The credibility issues lie with the Sandusky family (e.g., Jerry and Dottie Sandusky), the defense team, and others on the Sandusky side. Firstly, Dottie Sandusky is doing what abusers and deniers of abuse commonly do: try to turn the issue of credibility on the victim and lie about what happened. For example:
Part of the defense strategy is clearly to show that the details of accusers' stories are wrong, but Dottie Sandusky was unable to say with much precision how often certain boys would stay in the couple's State College home. She said one of the boys, called Victim 10 in court records, she did not know at all.
She described Victim 1 as "clingy," Victim 9 as "a charmer" and Victim 4 as "very conniving, and he wanted his way and he didn't listen a whole lot."
Victim 9 testified last week that he was attacked by Jerry Sandusky in the basement of the ex-coach's home and cried out for help when Dottie Sandusky was upstairs. She, however, said the basement was not soundproof and she would have been able to hear shouting if she was upstairs.
Dottie Sandusky, who isn't charged in the case, also said the visiting boys were free to sleep upstairs if they wanted to. The accusers have said Jerry Sandusky directed them to the basement, where they allege he sometimes molested them.
Secondly, the defense team is trying "is clearly to show that the details of accusers' stories are wrong". The defense first stated that the abuse victims had a financial motive and were outright liars, but now they're acknowledging that something did happen--although they're saying "that the details of accusers' stories are wrong". Thirdly, why would Dottie Sandusky smile about a matter like this? In whichever way the case ends up going, Dottie Sandusky has and should have no reason to smile. Fourthly, would you blame the victims for saying things like the following, if they really did even say what they are alleged to have said?
Witness Joshua Frabel, who lived next door to Victim 1, recalled that the young man's mother said she had just heard Sandusky molested her child and that she would end up owning Sandusky's house.
"She had said about, when all this settles out, she'll have a nice big house in the country with a fence, and the dogs can run free," he said.
He added that Victim 1 told him: "When this is over, I'll have a nice new Jeep."
The mother took the witness stand to deny it, and Victim 1 denied it last week during his testimony.
Jerry and Dottie Sandusky owe their lives to those victims, and the victims were nice enough to not bring a class-action civil suit in addition to bringing criminal complaints against them. Too bad that "Kennedy v. Lousiana" (2008) overturned the death penalty for convicted pedophiles. Fifthly, and in conclusion, the defense went really low to use a brain-damaged Iraq War veteran for sympathy--and using someone who didn't directly know Victim Four and who is cognitively and otherwise cerebrally damaged is not a smart move, anyway; since she may not even be able to understand what is really at stake in "Pennsylvania v. Sandusky".
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