An Army National Guard member said he loved Jerry Sandusky as he detailed repeated abuse that happened when he was a boy.
The 25-year-old said on the stand his love for Sandusky and the lifestyle he was providing was the reason he put up with the abuse and never told anyone about it. Just like all the other alleged victims who have testified so far, this one did not have a father figure in his life.
“He made me feel like I was part of something like a family,” said so-called Victim 3. “He gave me things I had never had before. I didn’t want to give anything up.”
But like other alleged victims, this 25 year-old man who served a tour of duty in Iraq sat on the witness stand and talked about abuse at the Sandusky home and abuse at the Penn State Lasch Football Building, all back in the late 1990s.
“I would have all my clothes on and he would ask me why I would want to sleep in my clothes,” he testified about bedtime at the Sandusky house. “So I stripped down to my underwear. He would sit on the bed and make me laugh then jump into bed to tickle me. He would blow on my stomach, rub my stomach and he would touch my penis.”
“He would wash my shoulders, my back, my butt. he would pick me up and bear hug me and put me up in the air with my back to him and my front to him,” the alleged victim testified about numerous times showering with Sandusky.
But despite that abuse, Alleged Victim 3 said he enjoyed spending time with Sandusky out of his troubled home. He said he felt like extended family. He said he felt unconditionally loved.
“I felt like I was part of a family,” he testified. “I didn’t feel part of my own family.”
So-called Victim 3 told jurors that as he got older and after a relationship of a couple of years with Sandusky he got into trouble at home and was sent off to a group home. He said he didn’t hear from Sandusky after that. He said hoped all the time that Sandusky would contact him to see how he was or try to get him out of the home, maybe even adopt him.
“I’m mad. I’m enraged. I’m hurt. Because he could just forget about me and there was nothing after all that,” the alleged victim said. “I prayed he would call me, find a way to get me out of there. That never happened.”
He testified that last year, police contacted him about possible abuse at the hands of Sandusky. He said he didn’t want to talk to police or anyone else about what happened.
As he has done with all alleged victims on the witness stand, defense attorney Joe Amendola asked him if he has obtained a personal attorney hoping to get a financial gain out of this. He does have an attorney but answered “no” to questions about financial gain.
Again, like the other victims, Amendola asked why he wasn’t forthcoming with details of the abuse when first talking with investigators. And like the others, this accuser answered that he was embarrassed and uncomfortable talking about it.
“I tried to block it out of my mind for years,” Alleged Victim 3 told the jury.
