{"id":6820,"date":"2020-01-18T18:21:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T22:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=6820"},"modified":"2022-03-24T15:49:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T19:49:46","slug":"jerry-sandusky-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jerry-sandusky-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Sandusky Case: Why He Got Away with Assault for So Long"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What happened during the Jerry Sandusky case? Why was Jerry Sandusky able to get away with abusing children for so long? Who’s to blame in the Jerry Sandusky case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll cover the elements of the Jerry Sandusky case and discuss why the people around him trusted him–and why they shouldn’t be penalized for being trusting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The <\/strong>Jerry Sandusky Case<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jerry Sandusky always loved sports and loved being around young people. He and his wife adopted six children and fostered countless more. In 1977, Sandusky started a charity, a sports program for troubled youth called the Second Mile. Among the children, Sandusky was known to be a goofball. And Sandusky had a great reputation among his coworkers, the families of Second Mile kids, reporters, and almost everyone else he came into contact with. This was one of the primary problems with the Jerry Sandusky case.
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But allegations against Jerry Sandusky began as early as 1998 when a young boy from Second Mile told his mother that he had showered with Sandusky. Ten years later, another boy came forward describing Sandusky\u2019s behavior as inappropriate. But in both cases, Jerry Sandusky\u2019s behavior was rationalized away as nothing more than \u201cboundary issues.\u201d The two cases together were not enough to push any doubts past the trigger point. 
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From 2009-2011 of the Jerry Sandusky case, the police interviewed former Second Mile members to find more victims. For two years<\/em>, they failed. But then, the prosecutor\u2019s office received an email from an unknown source. It said to contact Mike McQueary about what he witnessed in the Penn State locker room a full decade earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day in 2001, Michael McQueary entered the locker room of the Lasch Football Building at Pennsylvania State University. He expected the building to be empty, so he was surprised when he heard slapping sounds coming from the showers. Looking around, McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky, retired defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team, showering (naked) with a \u201cminor individual.\u201d McQueary later said that the boy looked to be about ten to twelve years old. Sandusky and the boy were standing close enough to be touching. 
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McQueary didn\u2019t know what to do. He ran upstairs and called his parents to tell them what he had seen. Some days later, McQueary went to Penn State football\u2019s head coach, Joe Paterno, to tell him about what he saw. Eventually, Paterno took McQueary\u2019s story to the university\u2019s athletic director Tim Curley, senior administrator Gary Schultz, and president Graham Spanier<\/a>. 
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All of a sudden, the case against Jerry Sandusky was not based on the unreliable testimonies of troubled teens. Mike McQueary\u2019s testimony gave the prosecution a very strong story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n