Victim 1 Given Gifts, Taken to Games by Sandusky: Court Documents

Victim 1 testified that he was ll or 12 years old when he met Sandusky through The Second Mile program in 2005 or 2006. As with the remaining victims, Victim 1 only came to Sandusky’s attention during his second year in the program, when the boy attended The Second Mile’s camp on the Penn State University Park campus. During the 2007 track season, Sandusky began spending time with Victim 1 weekly, having the boy stay overnight at his residence in State College, Pennsylvania.

 

Sandusky took Victim 1 to professional and college sporting events, such as Philadelphia Eagles games, or pre-season practices at Penn State. When Victim 1slept at the Sandusky residence, he would sleep in a finished bedroom in the basement.

 

Occasionally, other boys would also stay overnight at Sandusky’s home but usually it was only

Victim 1. Sandusky also encouraged Victim 1 to participate in The Second Mile as a volunteer.

Sandusky gave Victim 1 a number of gifts, including golf clubs, a computer, gym clothes, dress

clothes and cash. Sandusky took the boy to restaurants, swimming at a hotel near Sandusky’s

home, and to church.

 

Victim 1 testified that Sandusky had a practice of coming into the basement room after he

told Victim 1 that it was time to go to bed. Victim 1 testified that Sandusky would “crack his back.” He described this as Sandusky getting onto the bed on which Victim 1 was already lying and rolling under the boy. With Victim 1 lying on top of him, face to face, Sandusky would run his arms up and down the boy’s back and “crack” it. The back-cracking became a ritual at bedtime. Victim 1 said that after Sandusky had cracked his back a number of times, he progressed to rubbing Victim 1’s backside while they lay face-to-face on the bed.

 

Victim 1 testified that this began to occur during the summer of 2005 or 2006, before he entered sixth or seventh grade. Sandusky then began to blow on Victim l’s bare stomach. Eventually, Sandusky began to kiss Victim l on the mouth. Victim 1 was uncomfortable with the contact and would sometimes try to hide in the basement to avoid Sandusky. Victim 1 testified that ultimately

Sandusky performed oral sex on him more than 20 times through 2007 and early 2008.

 

Sandusky also had Victim l perform oral sex on him one time and also touched Victim l’s penis

with his hands during the 2007-2008 time period. Victim 1 did not want to engage in sexual conduct with Sandusky and knew it was wrong. Victim 1 stopped taking Sandusky’s phone calls and had his mother tell Sandusky he was not home when Sandusky called. This termination of contact with Sandusky occurred in the spring of 2008, when Victim 1 was a freshman in high school.

 

Before Victim 1 ceased contact with Sandusky, Sandusky routinely had contact with him at a Clinton County high school where the administration would call Victim 1 out of activity period/study hall in the late afternoon to meet with Sandusky in a conference room. No one monitored these visits. Sandusky assisted the school with coaching varsity football and had unfettered access to the school.

 

Victim 1 testified about an incident that occurred one evening at the high school when he

and Sandusky were alone in the weight room where there was a rock climbing wall. After Victim 1 fell off the wall a few times, Sandusky lay down on top of him, face to face, and was rolling around the floor with the boy. No one was able to see Victim 1 and Sandusky because of the configuration of the room. Sandusky was lying under Victim 1 with his eyes closed. Suddenly a wrestly coach, Joe Miller, unexpectedly entered the room and Sandusky jumped up very quickly and explained that they had just been wrestling. 

 

Joseph Miller testified that he was head wrestling coach for the elementary wrestling program for that school district. He knew Victim 1, who had wrestled for him. Miller corroborated that one evening in 2006 or 2007, he returned to the high school to retrieve something he had forgotten. He saw a light on in the weight room which should have been turned off and when he went in, he discovered Victim 1 and Sandusky, lying on their sides, in physical contact, face to face on a mat. He said both Victim 1 and Sandusky were surprised to see him enter the room. He recalls that Sandusky jumped up and said, “Hey Coach, we’re just working on wrestling moves.” Sandusky was not a wrestling coach. Miller found the use of that secluded room odd for wrestling because the bigger wrestling room right outside the weight room had more room to wrestle and more mats. He had seen Victim 1 with Sandusky frequently before the weight room incident. He saw them together after school and before athletic practice time.

 

Steven Turchetta testified that he was an assistant principal and the head football coach at the high school attended by Victim 1. He testified that Sandusky was a volunteer assistant football coach. Sandusky also worked with children in the Second Mile program in that school district. Turchetta described the Second Mile as a very large charitable organization that helped children who are from economically underprivileged backgrounds and who may be living in single parent households.

Turchetta first met Sandusky in 2002 when Sandusky attempted to assist some Second Mile members who were on Turchetta’s football team. Sandusky’s involvement grew from there.

 

In the 2008 season, Sandusky was a full-time volunteer coach. Turchetta said it was not unusual for him, as assistant principal, to call a Second Mile student out of activity period at the end of the day, at Sandusky’s request, to see Sandusky. He knew of several students who were left alone with Sandusky, including Victim 1.

 

Turchetta characterized Sandusky as very controlling within the mentoring relationships he established with Second Mile students. Sandusky would often want a greater time commitment than the teenagers were willing to give and Sandusky would have “shouting matches” with various youths, in which Turchetta would sometimes be the mediator. Turchetta would also end up being Sandusky’s point of contact for a youth whom he had been unable to reach by phone the previous evening. Turchetta testified that Sandusky would be “clingy” and even “needy” when a young man broke off the relationship he had established with him and called the behavior “suspicious.” Turchetta became aware of Victim 1’s allegations regarding sexual assault by Sandusky when the boy’s mother called the school to report it. Sandusky was barred from the school district attended by Victim l from that day forward and the matter was reported to authorities as mandated by law. 

 

Office of Attomey General Narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano testified concerning phone records that establish 61 phone calls from Sandusky’s home phone to Victim 1’s home phone between January 2008 and July 2009. In that same time, there were 57 calls from Sandusky’s cell phone to Victim l’s home phone. There were four calls made from Victim l’s home phone to Sandusky’s cell phone and one call from Victim 1’s mother’s cell phone to Sandusky’s cell phone. There were no calls made to Sandusky’s home phone by Victim 1 during that time period.

 

Another youth, F .A., age fifteen, testified that Sandusky had taken him and Victim 1 to a 

Philadelphia Eagles football game and that Sandusky had driven. He witnessed Sandusky place his right hand on Victim 1’s knee; Sandusky had also done this to F .A. on more than one occasion when they were in Sandusky’s car. F.A. was uncomfortable when Sandusky did this and moved his leg to try to avoid the contact. Sandusky would keep his hand on F.A.’s knee even after F.A. tried to move it. F.A. also testified that Sandusky would reach over, while driving, and lift his shirt and tickle his bare stomach. F.A. did not like this contact. F.A. also witnessed Sandusky tickling Victim l in similar fashion.

 

Sandusky invited F.A. to stay over at his house but F.A. only stayed one time when he knew Victim 1 was also staying over, after returning from the Philadelphia Eagles game. F.A. confirmed that Victim l slept in Sandusky’s basement room when F.A. stayed there. F.A. testified that he stayed away from Sandusky because he felt he didn’t want to be alone with him for a long period of time, based on the tickling, knee touching and other physical contact. Victim 1 confirmed that Sandusky would drive with his hand on Victim l’s leg.