Matt Sandusky Essay

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Amy Tirrill Reaction Paper Sandusky A haunting, and telling, piece of testimony in the trial of Jerry Sandusky came after the eighteen-year-old known as Victim 1 talked about how, when he was about thirteen, Sandusky groped him and then performed oral sex on him when he stayed over at his house. Mike Dawson, for McClatchy, described Victim 1’s account of what happened next, one summer night at bedtime: “He sat there and looked at me and said something along the lines of ‘it’s your turn’ and he made me,” he stopped, covering his face with his hands, “he made me put my mouth on his privates.” “It’s your turn”: in that phrase, there’s a glimpse of a particularly cruel means of compulsion that seems to have been used on the boys he is accused of sexually abusing or raping. Sandusky told them, again and again, that they owed him. All of the boys had family situations that left them vulnerable; a number of them were coming from or headed for foster homes, and were supposedly being helped by Sandusky, a Penn State defensive coach, and his Second Mile foundation. He instead, took their innocence. That includes Matt Sandusky, the youngest of six children Sandusky adopted, who now, at the age of thirty-three, has joined his accusers. Sandusky has pleaded not guilty, and the jury is deliberating now. The jurors were sequestered before Matt, through his lawyers, let it be known that he had told prosecutors he was ready to “testify truthfully as a commonwealth witness” against his adoptive father. The story of how Matt ended up in the Sandusky house sounds more like a soap opera or a tragedy, or, given how many warning signs seem to have been missed, a cautionary tale. The boy started a fire that burned down a barn; Sandusky, who knew him and had spent time with him through Second Mile, asked the juvenile court that Matt be sent to live with him. Did Sandusky consider

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