What has not been discussed in detail before now is the victim's painful journey — from accuser to crucial prosecution witness — in one of the most damaging sports scandals in
U.S. history. This account was provided to USA TODAY in interviews with the victim's psychologist, Michael Gillum, who in addition to counseling the victim, sat in on key police interviews and accompanied the victim to secret state grand jury sessions. He described his client's decision to step forward, an exhaustive schedule of police interviews and three anxious appearances before the grand jury. All of it a prelude to taking the witness stand in a packed courtroom just yards from the man who abused him.
Gillum's account is not disputed by Pennsylvania authorities and is supported by courtroom testimony, which outline similarly wrenching decisions by the other seven known victims to tell their stories in an open courtroom. It is USA TODAY's policy not to name the victims of sexual abuse. An attorney representing the victim declined to allow him to be interviewed. Gillum, who spoke with his client's knowledge, said that he hoped that by relating his experience other victims of abuse would be encouraged to report it, regardless of the consequences.
"From the first time we met," Gillum said, "he was fearful that he would be killed. He believed that Jerry Sandusky could have him killed."
There is no evidence that Sandusky made such a threat, but Gillum said the boy's extreme fear, along with anonymous threats delivered by telephone and letter after his name was linked to the investigation, set in motion elaborate plans by
Clinton County, Pa., youth authorities to relocate the victim and his mother if their safety was put at risk.
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High-profile child sex abuse scandals at Penn State, the
Catholic Church and the
Boy Scouts of America represent evidence of the pervasive nature of abuse, and the victims' accounts reveal that public attention to such cases — no matter how intense — often is not enough to overcome the paralyzing fear and humiliation that, for many, result in their collective silence.
On the same day that the Sandusky verdict was delivered, June 22, Philadelphia Monsignor William Lynn was convicted of child endangerment, the first Catholic Church official found guilty of covering up past abuses by priests under his direction.
Earlier last month, the
Oregon Supreme Court approved the release of thousands of pages in files compiled by the
Boy Scouts related to suspected child abusers in its ranks. The files came to light as part of a 2010 lawsuit in which a jury found that the group failed to protect children from an abusive assistant scoutmaster, Timur Dykes, dating to the 1980s.
"There is shame, fear, even guilt that they (the victims) may have allowed something like this to happen," said Curtis St. John, a spokesman for MaleSurvivor, a national advocacy group for sex abuse victims.
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Gillum doesn't have to consult a file to recall the day when a shaken 14-year-old boy and his angry mother arrived at his nondescript
Main Street office.
It was Nov. 20, 2008, and his two visitors had come straight from a disturbing meeting at a local high school where the boy told a counselor that Sandusky, then a volunteer football coach at the school, had engaged in unspecific inappropriate conduct with him.
The boy's mother had arranged the meeting with the counselor, she told the jury at Sandusky's trial, after her son began asking questions about how to access information about sexual abuse online.
Angered that school officials cautioned her against going immediately to authorities with information about such a prominent figure, the mother testified that she went directly to the Clinton County Children and Youth Social Services office.
Jennifer Sobjak, the office's assistant director, said the boy and his mother showed up with no advance notice. An initial interview with a female staffer proved uncomfortable and halting, Sobjak said, before the boy was referred to Gillum's second-floor office, partially decorated in Crayon images created by his daughter and some young clients.
"He was so anxious, he was shaking," Gillum now recalls.
In the two hours that followed, the psychologist said, the boy provided enough information — incidents of fondling, kissing and other inappropriate contact — that "indicated Jerry Sandusky as a child sex abuser."
The conclusion triggered a series of notifications and telephone calls to the
Pennsylvania State Police, to Sandusky's charity for troubled children, known as The Second Mile, and to the boy's high school, where officials were notified of the claims against Sandusky.
The county report resulted in Sandusky's required separation from the school pending the resolution of the allegations.
The public backlash, Gillum said, was almost immediate and jarring. Within weeks, the boy's mother reported to state investigators that she was confronted in a Lock Haven business by an unhappy local resident who had learned that her son had been linked to the allegations triggering Sandusky's removal as a volunteer.
The child's identity spread rapidly through the community, the psychologist said, making him and his mother the target of harassment — and ultimately threats of harm — by locals upset that Sandusky had been dismissed from the school.
School officials did not respond to requests for comment.
From his initial meetings with the boy, Gillum said, it became clear, based on the victim's fear and the community's anger, that extraordinary steps were needed to protect him and his mother.
"We started putting a (witness) relocation plan together almost from the first week," Gillum said, adding that an undisclosed sum of county money was dedicated to the effort. "There was huge fear."
