Thanks Mr. President

Dear President Obama,

Two years ago today, my mom passed away from colon cancer.  Her name was Laurel and she was a wonderful mother to me and my sister, a wonderful wife to my dad and wonderful friend to almost every one she met.   She voted for you, saying, “I like that young man”.  That sir was high praise indeed. 

I’m telling you about her because today the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act that you championed,  insuring that millions of Americans like my mom will get health care they need and can afford. 

You see, Mom didn’t seek medical care when she had some symptoms a full five years before diagnosis.  She simply couldn’t afford the co-pays and testing, even with Medicare and Medicare supplemental insurance.  Co-pays for office visits with specialists were two hundred dollars, some treatments she needed weren’t covered at all and were out of pocket.  Near the end she and Dad were forced to move out of their home and move in with my sister and brother in law. 

As a retiree on fixed income, she waited until she had no choice.  Her doctors and surgeons did what they could, but time ran out. 

It is my fervent belief that the Affordable Care Act will help prevent people like my mom from waiting for care due to costs.  I hope that going forward even broader changes to health care can be enacted. 

For now I just want to say thank you.  Thanks for supporting this law helping out people who truly need it.   Thanks for helping  my daughters ages 11 and 5 grow up in a country that recognizes that providing care for our sick is the human and humane thing to do.

Somewhere my mom is happy that she voted for “that young man”. She was right about you.

Sincerely,

Patrick Perion (@QuadCityPat)

Sandusky's Victims, How Many Are There.

I've been approached by several people on Twitter and email asking for information about how many boys Jerry Sandusky actually molested.  I've also been asked about the age at which predators start preying on children.  We know that he was found guilty of sexually abusing and raping 10 boys.  There are a lot more.  

First some general statistics.  Latest national data on sexual abuse of children shows that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys report abuse.  Approximately 1 in 6 boys are actually abused.  We also know that in general serial sexual abusers abuse an average of 117 children.  Those are scary numbers.

In Sandusky's particular case, I suspect that he started the serial child rape when he was between 16 and 18.  This is a guess, but it's one educated by 18 years of dealing with the Jerry Sanduskys of the world.

Serial child rape as with adult rape is about power and control.  We know from the Sandusky trial that all of his victims were between the ages of 10 and 15.  Due to this it can be surmised that Sandusky was between 16 and 18 when the serial nature of his abuse started.  In order to gain power and control, at those ages predators are generally bigger and stronger than their prey.

I pointedly stated that the serial nature of his predation probably started when he was in his late teens.  It's entirely possible that his first sexual assault of someone else happened earlier in life.  I've dealt with predators that have stated that they first abused a younger child when they were 7 or 8.

It should also be pointed out that Sandusky may not have been the victim of child rape himself.  Prison studies of serial child rapists show that a higher percentage of convicted child rapists say they were severely physically abused as children.  Many of them were sexually assaulted, but in most major studies, they claim either sexual or physical abuse, hardly ever claiming both.

Later in life Sandusky used the Second Mile charity and his status at Penn State to cultivate his prey and keep them silent after he brutalized them.  Judging again by the trial records, he abused two boys a year.  Simple math shows that his total in fifty years would be a hundred boys.  However when you factor in the under reporting of male victims those two boys per year may have been as many as four or five. Making the total as high as two hundred to two hundred fifty.

In this case, bet the over.

Sandusky: The Verdict

Wow, what a day.  Before I get to my final thoughts, I have a few thank yous.  First my wife Nicole and my girls, coming home to the three of you makes my job doable, I love the three of you more than I can say.  Adam Hoge at The Score for asking me to do this blog and his bosses for letting it happen.   Dan Bernstein and Terry Boers for promoting the blog during their show, and for putting up with me when I'm AKA Quad City Pat. Finally to you the Score listener, reader and commenter, I'm happy that I could shed some light on a dark corner of humanity for you.

Now my thoughts:

In child sexual abuse trials, there is really no substitute for hearing "guilty" as each charge is read.  The victims are vindicated, the abuser is brought to justice. The prosecution gloats a little.  The defense backpedals.  Everyone on the side of right feels good.

What happens now?

First and most importantly, every one of the victims must get into counseling to work through their issues.  Many already have, but they all need it.

At one point early in my career I had no idea what sexual trauma did to victims.  22 years ago, I was driving a female victim of sexual abuse in a stick shift pick up, to a visit with her family.  She was uncomfortable with sitting in the middle seat where the shifter was.  I thought she was being dramatic. I was an idiot.

I've quoted these stats before, 1 in 6 girls have been sexually abused. 1 in 10 boys.  Sexual abuse is horribly under reported.

Please educate your children.  If they have a secret, if someone tells them a "bad" secret, tell an adult.  If an adult asks them to do something that they think is icky tell another adult.

I don't know what will happen with Penn State and Sandusky.  There may be more charges.  There may be appeals.  There will be civil suits.  Frankly I don't care, these men came forward to tell the world about the unthinkable and they won. That's enough for now.

Sandusky Trial Day 9

Waiting sucks. That's what I have heard from every victim and every family that I've ever sat through a trial with.  

In most sex abuse cases that I have worked there is no trial.  There's a disclosure, there's a confession or enough corroboration that we need no confession.  The perp is charged.  They always plead not guilty at preliminary hearing, then the negotiations start.

The defense gets a copy of all of our evidence.  The advent and use of Children's Advocacy Centers has been invaluable in these cases, because we turn over the taped interviews as part of evidence.  The defense gets a look at a credible kid, and decides that they want to try for a plea deal.  Once in a while, they decide to take it to trial.

After overwhelming evidence is presented.  After victims give tearful heart wrenching testimony.  After people like myself get grilled on the stand because maybe we restated a victim's answer saying penis instead of wee wee.  After the closing arguments, charts, videos and timelines. After the judge reads the charges and the instructions, we wait.

Sometimes we wait for hours.  Sometimes its days.  Personal longest wait was 3 days.  Jury got the case on Friday, we got a verdict on Tuesday, they didn't work the weekend.  We won that one.  The shortest was 2 hours, we won that one too.  I had one a couple of years ago, multiple victims, unrelated to each other with varying degrees of abuse.  Seemed like a slam dunk.  Jury out for 6 hours on 12 counts.  Not guilty.  Turns out one of the jurors was a teacher, and she just "knew" that kids make things up.

You learn to force a smile in front of the families.  You never say you have a doubt. You always tell them that they did great.  You always  tell them not to worry.

You always tell them, waiting sucks....

Sandusky Trial Day 8

Thursday marked the closing arguments  of both prosecution and defense and the case being given to the jury.  The big news of the day happened outside the court house as two more victims came forward.  One of  them, Matt Sandusky, adopted son of Jerry and Dottie Sandusky.

I'll get to that in a moment but first a quick look at the closing arguments.

First the prosecution's which was particularly good. Reading excerpts reported by several outlets, it appears that Mr. McGettigan did his job to the best of his ability.  It will be hard for the jury to forget the faces of the 8 men shown on a 12 foot screen as boys.  That's the sort of thing that connects juries to the people who were victimized.  It humanizes the victims and they are no longer randomly titled "Victim 1 through 10".

In the many trials that I have been a part of, anything done with the big projection screen seems to have an impact.  I had a case a while back in which the defense used the projector and the prosecution did not.  The perp was found not guilty despite a mountain of evidence against him.  Juries are funny that way.

I'll say this for Joe Amendola, he really sells his side of the case.  His close hit all the points he made in the trial.  The one point he made that made me laugh was when he said that Sandusky didn't start being a pedophile until his 50's because all the alleged incidents started in the 1990's.  No, Joe, Sandusky didn't start in his 50's, no one before then has come forward. That"s a big distinction.

In the big news of the day, two more people came forward.  Travis Weaver, a 30 year old man came forward, has filed a civil suit and was interviewed on Rock Center with Brian Williams on NBC.  The full interview is to be shown on Thursday night's show.

Matt Sandusky also came forward.  He was prepared to be a rebuttal witness if Jerry Sandusky took the stand.  Matt Sandusky, through his attorney issued a statement that he was a victim of molestation by Jerry Sandusky and was later adopted by the Sanduskys as an adult.

Several questions were tweeted and emailed to me today about why the prosecution did not use these  two witnesses.  First, if I am reading Pennsylvania law correctly, both of these men are beyond the statute of limitations.  Abuse that occurred under the age of 18 can only be prosecuted 10 years after the victim turns 18.

In Illinois the law is similar.  Victims outside the statute can be used for rebuttal in some instances, but because of bans on presenting prior bad acts as prejudicial, I have not seen any case in which they were allowed to testify.  Usually prior victims are used during sentencing to show patterns of behavior.

The other question that was posed today was why did Dottie Sandusky not notice behavior changes in her Foster Son and later Adopted Son, Matt.

The reason is tragic on many fronts.  Foster kids and adoptive kids make perfect victims for serial sexual abusers.  Foster kids and adopted kids especially those adopted later in life have a myriad of behavioral, mental and social problems.  Any unusual behavior by that child is chalked up to being a foster kid.  They become sullen, withdrawn, perhaps even act out sexually, and it's all chalked up to being a foster or adopted kid with attachment disorders.  Unless the kid makes a disclosure, these behaviors are almost always attributed to other factors.

The children he had living with him as foster and adoptive children are even more perfect prey than the boys with no father figure and no self esteem that he groomed through Second Mile.

This case is finally with the jury.  Unfortunately, no matter the verdict, the atrocities that Jerry Sandusky committed, will never go away.

Sandusky Trial Day 7

Wednesday, the defense in the Jerry Sandusky trial rested its case without having Sandusky take  the stand in his own defense.  This perplexed some, outraged others and caused an endless stream of columns today.  As SCORE  colleague, Dan Bernstein, wrote earlier, if you're planning your defense around a hail mary strategy.  You let the guy testify.

There are several possible reasons for Sandusky sitting this one out.  First let me say, that not having him testify completely defuses the argument that he has Histrionic Personality Disorder.  A man with this disorder is someone who loves to be  the center of attention.  He tells his attorney "I'm testifying",  period.

I've sat through dozens of trials of child sexual abusers, child murderers and child batterers.  There are no two alike.  I've seen cases in which the prosecution has a mountain of evidence, the defendant testifies, and is later acquitted.  I've seen cases where the defendant is ripped to shreds on the stand and is found guilty.  Trials in which the defendant doesn't testify happen all the time.  It can be disappointing but it's been common in the sexual abuse trials that I have been involved in.

In Sandusky's case, Jerry may just not be capable of testifying without sounding pathetic and creepy.  Attorney's spend hours upon hours prepping witnesses.  In a trial about allegations this horrible, the defense certainly does not want Sandusky to sound as creepy on the stand as he did in the already played tapes from NBC.

It's also entirely possible that Joe Amendola and Karl Rominger think that they've proved their case.  That these boys are making it up for money, that Mike McQueary was mistaken and not credible, that Jerry really is just a great guy who wants to help kids.

I think they're deluded.  Even their defense character witnesses helped the prosecution. A 21 year old, David  Hilton testified that spent many nights at Sandusky's home and was never molested.  He also testified that he spoke to police and prosecutors several times and was always told to just tell the truth and don't make anything up.  This completely destroys the case that the other boys made it up and were coached by police to embellish the abuse.

Their assault on McQueary's credibility really didn't accomplish anything either.  It did raise a question as to why he didn't report this to someone besides Joe Paterno.  Simply put mandated reporting only covers people who are directly working with children in a professional capacity.  If McQueary was a coach of high school kids, he'd be required to call.  Other people didn't report because there was no outcry from the victims until they were adults.  Sandusky's type of serial sexual abuse depends on victims slipping through the cracks.  Unfortunately that happens a lot more than you might suspect.

Closing arguments are set for tomorrow.  Don't be surprised if some charges are dropped or consolidated, again it happens all the time.  The closing statements both sides make will be very telling about where they think they stand with they jury.  No matter what's said, it'll be a fascinating day in Centre County

Sandusky Day 6.

Tuesday marked the second day of defense witnesses.  It was a veritable clown car of Penn State sycophants, Sandusky's friends and mental health professionals.  That's apropos because Joe Amendola is a clown. 


On the way to the court room this morning Amendola was asked about Sandusky testifying.  His response: "Stay tuned. It's like a soap opera. If I tell you, it takes all the excitement out of it." When asked which soap opera he said General Hospital, then quipped "All My Children."  In  the midst of trying to keep his client from jail, in the midst of horrific tales of abuse, he chose to crack wise.  I spoke to a couple of defense attorney friends today and they were mortified.  There's a certain decorum to trials and clearly Amendola doesn't care.  In fact his obsession with the limelight leads one to believe that he has histrionic personality disorder.  


Speaking of mental health, two experts testified today with varying opinions on whether Sandusky has histrionic personality disorder.  In my limited experience with such things, I would tend to agree with the second expert, Dr. Sebastion O'Brien.  He did not seem to think Jerry was suffering from this disorder.  My personal belief is that Sandusky's more of a sociopath.  Charming, friendly seemingly able to have relationships with people.  Again as discussed before, his charm and friendliness helped him woo his conquests. 


Three things really stood out today.  One was the tape from NBC in which Sandusky said "I didn't go seeking out every young person for sexual needs".  Technically true, but damning.  The ones he did seek out were the  weakest prey.  Kids he dealt with Second Mile who were not the poorest kids, or the kids with the least self esteem would be too hard to corral.  They'd be the ones most likely to report him to authorities sooner.  


The second big deal of the day was what was reported as "contradictory" testimony from the lead investigators.  While there was some discrepancy in the testimony, it was hardly fatal.  The defense tried to say  that the investigators told the witnesses what to say because they mentioned on tape to Victim 4 that "other boys" had said the "same things".  


I've interviewed thousands of kids.  When we do forensic interviews of child sexual abuse victims, it is occasionally necessary to tell the child that other people have come forward, other people have already told what happened.  When we are interviewing multiple victims of the same perpetrator, telling the child that other children have come forward, makes it easier for them to tell.  The idea is to get the kid talking to give a narrative of what happened.  I've used this technique with kids as young as 3 to get them talking.  Frankly as an investigator you use whatever you got.  I once got a kid talking because he thought I looked like John Goodman.   


The only real problem I had with the investigation was that I would have preferred  that the victims had been interviewed one on one in at a Children's Advocacy Center.  I realize that the victims are now adults, but giving a taped statement to one person in a safe place works for victims of all ages.  


The final big item was the testimony of Dottie Sandusky.  I literally started humming Stand by Your Man, when Dan Bernstein reported that she had taken the stand.  What's important for the prosecution is that she corroborated the Victims testimony that they had spent the night and that Sandusky had gone to "tuck them in" before bed.  Again like this entire defense, no one is refuting the testimony of the victims.  


Apparently they are leaving that for Sandusky who testifies tomorrow.  I for one can't wait to hear what the bastard has to say.