schultz, Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, John McQueary, Jonathan Dranoff, Dottie Sandusky, and all of the others who were confronted with that choice. This story has recieved wall to wall coverage and legal analysis. But that's not why I'm here-that's not what this is about.
Instead, I want to tell you what it is like to be down here.
I feel alone most of the time. I'm a pretty shy person, and I don't like to draw attention to myself. And most of the people here seems so glamorous, dressed to the nines with perfect makeup, perfect hair, pressed suits and dresses fresh from the dry cleaners. As for me, I wake up every morning, throw my hair in a ponytail and walk 5 blocks to the courthouse.
My clothes are usually wrinkled because I have to wash them in the bathroom sink at night. Yesterday, I got halfway through the day before someone was kind enough to inform me that my shirt was on inside out.
I gave up on trying to look pretty about a week ago-If I wear makeup, it will be streaked all over my face by the end of the day. Because I cry, I sweat, I hyperventilate. As I sit in those pews and hear about what was done to these boys, and all of the people who did nothing to stop it, sometimes I have to will myself not to run out of the courtroom. Sometimes I have to, because it hits a little too close to home and I need to throw up. It's not a pretty sight.
So I keep my head down. I try to blend in among the masses-keeping to myself for the most part. Sitting back and observing. Listening instead of talking. There are a few of us here in this courtroom. We fill up the back rows, where no one pays us any mind. Nobody asks to interview us, or really cares to know our opinion of the trial. Who are we, after all? Just members of the public.
There is the pink lady, as I call her because she always wears pink from head to toe. She survived child sexual abuse and domestic violence until she finally had enough and left her marriage with 5 young kids in tow.
There is the tatooed biker chick who helped organize the candle light vigil held this November. She volunteers at the State College Women's Resource Center, and protested outside of the courthouse during the pretrial hearings. Today, during one of our 20 minute recesses, she ran 3 blocks to the corner store and bought a roll of blue ribbon, and made pins to pass out to everyone in the gallery. She is also a survivor.
There are the mother and daughter who have spent the entire week sleeping in their car, just so they could bear witness. Both of them are survivors too, who never got justice. Like so many of us, they feel like justice for these boys will be justice for them too.
And then there is Debra. Every day, she sits in the same spot-a plastic chair in the back right corner of the room. She looks like any other middle aged woman here for the trial. Wal Mart clothes, short cropped hair, nicotine stained fingers. She doesn't say much, really. She just blends into the background. And until yesterday, I had no idea that she is actually the mother of Matt Sandusky-the 33 year old man who is making international headlines as we speak for finally coming forward and admitting that he was sexually abused by the man who fostered and adopted him.
Debra has known this since 1994. She told child welfare, she told the judge, she told the district attorneys office- but no one would listen. Why would they? She was a nobody. Just a single mom from Milesburg PA-a depressed little rust belt town in the middle of nowhere. A mother who had lost custody of her own child. She wanted too get her son back-and pleaded for him to return. But Jerry Sandusky wanted Matt for himself. And what Jerry Sandusky wanted, he got.
I drove through Milesburg the other day,and then into Snow Shoe-the other small town where Jerry Sandusky found so many of his victims. There are long stretches of road, a few gas stations, and many shuttered homes. There is the dead end street where a 24 year old man drove his motorcycle on to the railroad tracks and died-after the police knocked on his door and asked him what happened all those times he went off with Jerry, alone.
While I was driving, it hit me-this is why he chose boys from these small towns. Because there is nothing out here, because it is so isolated, and you can walk for miles without seeing another soul. In these small towns, secrets like this (and only this) stay buried. One word, whispered in confidence, will spread town-wide within a day.
In his testimony last week, Victim #9 said that when he was being raped by Jerry Sandusky in his basement he screamed for help, but no one ever came. "No one can hear you down there", he said. For many years, these boys kept silent. They lived with their memories and nightmares, and just tried to move on. Because boys are not supposed to be victims. Boys are not supposed to get hurt. As they grew up, they went to college, served their country, got married and had children of their own and tried to forget.
Many have asked-Why didn't they speak out sooner? The question I would ask in return is if they did speak, who would have listened? Who would have believed them if they did? Children are powerless to the forces in their universe, dependant on the adults around them to keep them safe. Like a tiny pebble at the bottom of the ocean, a child is pushed and pulled by the currents and tides. And no one can hear you down there. But the part of me that has not yet succummed to cynicism believes that before this day is over, those 12 men and women finally will.
UPDATE-I just left the courtroom. Please be warned, this includes a graphic description of the testimony. The jury wanted to review the testimony of both Mike McQueary and Dr. Dranoff (one of the witnesses who Mike McQueary spoke with on the night he witnessed Sandusky in the shower raping a young boy) I had a perfect vantage point-I could see the jury, Jerry Sandusky, and Dottie Sandusky very clearly from where I was sitting. Jerry was pretty much expressionless so I went back and forth between Dottie and the jury. This is what I observed: The members of the jury seemed pretty relaxed, and I didn't detect any frustration in their body language as you might expect if there was a tense deliberation.
I paid attention to what parts of the testimony they paid special attention to (leaning forward, taking down notes, etc. seemed that there were two main issues they were concerned with. One was the act itself that McQueary described witnessing. They seemed most interested in the parts of the testimony where McQueary was describing the positions of the 2 bodies relative to each other. Specifically the details McQueary provided-such as the fact that the boy was bent over and his hands were pressed up against the wall of the shower, his arms were around the boys waist, that he saw Sandusky moving subtly, rocking back and forth behind this child.
My interpretation of this is that they are dealing specifically with the charge of Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse (IDSI) in which there needs to be penetration (however slight) into the mouth or rectum of a male child. The fact that they are considering this charge is a good sign, in my opinion. I was concerned that they would be hesitant to convict on the charges where victims had not come forward. I also noticed that they were very somber when this portion of the testimony was given, and when McQueary had said he left the child alone with Sandusky one of the female jurors shook her head as if in disgust.
To me this signifies that they believe McQueary's story. The other portion of the testimony they were interested in concerned slight discrepancies between testimony given by McQueary when he was first questioned by police, in his victims witness statement, in his grand jury testimony, as well as differences between what Dr. Dranoff testified that Mike told him, and what Mike recalls happening that night. In particular-Dr. Dranoff (who was a witness for the defense) testified that Mike told him he saw the child peeking out of the shower, and that he made eye contact with him-and then he saw an arm pulling him back into the shower.
A few moments later, he saw Jerry Sandusky coming out of the shower alone. This is very different from the story Mike has always told, and in his testimony he was asked about this. He said that Dr. Dranoff was an honest person, but that his recollection of the night may be inaccurate. I had initially been concerned about this discrepancy myself, but after reviewing Mike's testimony I felt much better about it. I believe the jury did too. After hearing this portion of the testimony they seemed bored, like they had already heard what they needed to hear and were satisfied.
They seemed irritated when the cross examination was re-enacted by Karl Romminger (it was quite a long cross exam-almost 45 minutes, and mostly repeated questions about minute details) Dottie Sandusky's reaction was one I wanted to see, because it is the first time in this trial that she has been in the courtroom to hear testimony. She was sequestered throughout the trial because she was on the witness list. She had noticeable reactions during the same portions of the testimony where the jurors reacted-when the act witnessed by McQueary was described in detail. She put her head in her hands and was rubbing her temples every time this was discussed. She looked humiliated when the meetings between McQueary and Penn State officials were discussed.
After court was recessed, I watched to see how she would interact with her husband. He looked sheepish and depressed, she would not make eye contact with him and although she eventually made her way over to him, she kept her distance from him. They never made eye contact, and never spoke to each other. In unrelated news, I just did a brief interview with Diane Dimond herself, for the article she is writing on Matt Sandusky! She is wonderful. I just gave her some insight into why someone like Matt would have waited so long to come forward, and how being sexually abused could have triggered much of the acting out behavior that some are now using to discredit him. The article should be out tonight. We are now in recess until further notice. I will update with any new developments. Also, thank you for all of the kind words.