Alleged Victim Says Sandusky Treated Him Like a “Girlfriend”

“Creepy love letters.” That’s how Jerry Sandusky’s alleged victim number 4 described the dozens of handwritten notes—some as long as three pages, penned on Penn State letterhead—Sandusky sent to him.

But during No. 4’s cross-examination, Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola, found a different message. The letters, Amendola surmised through No. 4’s testimony, were written during No. 4’s teenage years, when he was rebelling, losing focus in school and bullying others. Sandusky, Amendola argues, was simply acting as a mentor through his Second Mile charity organization.

“When in public, he’d treat me like his son,” No. 4 testified. “In private, he’d treat me like his girlfriend.”

No. 4 maintained in his testimony that he was rebelling as a result of Sandusky’s molestation and that Sandusky was using the Second Mile to prey on him. That’s why, No. 4 says, Sandusky was so insistent in having him sign an agreement that Sandusky said was part of a Second Mile program.

In the final testimony of the day, Second Mile administrator Marc McCann testified that the contract was not Second Mile approved.

The written agreement required that No. 4, a teenager at the time, would earn money for college if he maintained good grades, worked out three days per week, and spent time weekly with Sandusky. No. 4 said he signed it, then hoped he could get Sandusky out of his life. But Sandusky persisted. Amendola says Sandusky was simply trying to be a mentor.

In one such letter that Sandusky wrote to No. 4, he signed it in addition to No. 4’s youth sports coach, after No. 4 had acted up:

… [We] seem to be conveniences. Commitments seem meaningless. You seek happiness through control. You don’t understand or choose to understand loyalty. Your motivation is to get what you want … You will get older. People will expect more. Your youthfulness will disappear … your so-called best friends will vanish and happiness will escape your life … [but] it’s your life! … We’d love to be a part of your life, but that’s your choice.

In another portion of the letter:

Once again I have decided to write some of my thoughts. I write because you mean so much to us. I write because I am concerned about all of us. I write because I have seen the hurt on [the coach’s] face when you don’t show up for him even though you give him your word. I write because of the churning in my stomach because you don’t care.

In another letter, Sandusky wrote a story he titled “The BJ Story” about a man and a young man riding in a car together and the man not wanting those rides to end:

Very few people know about this story and probably less care I guess that I am writing it for me.