For Immediate Release

Former Penn State Football Coach Jerry Sandusky filed this date, February
8, 2023, an “Amended Motion for New Trial on the Grounds of After-Discovered
Evidence and Request for an Evidentiary Hearing”. The motion was filed by
Attorney Al Lindsay of Butler, Pennsylvania.
The newly discovered evidence involved a transcript of an interview
between “SS” a young man who was originally interviewed in 2011 by the police
in the course of the Sandusky investigation. At that time, SS stated he didn’t view
any act of Mr. Sandusky as sexual in nature, never felt uncomfortable around him
and would tell the investigator if anything inappropriate happened. Then, in 2018,
after six years, and being subjected to an interview with one of the prominent
attorneys involved in bringing lawsuits against Penn State, he said that he had been
sexually assaulted by Mr. Sandusky.
The transcript in question was indicative of the methodology of certain
attorneys to change the testimony of the alleged “victims” in the case who, when
first interviewed by the police denied any wrongdoing by Mr. Sandusky and
indeed, had nothing but good things to say about Mr. Sandusky. Then, after
numerous “therapy” sessions, and interviews by attorneys seeking substantial sums
from Penn State, they suddenly remembered, at the time of trial of memories that
had been “blocked”.
In the original motion, Mr. Sandusky requested an evidentiary hearing to
present the expert testimony of licensed psychologist and attorney R. Christopher
Barden, Ph.D., JD. Dr. Barden is, without question, the foremost expert in
America on the issue of what is called Recovered Repressed Memory. Dr. Barden
has worked with science-therapy-legal colleagues to reduce the historic, disaster of
the inherently unreliable, unproven and controversial “Recovered Repressed
Memory – Multiple Personality Disorder, Dissociation” (RRM-MPD-DISS
Therapy Movement).
The newly discovered evidence presented in the original Motion for New
Trial filed by the Defendant consisted of an interview that took place in January
15, 2018 of SS, now deceased, by his attorney. A copy of the transcript of that
interview was provided through discovery to Mr. Sandusky’s civil attorney,
Donald Litman. The new evidence obtained in discovery in the civil case was
relevant because it demonstrated the techniques used by the attorney to influence
the testimony of SS and other young males, like SS who had previously given
statements that denied any wrongdoing on Mr. Sandusky’s part, but had later made
accusations against Mr. Sandusky and, in some cases, testified against him in his
criminal case.
Dr. Barden’s analysis of the interview led him to believe at least two investigative
hypotheses: the attorney and therapist interview was a) negligent of the science-
history demonstrating the inherent unreliability of RRM-MPD-DISS notions as
well as science showing that leading-suggestive interviews can improperly
“change-manipulate memories” leading to substantial taint and defects in the
integrity of the legal process and/or b) were engaged in an unethical and/or
criminal scam to manipulate witnesses to produce ‘new memory claims of abuse”
and thus obtain large settlement sums in civil litigation.
Dr. Barden then analyzed the trial testimony of other “victims” influenced
by the attorney in question. These “victims” all, when initially interviewed by the
police, had nothing but good things to say about Mr. Sandusky and denied that he
had done anything inappropriate with them. Nonetheless, after they were
subjected to substantial interviews by the attorney and undergoing “therapy”, to
recover lost memories, they showed up at the trial and implicated Mr. Sandusky in
wrongdoing.
Dr. Barden also analyzed information provided by A.J. Dillen. Mr. Dillen
posed as a “victim” and was interviewed by this lawyer and was subjected to the
same “therapy” as the other “victims”. Mr. Dillen alleged that the lawyer
attempted to change his story to enhance its settlement value by, for example,
moving the location of events to the campus of Penn State, from a public park. Mr.
Dillen said he was “shocked and I am immediately thinking this entire thing is BS.
I came as a fake accuser, and he has changed my story. What makes me think he
didn’t do this with everyone?”
Dr. Barden, in his report, links what happened in the Sandusky case to the
infamous Day Care Hysteria and related cases where abuse of mis-interviewing
caused a wave of infamous criminal cases where improper, abusive, memory-
manipulated, repetitive interview practices led to innocent people spending years in
jail including the cases of McMartin, Kelly Michaels, Wenatchee, Little Rascals
and others.
According to Dr. Barden, in the era of thousands of abuse claims based on
“Recovered Repressed Memories” (RRM) and “dissociated memories” were
investigated and debunked by the FBI (led by Special Agent K. Lanning and the
National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect) finding essentially zero
corroborating evidence for over 12,000 cases of recovered memory allegations of
horrific abuse based on “memories starting to come back”, “buried memories,
“blocked memories” and other typical RRM-MPD-DISS ideologies and methods.
Dr. Barden also states: “Decades of research and scientific debate have clarified
over and over again that the notion of traumatic events being somehow ‘repressed’
and later accurately recovered is one of the most pernicious bits of folklore ever to
infect psychology and psychiatry. This folklore provided the theoretical basis for
‘recovered memory therapy’ – arguably the worst catastrophe to befall the mental
health field since the lobotomy era.”
Dr. Barden’s report and, indeed, the motion pay substantial attention to an “off-the-
record-Hilton-Garden-Inn meeting” producing a “likely conviction-death-march”
trial schedule that precluded any chance of a fair trial.
The report refers to an off-the-record meeting which took place at the Hilton
Garden Inn hotel the night before Mr. Sandusky’s preliminary hearing held on
December 13, 2011. Attending the meeting were the trial judge, the district
magistrate judge, one of Mr. Sandusky’s attorneys and two prosecutors. It is the
position of Mr. Sandusky that at this off-the-record meeting, a trial date was set for
June 2012, the month wherein the trial took place. The motion states that if there
was any single factor that brought about the legion of prejudicial errors that led to
the ultimate injustice in the Sandusky case, it was the speed with which the matter
was rushed to trial.
Dr. Barden notes that even highly specialized experts in such cases COULD NOT
properly prepare and try such a complex case on the “likely-conviction-death-
march” schedule set by the trial judge at his reportedly “secret-off-the-record”,
unrecorded, apparently improper meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn with the
prosecutors and defense attorney. From that point on, the trial judge would
entertain no postponements placing the defense attorney in an impossible situation
to defend the case. Thus, while the defense can hypothesize about the need for
legitimate expert testimony in the trial, the trial judge’s “death march” would have
made that impossible.
Mr. Sandusky’s motion poses the questions: WHY would a trial judge conduct, or
at least attend, an off the record meeting dealing with, among other things, the
scheduling of a trial date prior to the preliminary hearing? WHY would a trial
judge discuss an arraignment date before the preliminary hearing? WHY would a
trial judge, as Dr. Barden puts it, put the case on a “death march” to trial in a
matter of this magnitude?
One suggested answer to those questions was put forth by Mr. Sandusky in his
pleading. The “Report to the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania State
University” submitted on June 29, 2018 on the part of seven members of the
Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees stated under “Freeh Report used
by NCAA”:
Less than two weeks after the release of the Freeh Report, Mark Emmert, NCAA
President, and Rodney Erickson, then Penn State President, signed the “Consent
Decree” that imposed sanctions on the Penn State football program. The sanctions,
so harsh that they were described as “unprecedented,” included a $60 million fine,
post-season ban, vacated wins, and loss of scholarship. Critics immediately
questioned the NCAA’s authority to levy such sanctions in a criminal matter and
accused the NCAA of capitalizing on an opportunity to enhance its own reputation
at the expense of a member institution historically known for exceptional ethical
conduct.
The Consent Decree justified the NCAA’s use of the Freeh Report in lieu of its
own investigative procedures by stating that “The University” had commissioned
“the independent FSS investigations,” and stated that I could rely on “the findings
of a Criminal Jury and the Freeh Report (as a) …. factual basis from which the
NCAA concludes that Penn State breached the standards expected by and
articulated in the NCAA Constitution and By-Laws.” The Consent Decree further
stated that it could rely on the Freeh Report “(i)n light of …. The University’s
willingness, for purposes of this resolution, to accept the Freeh Report.”
As stated, “the findings of a criminal jury” was a significant part of the factual
basis for the agreement between Penn State and the NCAA, which averted the
“death penalty” for Penn State Football. If the conviction of Mr. Sandusky had not
yet occurred, there would have been no Freeh Report. If there had been no report
of the Freeh Group, there would have been no agreement between Penn State and
the NCAA.
If there was no agreement between the NCAA and Penn State University, there
would have been no football season in the fall of 2012 and likely for many seasons
thereafter. There would have been millions and perhaps billions of dollars lost
from television revenue, ticket sales, various collateral sales such as paraphernalia
and apparel and most important, loss of the Penn State “brand”. Put differently,
the loss would have been incalculable.
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2023- listen/watch live at this link: https://kgradb.com/livestream/ - also can watch
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