Jerry Sandusky and recovered memory
Remember Jerry Sandusky, convicted of many counts involving serious sexual abuse of children? His name came up in a thread yesterday, when commenter “Abraxas” wrote: “I hadn’t heard the name Jerry Sandusky in a while, but the last time I did, people were writing that he may not actually have been guilty, but just may not have known how to defend himself effectively.”
I hadn’t heard a thing about that, and so I became curious and looked it up. I found this extremely disturbing article that introduces quite a bit of room for doubt concerning Sandusky’s guilt, because the accusations appear to have been the result of pressure, guided questioning of a type that occurred mostly in the 1980s but has since been discredited, and “recovered memory.”
I can’t say whether or not Sandusky is guilty, but if you’re interested in the question, I suggest you read the article or at least most of it. He’s eighty years old now and almost certainly will be in prison for the rest of his life.
Not all recovered memories are false, of course. But they are subject to manipulation, and it is my opinion that they should be regarded with great suspicion in a court of law and no guilty verdict should rest on them, particularly when the “recovery” occurs after accusations about the perp have been made by others and publicized, and when the possibility of high monetary rewards for lawsuits are involved.
NOTE: If you’re interested in learning more about recovered memory, please see this book.
“Recovered Memories” was a cash cow for psychologists who were under financial pressure from insurance companies that were cutting the payments for therapy. The year that Gary Ramona won his lawsuit, the Psychology meeting had workshops about how to “recover memories.” The malpractice insurers dropped coverage for this “therapy” and the whole field collapsed.
No, no, no. I am not going to read an article about Jerry Sandusky. Not today, not any day.
Back in the height of the “recovered memory” shtick, I was seeing a counselor for depression. That chick REALLY was hoping I’d have some sort of “recovered memory.” If I’d’ve been more susceptible to her suggestions (instead of quitting and finding a new counselor, like I did), someone in my past would’ve gotten in deep water. She kept REALLY pushing it for several sessions. I finally realized she was less interested in what was going on at the time with me, then digging up some recovered memory and getting published.
It ruined a lot of people’s lives and drew a butt-load of charlatan shrinks like moths to flame. Much like today, if you criticized the concept you were labeled a hater, etc.
I recall the torment an elderly grand-couple went through in FL. Accused by a deranged teen granddaughter of having a torture chamber in the basement. In FL. There was no basement to the house yet the trial stomped on.
This was one major reason for my utter disdain for the profession, their fabricating of mental issues for the buck. I disagree with Mike K, the field didn’t collapse, it just jumped to another rail.
Oh, look… transgender.
I would have to do a lot of research to come to a (tentative) conclusion. Maybe Sandusky felt guily about feelings that he hadn’t acted upon and was thrown off balance by the charges.
Revisionism. I spent a lot of time in the Penn State community, surrounded by extremely zealous Nittany Lions fans, and kept my distance. Still, I knew Joe Paterno from casual crossing of paths and mutual acquaintances, as well as much of his staff and other Penn State leadership. Couldn’t help but know people, it was a small town, especially pre-2005 or so.
I met Jerry Sandusky and was instantly creeped out. Some prominent people signed on to his Second Mile charity to benefit at risk youths. It was exceedingly strange that after leaving his coaching job as Defensive Coordinator, reportedly because he was told he would never be Paterno’s successor, he never sought another college coaching job. All the other assistant coaches and coordinators were driven to succeed in college coaching, and moved on to other universities for their football programs.
Not Sandusky, he was content to be a Penn State hanger-on and stay in the small town to spend time with his boys in the Second Mile. Very odd, and in person he gave off the creepy vibes you would expect of a pedophile. I often mentioned to some of these Penn State superfans how odd it was, and how much he fit a profile with his obsession with at risk boys. They mostly refused to debate the point, being lost in the cult of Nittany Lion football and the Joe Paterno mythology.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Sandusky was guilty.
I’m not going to take a position one way or the other. Wally may or may not be right but he has closer knowledge of the situation than most of us speculating from afar.
It is possible Sandusky was guilty but that some false “recovered memory” incidents were added in. I fully understand neo’s skepticism given the long record of false recovered memory charges. Kavanaugh for one, though that may have just been a barefaced lie by Blasey.
Two fallacies were used to convict Sandusky. One is “recovered memories”. The other is selective outrage. Let me explain.
We are told that Joe Paterno was morally depraved because when told his former assistant coach was raping a boy in the locker room shower, Paterno did not drop everything and like Superman bring justice to Sandusky. At the same time the football staffer who witnessed the event is given a pass for not doing anything about it other than telling some family and Paterno. But nothing after that! Why the moral selectivity?
Consider that any decent adult who witnessed the rape of a child would be consumed with indignant rage and demand immediate criminal justice. But not at Penn State. No. The adult football staffer is given a pass with all moral outrage heaped onto Paterno, Schultz and Spanier.
This is selective moral outrage and it confirms to me that what happened in the shower was not rape or anything like it – the shower rape narrative is a lie. It is not what the staffer saw and it is not what the staffer told Paterno.
Another case of selective moral outrage is some boys testified they were systematically raped in the basement of the Sanduskys home, with Mrs. Sandusky chilling in the kitchen baking bread or something. Day after day this happened.
No. It did not happen. And authorities know this is a fairytale because otherwise they would charge Mrs. Sandusky with moral depravity. If authorities cannot convict Mrs Sandusky on the basis of this outrageous testimony than they shouldn’t be able to convict Mr. Sandusky. But the fallacy of selective moral outrage allows this dissonance to be ignored.
Wish to add that seeing a man in the shower with a boy in an otherwise empty locker room is creepy. (It deserves noting that it is the solitude of the situation that is creepy. For most of the 20th century men and boys naked in a shower was normal society – YMCA and all that).
So the staffer sees creepy behavior and he tells a few people about it. Eventually he tells Paterno. Paterno informs his superiors who look into the matter and Sandusky admits to them being in the shower!
If what Paterno was told and passed on was the creepy observation of Sandusky being alone in a shower with a boy, but no witness of sexual impropriety, than the case is now confirmed and closed.
That Penn State officials did the right thing is supported by the later testimony of the boy in the shower incident. The boy insisted always that nothing sexual occurred that night – he remembers playing around. Creepy, yes! Criminal, No!
The miscarriage of justice is that prosecutors exploited what was creepy to create a false narrative. Even the football staffer eventually protested that the narrative given by the prosecution was excessive and did not match what he remembered. The lies of the prosecution hurt a lot of innocent people. But because we are “Sure & Certain” Sandusky is a child rapist we are supposed to accept these lies as worth the cost.
This line of thinking – that the lies are worth the cost – is morally repugnant. But it is what too many prosecutors do and what too many citizens allow.
Prosecutors and mercenary shrinks have their various reasons for inserting false “recovered memories”.
That juries buy the con is depressing.
Time for a UFO post. Or a post about killing elephants and other animals for sport.
I read the linked article. Wow. Just wow. The Gell-Mann effect strikes again. Why do we ever believe anything that we read or hear in the news media?
I found the linked article fascinating — I never knew of its existence. Does anyone know of an article effectively refuting it, and I don’t mean merely saying “I find Sandusky creepy”?
The boy insisted always that nothing sexual occurred that night – he remembers playing around. Creepy, yes! Criminal, No!
If he’s right, and Ashley Biden was telling the truth in her diary, then Jerry’s not so different from the current President of the United States and Leader of the Free World.
I might have mentioned Camus’ “The Stranger” in my post the other day. Kafka’s “The Trial,” and Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister” may be other examples of those convicted as much based on how they behave and react as on what they actually did (though Camus character really was a murderer).
Maybe Faulkner’s “Light in August,” Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy,” and Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” could be added to that roster. The list goes on and on — in literature and in real life.
It’s strange that the “creepiness” factor doesn’t discredit accusers, though. E. Jean Carroll and Christine Blasey Ford, for example. The latter has a memoir coming out this year.
A skeptical view of the Case against Sandusky
http://www.framingpaterno.com/here-are-all-5-parts-pennsylvania-newspapers-series-arguing-jerry-sanduskys-innocence
I am still reading through the paper and it is somewhat interesting, but I want to single out something I found particularly disturbing in the author’s argument.
This is grade A horseshit. Moreover, I think Crews Knows (or at least SHOULD know) it is Horseshit.
It seems to make no sense to us, and rationally it does not, but human psychology under stress often is not rational. And we know full well of similar unhealthy dependent relationships like what is Alleged (I will withhold using more certain terms for now) happened here, even though both sides were nominally free and it seemed voluntary. Workplace or school sexual coercion are good examples of this, as is abusive parents or fosters.
Meanwhile, “boastful, actively heterosexual” behavior could be a thoroughly normal set of behaviors for young men, or a way of compensating in the face of being pressed into a situation they do not want. The cult of rape and abuse in the “Dark Valley” of Japan – and especially in the Imperial Japanese Army – I think has a fair amount of scholarship on these kinds of dynamics that describe things very much like that, albeit usually even less healthy. Of boastfully going after women in order to conceal being a submissive or outright victim to other men (which was hardly limited to the Japanese in WWII; Julius Caesar was unsuccessfully accused of being a lover of one of Rome’s Client Kings and while to the best of my knowledge it was never proven it does show the kind of atmosphere that can pervade.)
Certainly, these are grounds to suspect the explanation. But the allegation is not “unimaginable” unless one is being remarkably unimaginative, remarkably dishonest, or both.
I have not read through the rest of the article, and there may be good points. However, this already leads me to gravely suspect the honesty involved here.