Victim 1 Cries on Stand in Penn State Sex Abuse Trial - East Idaho News
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Victim 1 Cries on Stand in Penn State Sex Abuse Trial

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Getty 061212 Sandusky2?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1339517361259Rob Carr/Getty Images(BELLEFONTE, Pa.) — The 18-year-old man who launched the sex abuse investigation into Jerry Sandusky wept on the stand Tuesday and brought some jurors to tears as he recalled the first time the former Penn State coach allegedly performed oral sex on him, when he was about 12 years old.

“After rubbing, cracking my back and rubbing his hands down back of my shorts, and the blowing on the stomach,” he said, pausing to cry, “he put his mouth on my privates.  I spaced, I didn’t know what to do.  With all the thoughts running through my head, I just kind of blacked out and didn’t want it to happen.  I was froze.”

The man, known as Victim 1, reported the alleged sexual abuse to his mother and his high school in 2008, launching a three-year investigation that led to 52 charges of child sex abuse against Sandusky.

The recent high school graduate was the second accuser to testify during the trial, which began Monday in Bellefonte, Pa., 10 miles from Penn State University.

He described meeting Sandusky through Sandusky’s charity for underprivileged boys, the Second Mile, and spending time with Sandusky playing sports, doing activities and sleeping over his house.

Victim 1 described staying in Sandusky’s basement bedroom, where a water bed and television were sequestered away from a pool table.  It was there that Sandusky began abusing him, he said.

Jury members placed their hands over their mouths or wiped tears away from their eyes as the man testified that Sandusky forced him to perform oral sex.

“lt was back cracking, rolling around in bed, back massages, hands down back of my shorts.  The same thing,” he said, pausing to cry.  “Except this time he sat there and he looked at me and said something along the lines of, ‘It’s your turn,’ and he made me, he made me put my mouth on his privates.  In the basement room.”

Joseph Amendola, the defense attorney for Sandusky, tried during cross-examination to pick through the accuser’s account of events, showing that he told investigators with Children and Youth Services and the state police different timelines for when the oral sex abuse began and ended, and showing that he didn’t even mention oral sex to investigators until about eight months into the investigation, when troopers told him there were other young people with similar claims.

The back-and-forth between Amendola and Victim 1 became tense at times, as the accuser dismissed Amendola’s suggestion that he was lying.

Victim 1 was adamant that staying at Sandusky’s house affected his behavior.

“After I started staying with him it [my behavior] changed noticeably.  I acted out, I started wetting the bed, I got into fights with people, stuff I would never normally do,” he said.

Sandusky also came to the boy’s school frequently and pulled him out of class for conferences, he testified.

Once, Sandusky and the boy were working out in a wrestling room when Sandusky pulled the alleged victim off of a rock climbing wall and down onto him on a wrestling mat, where he began rolling around with the boy and blowing on his stomach.  Then, a coach walked in.

“Then the door opened and Joe Miller walked in on me.  I felt kind of like a relief that nothing was going to happen in the school,” he said.

Amendola, however, went back over the incident with Victim 1, noting that in his grand jury testimony, Victim 1 said it was “hilarious” when he fell of the rock wall with Sandusky when they were climbing, and that he was “laughing hysterically.”  Amendola reiterated that there had been no sexual contact during the incident.

Amendola also hinted that Victim 1 had discussed getting rich by bringing a civil suit against Sandusky, part of the defense strategy Amendola has described since the beginning of the case.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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