THE VERDICT IS IN!! Jerry Sandusky has been found guilty on 45 of the 48 counts/ Sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison/ Sandusky gives interview from prison

He was known only as Victim 1 in one of the most infamous child sexual abuse cases in history. But this week, Aaron Fisher revealed his identity to the world and, in an exclusive interview with "20/20's" Chris Cuomo, told the story of those he said stood in his way as he struggled to bring now-convicted child predator Jerry Sandusky to justice: officials at his own high school.

"Here I am, beside my mom, crying, telling them and they don't believe me," he said in an interview with Cuomo airing on "20/20" tonight at 10 p.m. ET. "I knew they wouldn't."

Fisher has detailed his struggle to have his allegations against Sandusky, formerly a revered Penn State University football coach, taken seriously in a new book,"Silent No More: Victim 1's Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky," published today.

He was 11 when he met Jerry Sandusky in the summer of 2005. Fisher was selected to attend a summer camp run by Sandusky's charity organization for disadvantaged children, The Second Mile, on Penn State's campus.

Fisher said Sandusky immediately took a special interest in him. He encouraged Fisher's athletic interests, taking him to both college and pro sports events.

"We sat in box seats," said Fisher. "He was just kind of like a giant stuffed teddy bear. He seemed like the all-natural father figure -- something that most kids wished their dads did."

Watch the exclusive interview on "20/20" tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

Young Aaron came from a struggling family and didn't have a father at home. Dawn Daniels, Fisher's mother, recalled the times Sandusky took the boy away for the weekend to give her a break.

"Everybody knew who he was," said Daniels, "He's a great guy. Everybody, even my own father, said he does great things for kids."

Sandusky's reputation had preceded him and put Daniels at ease as far as allowing her son to spend so much time with Sandusky. But according to Fisher, Sandusky slowly turned from a "father figure" into something much darker.

"He'd put his hand on my leg while we were driving," Fisher said, "My family never did that, so it was kind of weird."

By the time Fisher was 12, Sandusky was sexually assaulting him. Fisher said fear, shame and confusion prevented him from seeking help and telling anyone about his tormentor.

"There were so many emotions and thoughts running through my head," he said. "Being a kid, you never know what to do, and you don't know who to tell because you don't know who you can trust."

Fisher said Sandusky began seeking him out at his own high school, Central Mountain High School in Lock Haven, Pa. Sandusky was a volunteer football coach there and would pull him out of class, with school officials' blessing.

Daniels said the school never notified her about all of the classes her son missed because of Sandusky and Fisher said no teacher or administrator ever questioned Sandusky's motives.

It grew to be too much and Fisher said he tried to do everything in his power to stay away from the ex-Penn State coach, sometimes hiding in school bathrooms rather to avoid meeting with Sandusky. But Sandusky only grew more aggressive, Fisher said.

"He once followed my bus home from school," he said. "I took off running but he drove on the opposite side of the street, onto oncoming traffic to catch up with me. I ran up an alley and he went to my house and parked out front."

Daniels said she was alarmed by the hundreds of phone calls Sandusky made to the house. By the time Fisher was 15, he reached a breaking point and finally summoned the courage to tell his mother and the school's principal, Karen Probst, that Sandusky was sexually abusing him.

"Aaron was melting down in the office," Daniels said. "I immediately told them we need to call the police."

But the mother and son say they were shocked by the principal's response.

"They said that Jerry has a heart of gold and that he wouldn't do those type of things," Daniels said "They tell me to go home and think about it."

Daniels did not follow their advice. Instead she says she told Probst that she would be notifying Clinton County Children and Youth Services of the allegations directly.

Daniels and Fisher later learned that Central Mountain High School officials did call CYS, but they say the call only came after the mother and son left the principal's office. School officials are legally mandated to report all allegations of child sex abuse and have said that the allegations were reported immediately.

For Fisher, the initial suggestion that those meant to protect him did not believe his story was crushing.

Clinton County CYS psychologist Michael Gillum was one of the first to handle Fisher's case.

"It was obvious to me immediately that he was upset, that something had, in fact, happened to him," Gillum told "20/20."

Gillum said he was shocked by the claim that Central Mountain's principal, Probst, had told Fisher and Daniels to go home.

When confronted outside the school by "20/20", both Probst and football coach Steve Turchetta -- who pulled Fisher out of his classes for meetings with Sandusky -- declined to answer questions. In grand jury testimony, Turchetta said that he took kids out of class for those meetings even though he developed suspicions about the relationships.

Jerry Sandusky Sentencing: Why Did He Release Statement? Watch Video
Much to Fisher's dismay, coming forward with the allegations was only the beginning of a long battle to bring Sandusky to justice. It would take years for an arrest.

"The broken promises, the numbers of state troopers," Fisher said, "and he's not even in jail."

Sandusky was interviewed by CYS but he laughed off the allegations, painting Fisher as a troubled kid, Gillum said.

Meanwhile, the police made Fisher retell his story four times over the course of three years. He was forced to go before two grand juries. Yet still, the attorney general prosecuting the case said authorities needed more victims to charge Sandusky.

To Fisher, it meant his suffering was not enough.

Fisher said every delay in the case caused him to grow increasingly desperate and drove him to contemplate suicide.

"I thought maybe it would be easier to take myself out of the equation," he said. "Let somebody else deal with it."

Finally, in 2011, there was a break in the case. Allegations surfaced from a Penn State coach, Mike McQueary, that he had witnessed Sandusky molesting a boy in a university locker room years earlier.

On Nov. 5, 2011, just before Fisher's 18th birthday, Jerry Sandusky was arrested following an indictment by a grand jury on more than 40 counts of child sexual abuse. In June 2012, Sandusky was tried and convicted on 45 of 48 counts. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison, a virtual life sentence for the 68-year-old man.

"I wasn't expecting it," Fisher said, "I was kind of thinking that he'd get off scot free with this."

Though the conviction was a victory, Sandusky was not the only adult who Fisher felt betrayed his trust. Fisher still has questions for the teachers and administrators at his high school.

"It's a fact that I lost a good portion of my childhood," he said. "I endured heartaches and numerous amounts of people who didn't believe me and walked away from me."

Watch the full story on "20/20" tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

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I missed 20/20 and will have to catch it online during the week. The program wasn't shown in Portland due to the news conference about Whitney Heichel's body being found. I've been to the Starbucks she worked at many, many times. So sad!

Thanks for posting the links to 20/20.

BJ, the two links I posted are the whole interview. It was very interesting and very maddening!

Thanks, Raine! I've been too busy to look at them today but thought they were just clips from the show.

raine1953 wrote:BJ, the two links I posted are the whole interview. It was very interesting and very maddening!

Thanks for the links, Raine. Very sad, I hope this young man can get his life on track despite what Sandusky did to him. Very brave and courageous, this young man is. JMO

hippy

And PS= I am glad Sandusky lost his pension. Wonder what his wife will do for income? For the record, I think deep down she must have known Jerry was involved in some shady business with those boys, she never tried to help any of them. Abhorrent, IMO.

Yeah, well, too bad he lost his pension ( ) Tough luck, that's the LEAST they can do to him for what he did to those kids. Sorry his wife won't have that $$, but am not sure she wasn't complicit in her husbands crimes as well. At the very least she is guilty of being the most unaware housewife in America, regarding what was going on under her own roof.

Take his pension and put it in a fund to help his victims try to get to a place where they can have a normal life. If that's even possible.

Man, this guy really makes me

In an interview on the “Today” show, a documentary filmmaker played audio excerpts of interviews he conducted with Jerry Sandusky, who is serving a minimum 30-year prison sentence for child sexual abuse.
John Ziegler, who is making a documentary called “The Framing of Joe Paterno,” spoke with Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator for the late former Penn State coach, several times over the telephone and told Matt Lauer that he knows the identity of Victim No. 2, who did not testify at Sandusky’s trial. Lauer kept Ziegler from revealing the victim’s name.

It was a curious interview that revealed little — and the Paterno family sought over the weekend to distance itself from Ziegler’s work. In the brief tape excerpts, Sandusky, who did not testify at his trial, questioned Penn State’s investigation, conducted by former FBI director Louis Freeh, and said witness Mike McQueary, a former assistant coach, misinterpreted what he saw in the Penn State shower, when Sandusky was raping a child. McQueary testified that he reported it to Paterno. ”That would have been the last thing I would have thought about,” Sandusky said. ”I would have thought maybe fooling around or something like that.”
Sandusky also said that Paterno would not have let him coach if he had suspected Sandusky was a pedophile. “If he [Paterno] absolutely thought I was [a pedophile], I’d say no,” Sandusky, whose final season as a coach was in 1998, said. “If he had a suspicion, I don’t know the answer to that.”

Paterno family lawyer Wick Sollers released a statement released shortly after midnight, saying:
“The release of the audio recording of Jerry Sandusky is a sad and unfortunate development. Sandusky had the opportunity to speak, under oath, during his trial and he chose not to do so. Releasing a recording at this time, nearly a year after he was found guilty on 45 counts, is transparently self-serving and yet another insult to the victims and anyone who cares about the truth in this tragic story.
“The Paterno family would prefer to remain silent on this matter, but they feel it is important to make it clear that they had no role in obtaining or releasing this recording. Moreover, they believe that any attempt to use this recording as a defense of Joe Paterno is misguided and inappropriate. I encourage anyone who wants to understand the facts of this case to go to Paterno.com and read the reports of former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, former FBI profiler, James Clemente, noted pedophilia expert, Dr. Fred Berlin and the King & Spalding legal team.
“From the beginning, the family has been committed to due process and a careful, objective examination of the facts. This is the path they will continue to follow.”
Over the weekend, Paterno’s son, Scott, tweeted: “Why would we oppose Ziegler’s analysis if it credibly exonerated Dad? We oppose it b/c it seeks to do so with a false narrative. A false narrative in support of JVP [Joe Paterno] is no better than Freeh’s false narrative condemning him — truth is the only narrative we endorse.”
Ziegler replied on FramingPaterno.com that he is “shocked and saddened” that the Paternos have rushed to judgment on his work. “I am baffled as to how Scott Paterno thinks we can even possibly put all of the pieces of this puzzle together without having the central figure in this story give his full account.”
Ziegler claims to have Ziegler claims to have more tapes of conversations with Sandusky, who is housed at State Correctional Institution Greene, in Waynesburg, Pa. Video interviews are not permitted.

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