http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1206/11/ijvm.01.htmlJANE VELEZ-MITCHELL
Young Mom Vanishes after Visiting Uncle
Aired June 11, 2012 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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Also the Jerry Sandusky pedophile trial opens with a shocker. Victim No. 4 spills the secrets of what he calls his childhood sexual torment at the hands of this Penn State legend. Tonight, a famous survivor of sexual abuse gives us a peek into what these boys allegedly endured. And we`re taking your calls.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Opening statements under way this morning in the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse trial.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The grand jury report is filled with details from each accuser, alleging how and when Sandusky allegedly abused them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Former Penn State assistant football coach is charged with sexually abusing ten boys over 15 years ago. He`s facing 52 counts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The report details accusations that Sandusky would take his hands and place them on their thighs as they were driving in the car. That he would tickle them and blow on their stomachs at bedtime, would shower naked with them, and would rape them.
JEAN CASAREZ, TRUTV`S "IN SESSION": All of a sudden this young man walks out from a door in the back of the courtroom and takes the stand. He`s wearing a dress shirt. He`s got a tie. He is alleged victim No. 4. He would lift them, he said, by their buttocks and then he would take his hands and rub them on their genitals real fast. That`s how he got to know Jerry Sandusky.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A tent is set up outside the courthouse to help shield some of these alleged victims, the witnesses, from the cameras.
JOE AMENDOLA, ATTORNEY FOR JERRY SANDUSKY: I find it hard to believe -- and many other people will consider this issue also -- that so many of these accusers have maintained social ties with Jerry and his wife, Dottie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Tonight Jerry Sandusky comes face-to-face with one of his accusers, a 28-year-old man who says he was sexually abused by Sandusky for years when he was a boy.
Some of what this young man told the court in day one of this nationally watched trial is so graphic we cannot quote him on TV. But tonight, as we show you video of Jerry Sandusky going into court, we`re going to talk with somebody who was in the courtroom and heard every single word.
Here is the man at the center of it all, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. You see him there arriving at court. He`s facing 52 charges as he walked into court today. Fifty-two charges, tied to what prosecutors say was his systemic abuse of at least 10 boys over 15 years, alleged victims who had feelings of humiliation, shame and fear that kept them silent for years.
Here`s what Sandusky told NBC about allegations that he was taking neighborhood naked showers with young boys.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JERRY SANDUSKY, ON TRIAL FOR SEXUAL ABUSE (via phone): I have horsed around with kids. I have showered after workouts. I have hugged them, and I have touched their legs, without intent of sexual contact.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Today it was alleged victim No. 4 who took the stand. This young man, who we`re not naming, says he met Sandusky at the Second Mile Foundation for boys at risk and says the relationship quickly escalated to sex, but he didn`t know what to do about it.
Listen as "In Session`s" Jean Casarez describes what this young man told jurors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: He took this alleged victim No. 4 along with some other kids down to the water`s edge at the park where they went on the family picnic and started lifting the little kids up in the air and down. He would lift them, he said, by their buttocks and then he would take his hands and rub them on their genitals real fast. That`s how he got to know Jerry Sandusky.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: This case rocked the nation, and of course, Penn State. And when the legendary football coach Joe Paterno was fired in the fallout, there were riots. You`re looking at those riots. They overturned a news van. Paterno later died.
Now, one of his key staffers, Mike McQueary, is a key witness because he says he saw Sandusky in the showers in a sexual situation with what he believed to be a young boy. Today we found out the defense hopes to introduce evidence that Sandusky suffers from a personality disorder.
What do you think about this case? Call me. 1-877-JVM-SAYS.
Straight out to Beth Karas, "In Session" correspondent on TruTV; Beth, you were in the courtroom. What was it like to hear this young man take the stand and face this alleged monster in court?
BETH KARAS, CORRESPONDENT, "IN SESSION": Well, as you can imagine, Jane, it was very tense in the courtroom; almost 200 people filling the courtroom, listening from the public gallery.
Jerry Sandusky sitting between his lawyers staring at this young man, now 28 years old and I saw him from a side view, just looking at him. Couldn`t see emotion from Sandusky`s face, but he was staring at him.
Now this young man was very forthright, but he was very well-prepared. He met many times with prosecutors to go over this story. It had to have been painful to talk about it. But he probably said it so many times that it was more rote because he had gone over it a lot.
He described how he was just a child. No one ever cared for him before, and he knew what was happening was wrong. He didn`t want it to happen, but he also didn`t want to lose the attention and the things that he was getting. "For once, somebody was paying attention to me," he said.
He had sort of a troubled life. He was a bit of a bully. He used to get in trouble. And here is a man who was taking him to games and taking him to ball games outside of the state. He was lavishing him with gifts and sports equipment and jerseys, and he was getting lots of nice things. He had to do things he didn`t want to do, and he talked about how it escalated.
He did not want penetration, and there was a little bit, but he got away from him when there were these attempts to penetrate him. But there was a lot of other things that went on besides penetration.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Duncan Roy is a survivor of sexual abuse -- because we`re trying to understand what is it like to be in the shoes of this young man who says all this stuff happened to him for years, sexual stuff at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, and now he`s got to get up and talk about those and spill those allegations essentially in front of the world.
Now, Duncan Roy, you spoke courageously about your abuse to Dr. Drew on VH1`s "Sex Rehab".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DUNCAN ROY, SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVOR: I felt utterly powerless because I was.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were. No social services are going to come in on a white horse and save me. It wasn`t going to happen. So consequently it just got worse and worse and worse --
DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN HOST: Nothing worse could happen.
ROY: Nothing worse could happen.
PINSKY: Even death.
ROY: Yes, that`s right. It`s like you`re already dead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Duncan Roy, on cross examination, Sandusky`s attorney grilled this young man about why didn`t you cut off contact with Sandusky if he did this to you? Can you explain the dynamic that occurs?
ROY: I think when you`re a child and you`re being abused by a family member who you trust in almost every other situation, you tend to believe that what they`re doing to you is good. And you know, you might have feelings of shame then, but as the young man explain in the courtroom, if you`re feeling less than and you`re getting gifts and you`re getting attention, then sometimes it`s probably easier just to put up with the sex abuse than to say no and lose the good things that you`re getting.
I mean, you know, the legacy of abuse is the ongoing shame that you have throughout your life. And you know, I feel for these kids, these young men that have come to testify because it`s not easy. It`s not easy to tell the truth about terrible things that you know you`ve put to the back of your mind usually. And you know that it was wrong.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: So right -- it must be so difficult for these young men. Alleged victim number four, the first witness in this blockbuster trial admitted to the court that part of the reason -- you were hearing it -- he didn`t tell anybody because he enjoyed all the special attention Sandusky was giving him.
Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: He couldn`t believe what he was getting to do. Go to Penn State games, meet the football players, fly in the coach`s plane. He said, "I never told anybody because I was a big deal at high school, and I didn`t have very much in my life, and I didn`t want it to stop."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: But clearly this was a nightmare. Alleged victim number four says Sandusky forced him to perform oral sex dozens of times and attempted penetration. And that Sandusky allegedly pressed him against the floor, stomach down and attempted to have blank sex with him.
This is what I have to understand. Stacy Honowitz, how is it possible that about half of the people on the jury have ties to Penn State? At least one, possibly two are professors. To me, given that this was an institution that failed to call 911 at a time that they should have called 911, I think that these people may feel pressure to act a certain way and decide a certain way because of their connections to Penn State.
STACEY HONOWITZ, FLORIDA PROSECUTOR: You know, Jane, it was very unusual that number one, the jury was picked very quickly in a sex crimes case, especially a very high-profile case that the world is watching. And number two, (inaudible) a lot of the people on the jury are connected with Penn State. And you`re right. There could be a feeling of pressure that we didn`t do anything before. Maybe we need to do something now.
But I can also tell you that after listening to eight to nine to ten victims come and take the stand and repeat the same story over and over again, it might not be that difficult. It is interesting to note why the defense did do it that way or left them on. Maybe they had a different way of thinking. Maybe they thought they were going to be sympathetic because he did work for the university.
But, you know, this is just one day of graphic detailed victim abuse. You`re going to hear of it for the next couple of weeks. And it`s a tough case for people have to sit on. It`s tough for people to have to listen to. Sometimes it`s good for the victims to finally come forward and talk about it.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I watched closely, and, you know, his back is to the gallery, but I saw a side angle. He listened to everything. He wrote some notes, but when alleged victim number four was talking about how he met him and the family picnic and how they would start to go to Penn State to do exercise and then shower, I saw Jerry Sandusky re-living some of that -- I felt I saw a faint smile on his face.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Gosh. The defense has hinted he might take the stand. So you`re going to hear from Jerry Sandusky. Or maybe they`re just referring to videotape. He`s spoken on camera. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JERRY SANDUSKY, ON TRIAL FOR SEXUAL ABUSE: If I say "No, I`m not attracted to boys," that`s not the truth because I`m attracted to young people -- boys, girls.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, but not sexually. Your attracted because you enjoy spending time.
SANDUSKY: Right. I enjoy -- that`s what I was trying to -- I enjoy spending time with young people. I enjoy spending time with people. I mean my two favorite groups are the elderly and the young.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Boy, they play that tape in court, Jon Leiberman, that is going to be tough. Do you think he`s going to take the stand? And what about this histrionic personality disorder which now the defense is hinting that`s what they`re going to use as a defense. That he has histrionic personality disorder -- "attention-seeking, dramatic behavior".
JON LEIBERMAN, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Yes, I mean Jane -- I mean a laundry list of all of the theories here that the defense is trying to throw up against the board here. You have history on personality disorder. They`re going to tell you that Mike McQueary misunderstood what he saw when he saw Sandusky in the shower with one of the kids. You`re going to hear that the victims just want to make money, and that`s why they lawyered up and started looking at civil action.
You`re going to hear that in Jerry Sandusky`s culture, it was, quote, "normal for coaches to shower with kids". These are all the things you`re going to hear.
What it`s going to come down to for the jury is this. This is a case with really no physical evidence because of the time. It goes back so far. You`re not going to have DNA. You`re not going to have fingerprints. This is going to come down to the pictures, the people, the victims, the real lives that these jurors saw today in front of them when the prosecution put each of the alleged victims` pictures up on the screen. If the jurors believe them, then they will convict.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: This is a cautionary tale. If a guy who is a middle- aged man starts taking interest in your kid, beware. If he starts giving your kid gifts, and this guy gave allegedly tons of very fancy sports equipment to these kids, beware. If he wants to shower with your kids, beware.
Ok. Let`s go out to the phone lines. Karen in North Carolina, your question or thought, Karen?
KAREN, NORTH CAROLINA (via telephone): Hi.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Hi.
KAREN: Hi. Hi, Jane. Jane, I just wanted to say that I think Sandusky, first of all, put himself in a position to be around young boys. And I think that his family were a bunch of enablers that turned a blind side to his actions that they saw right in front of their face but chose to ignore. And I think that trickled down to the football field where because of his position, the people around him just turned the other cheek in fear of losing a position that they have.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Thank you Karen.
KAREN: And I think that`s what allowed him to be able to continue --
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Duncan Roy, sexual abuse survivor, these kind of guys go after troubled kids because aren`t they easier to manipulate?
ROY: I think a child with a broken wing, as it were, is much easier to manipulate. And probably, as you said, ignored by the family -- his own family; he turns to somebody powerful, like this guy, and would have done anything for him because there`s a certain amount of loyalty that springs up between children and adults in powerful positions. And I think, you know, when you don`t see a future for yourself and this person is promising you the world then you know, that`s a very easy position to lose yourself to.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And this victim said Sandusky wrote him creepy love letters. Here`s one. "I write because you mean so much to us. I write because of the churning in my stomach when you don`t care. I write because I hope there will be meaning to the time we have known each other." Oy, this is bad.
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