Advertisement
ABC News' Chris Cuomo, left, with Aaron Fisher, 18, a victim of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky yesterday. (AP Photo/ABC News)
Penn State

Penn State scandal: Sandusky accuser tells of abuse ordeal in new book

18-year-old Aaron Fisher, who was known publicly for a year only as Victim 1, put aside anonymity yesterday to speak about his ordeal as a child.

A YOUNG MAN whose sexual-abuse claims triggered the investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky says in his new book Sandusky’s wife once called down to the basement while he was being attacked and Sandusky dismissed her by saying he was busy.

Aaron Fisher writes in “Silent No More” that Dottie Sandusky asked her husband to fix a table upstairs but that when he replied he was fixing an air hockey table she dropped the subject.

“Sarge,” Fisher wrote, using her nickname, “never went down to the basement.”

The basement, according to court testimony, is where Sandusky abused Fisher and other boys who stayed overnight at his home.

Fisher, who was known publicly for a year only as Victim 1, put aside anonymity yesterday to speak about his ordeal as a child, telling ABC’s “20/20″ he had contemplated suicide because authorities took so long to prosecute Sandusky, nearly three years after he and his mother first alerted school officials.

The Associated Press bought an early copy of Fisher’s book, which is being published next week.

Jerry Sandusky didn’t testify at trial but has repeatedly said he is innocent, and Dottie Sandusky has maintained she never saw him behave inappropriately with children. Not only that, Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer Joe Amendola said yesterday, “she said they had a freezer in the basement so she would routinely go down there go get stuff to make for dinner. She said had she thought Jerry was doing anything inappropriate, she said he wouldn’t have needed the judicial system.”

In the book, Fisher’s mother and co-author, Dawn Daniels, recounts meeting Jerry Sandusky after her son had spent a couple of summers at events held by his charity, The Second Mile.

“When Aaron introduced us, Jerry shook my hand, put his arm around Aaron, roughed up his hair and said, ‘You got a good kid on your hands there,’” she said, according to the book.

Fisher wrote that in an early warning sign, while swimming together he felt Sandusky’s hand on his crotch a “little too long.” During car rides, he said, Sandusky had him sit up front and would put his hand on the boy’s thigh. He first reported the abuse in 2008, but he said the state attorney general’s office told him it needed more victims before Sandusky would be charged. Sandusky was arrested last November.

Video: Armstrong speaks of ‘difficult couple of weeks’ after doping scandal

PHOTOS: Emotions high as Twigg signs off in style

Author
Associated Foreign Press