The investigation of Jerry Sandusky took three years.
And it took Sandusky himself through the pages of his autobiography, Touched to help police find Victims 3, 4, 5 and 7.
At the end of 2009, police had spent almost a year trying to corroborate claims by a single boy a 17-year-old Clinton County teen later known as Victim 1 who had alleged years of sexual abuse by Penn States legendary defensive coach. Only one state police investigator had been tasked to handle the case.
The 1998 boy was called Victim 6 by the grand jury. After police found him, the mans mother told them about Sanduskys autobiography, which was sitting on the shelves of the Penn State bookstore.
A Google search of the name Jerry Sandusky would have revealed the book in seconds.
Victim 6s mother and sister sat down with police, flipped through the pages of Sanduskys book, and quickly identified boys who had often attended football games together. That led police to identify four more alleged victims, according to Victim 6s mother.
Revelations like this only fuel the questions that persist about how Gov. Tom Corbett who was attorney general at the time handled the Sandusky case. Three years elapsed between the time the Clinton County boy came forward and the day that Sandusky was charged in November.
Corbett and current State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan have insisted it is flat-out wrong to suggest Corbett wanted the investigation to move slowly during his campaign for governor. Both have said investigators waited to find evidence to corroborate Victim 1s claims.
But that evidence didnt really come until early 2011 after Corbett left the attorney generals office and Noonan bumped the number of investigators on the case from one to eight.
The mother of Victim 6 told her story to The Patriot-News because she said she wants to set the record straight about a claim by Sanduskys attorney, Joe Amendola. The Patriot-News is withholding her name to protect the identity of Victim 6.
After waiving Sanduskys preliminary hearing in December, as he held a three-hour news conference on the courthouse steps, Amendola claimed that the boys who have alleged crimes against Sandusky in the 1990s all got together and concocted their stories because they envisioned big payouts from lawsuits against Penn State.
Victim 6s mother is outraged at the charge.
Amendolas right; they all knew each other. They went to the football games together, Victim 6s mom said. But to think they all got together? No. They went down [to the grand jury] kicking and screaming. They each thought they were the only ones. My son knew them, and he didnt know it happened to them, and they didnt know it happened to my son. It wasnt something they spoke about.
Instead of volunteering the information to police, she said most of the boys had to be subpoenaed by a grand jury and forced to testify. It was only when they realized they werent the only ones that they began to cooperate, she said.
Not one of those boys came forward, she said. These kids tried not to talk to police. Several times they didnt call back. And in some cases [the police] had to go and knock on their doors. [Amendolas] full of bologna when he says they colluded, because they never knew it happened to anyone else.
Unpursued case
Victim 6s mom said police hadnt yet gone through Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story, when she was interviewed.
View full sizeThe Penn State Bookstore sold the autobiography of former coach and accused sex offender Jerry Sandusky, "Touched."Looking at the book jogged the memory of Victim 6s sister, who told police about one boy who had been in her class in middle school. During lunch one day, she remembered kids talking about Sandusky being a hero. The boy shouted that he hated his guts, and ran out, her mother said.
Did you have to take showers with him, too? she asked later.
How did you know? the boy answered.
It happened to my brother, too, she said.
Police told Victim 6s mother that they had been hearing rumors within law enforcement about the 1998 case that then-prosecutor Ray Gricar decided not to pursue. State police found the file about a year after the investigation started, got her number and called her up.
Gricar is the former Centre County district attorney who went missing in 2005 and was declared dead in July. It isnt known why Gricar decided not to prosecute.
Around the same time that police were contacting the mother of Victim 6, they also knocked on the door of assistant coach Mike McQueary and asked him if rumors were true that hed witnessed something in the locker room on campus.
What police determined over the next 12 months would eventually lead to more than 50 counts of sex abuse involving 10 boys. Sandusky waived his preliminary hearing and is free on bail awaiting trial. He has maintained his innocence.
Amendola, Sanduskys attorney, did not respond to requests for interviews.
Victim 6s mother said police told her they believed prosecutors could have gone further.
At one point police told me theyve had less evidence in murder cases, she said. I kept being told, March, April, June, October. ... The AG kept asking for more evidence. The police told me they had enough for 400 counts, but the AG wanted only 40. This whole thing just stinks so much more than we all know.
Maria Finn, state police press spokeswoman, said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation. However, she said in any case there are many consultations between prosecutors and investigators before charges are filed and this case was no different.
The [AGs office] and state police investigators, after many discussions, agreed upon the charges that were filed against Mr. Sandusky, Finn said.
Why so long?
Critics have suggested that Corbett, who was the attorney general at the time, slowed down the investigation until his 2010 election was over.
View full sizePennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett celebrates his election.The latest are two Democratic candidates for attorney general who said that, if elected, they will investigate how the attorney generals office handled the Sandusky case. Former Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Dan McCaffery and former congressman Patrick J. Murphy claim the three-year investigation was unusually prolonged.
Nils Frederiksen, spokesman for Attorney General Linda Kelly, said the office would not comment on the Sandusky investigation.
Victim 1s mom has said she was shocked when police told her they couldnt arrest Sandusky immediately. Her son, the Clinton County teen, had described graphic details of prolonged abuse to police, to Children and Youth Services, and then to a grand jury.
She wondered, why wasnt Sandusky charged sooner.
The grand jury that investigated meets only for a few days each month and also was hearing evidence of other cases.
By comparison, in 2006, when the attorney generals office began investigating a Marysville police officer accused of sexually abusing girls, the officer was charged 13 months after the grand jury convened.
In that case, 14 girls were eventually named alleged victims of Robert Pavlovich.
He is serving a minimum of 10 years in prison after being found guilty of some and not guilty of other counts at trial.
In October 2009, the attorney generals office waited just a few weeks after interviewing two men who accused a Butler County man of providing medical services to teen boys at a delinquent academy.
The men said they were abused almost two decades prior, and after David Allen Evanko was charged, two more younger boys came forward with similar allegations. More charges were then filed, and Evanko is awaiting trial on three of those cases because the statute of limitations ran out on the fourth.
Last year, the same deputy prosecutor who led the Sandusky and Pavlovich grand jury investigations filed charges against Swatara Twp. man Michael Musser after three girls said they were abused by him over a period of nine years.
All three came forward within six months, but there was an unexplained 18-month lapse in filing one of the cases. Musser also is waiting for trial.
When Corbett left the attorney generals office to head to the Governors Residence, his wife said his biggest accomplishment as the states top prosecutor had been the establishment of the child-predator unit, which targeted people soliciting sex from undercover agents posing as teens in online chat rooms.
The To Catch a Predator-style stings netted nearly 300 arrests across the state and as far as Florida. But the office doesnt handle too many traditional child sex abuse investigations because most are prosecuted by district attorneys at the county level.
Only when there is a lack of resources or a conflict of interest, does the attorney generals office step in.
Thats what happened with the Sandusky, Pavlovich and Musser cases.
More claims
Since Sanduskys Nov. 5 arrest, several more men have come forward publicly saying they, too, were victims of the 67-year-old.
Police, so far, have only filed two additional sets of charges, and sources tell The Patriot-News that prosecutors are not filing charges that dont fit into the pattern theyve already established.
Two lawsuits have been filed by men who are not part of the criminal case.
Victim 6s mom says shes been emotionally a wreck, especially when she learned that her son who she believes was denied justice once in 1998 was almost denied justice a second time.
Initially, the attorney general didnt want to pursue criminal charges in the 1998 case, she said.
The state cop fought for them, she said. I heard it got heated, but he stood his ground because he said my son was the cornerstone of the whole case and how they got the other football boys.
The four alleged victims who were once friends as boys have now turned to one another for comfort and support, Victim 6s mom said. As the case moves forward, and the attorney general takes over, she said her son was devastated to learn that the lead state police corporal, Joe Leiter, is retiring this month and wont be there to help him through the case.
My son is so upset, she said. These boys dont want to talk about this, but my son developed a relationship with this investigator. Hes like a father figure.