Did Aaron Fisher Mislead Authorities in Sandusky Case? Looks Like He Did!

I invite Aaron Fisher, his mother or any of the “victims” who made millions to contact me, if they think I have it wrong.

Did Aaron Fisher lie? Part 2

Part 1: The Unheard Side of the Sandusky Story: Did Aaron Fisher Lie?

The investigation of Gerald Arthur ‘Jerry’ Sandusky began in November 2008, based on a story 15-year-old Aaron Fisher told his mother. Three years later, on June 22, 2012, a jury convicted Sandusky of sexually abusing ten pre-teen and teenage boys.

For two years, Aaron Fisher was the only ‘victim’ the state of Pennsylvania had. In October 2012, Judge John M. Cleland sentenced Sandusky to 30 to 60 years.

A few months later, Fisher settled with Penn State for $7.5 million.

Aaron Fisher: Victim or Deceiver?

Mike Gillum and the Sandusky Scandal

Mike Gillum dreamed of fame and prestige, of not being a therapist who had to discount hourly rates with the Clinton County Youth and Family Services, but of being a modern-day Sigmund Freud, with elite clients with weighty problems who would wait in line for his priceless time.

His patient, Aaron Fisher, 15, and his mother, Dawn Hennessey, had dreams too.

Hennessey’s American Welfare Dream

Dawn Hennessey dreamed of getting off welfare and moving with her kids away from their loathsome public housing, of buying a house in the country with a fenced yard so the dogs could run outside, instead of being cooped up all day indoors.

She had never seemed to work a steady job. Working did not become her, and with three kids from three different fathers, even if she was capable, she was not seeking employment.

She was busy between her duties as a mother and searching perhaps for a man to supplement what the taxpayers doled out through the Clinton County Social Services.

She knew the system better than the average caseworker, and knew when to come on meek and humble and bring a tear to her eye, or how to swear and yell bloody murder, demand her rights, threaten to go to higher-ups, run to the media, or contact a congressman. She could bluff with the best.

But at best, this had gotten her three rotten men, the last one a child molester, a lousy taxpayer-paid apartment, taxpayer-paid food stamps or SNAP, but not enough for three growing children, and little extra cash, not nearly enough for the essentials like decent clothing, good furnishings, and alcohol.

Happily, at the taverns she visited on weekends, generous men would buy her a draft or a quaff, a shot, and a brew, downed fast to prove she could drink with the men. But she was always prepared to show her splendid differences should any of them promise to display a little more generosity than the cheap taxpayers of Clinton County with their scanty welfare offerings.

Yes, they lived the American welfare dream. A dream Dawn Renee Fisher Daniels Hennessey wanted to wake up from.

Aaron Fisher: The High Price of Lies

Her hopes rested in her eldest son, Aaron Scott Fisher. Quite the little man, Aaron Fisher, had dreams of his own. At 15, he dreamt of buying and fixing sports cars and racing real fast and beautiful women, who would believe his stories of his braveness, gullible girls, not too discerning, as his mother had not been, who would think him tough, intelligent, brave and wealthy. But nobody ever believed his stories.

This time, chance, based on a stray lie the lad told his mother, gave them a chance to get off the dole with a story that would rock an institution, tarnish legacies, get men fired, ruin families, and put one man, his mentor, and friend, Jerry Sandusky, away for life.

Jerry Sandusky

Weeping Wussy

Aaron Fisher was a boy not formerly given to weeping, who became — through his lies that Sandusky abused him — a weeping wussy.

But it paid off. Let us remember Fisher got $7.5 million. And the lad helped make others successful liars who followed his lies. They knew of his lies, told similar lies (some told better), and also collected millions. None would have been millionaires, but for Fisher.

Aided by his mother and his therapist, Michael Gillum, he stuck to his lies. And as we shall see, he almost backed out many times.

Yes, it was hard on poor (now rich) Aaron Fisher, for he had a conscience once upon a time. Sometimes, his conscience peeks through, sometimes as a mere glimmer, and sometimes as an avalanche of emotion. A thousand times, the boy wrestled with his spirit. To tell the lie and make millions or the truth and go on honest and poor.

He was not looking to hurt Jerry Sandusky. He wanted to go out with his friends, meet girls and drink. But one Saturday, his mother insisted he go with his mentor, Sandusky, so she could go out, drink and meet men.

So he lied, inferring Sandusky might be a child molester.

When his mother sniffed the enormous opportunity, she became part of Team Aaron. It only needed Mike Gillum, the friendly therapist, to corral a boy into staying inside the corral, and actually allege sexual molestation.

Fisher Admits Oral Sex to State Police

Mike Gillum did the hard work. Fisher never once volunteered Sandusky abused him. Gillum had to guess what happened, and Fisher would answer yes or no. Or nod his head.

Gillum said it was like “peeling an onion” – in the mind – to find “hidden layers” of abuse Fisher had forgotten.

After seven months of steady, sometimes daily therapy, Fisher finally uttered the word “yes” to a scenario Gillum had offered many times before.

Oral sex.

Young Fisher explained it:

“As long as I told [Gillum] that something happened, I didn’t need to go into any detail. He was real straightforward. When I said yes, that oral sex happened, Mike just said that I didn’t have to talk about it more right now, but at some point, when I was ready, I could talk to him more.”

It was time to try the police again.

The first time in December, Fisher refused to tell the police that Sandusky abused him. But Gillum wasn’t with him. This time, they met in Gillum’s office on June 8, 2009. PA State Trooper Scott Rossman got Fisher to say aloud that he and Sandusky had performed oral sex many times, and that Sandusky had ejaculated, keeping his eyes closed.

Who could blame the mother if she nearly danced with delight when she found out her son disclosed to the police that a sixty-five-year-old man forced her son to have oral sex? She knew there wasn’t a dime for her or her son unless the police arrested Sandusky and the state convicted him.

Now, he was ready for the grand jury.

Fisher Denies Oral Sex to Grand Jury

By treating the 15-year-old as a mentally disturbed child, rather like an infant, Gillum got permission to sit in the grand jury room when his patient testified.

Twenty-three jurors watched as Assistant Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach asked Fisher if Sandusky had molested him.

Fisher tried to open his mouth to speak, but instead, he started to cry. Plunging ahead, taking his tears as proof of his abuse, Eshbach asked whether oral sex had occurred.

Through his tears, Fisher blurted out the word “no,” and then he broke down, weeping inconsolably.

Picture this: a 15-year-old boy crying in front of 23 adults on the jury, denying under oath when questioned what his mother, his therapist, the police, and the prosecutor all wanted him to say.

This he said under oath: it didn’t happen.

As Gillum explained, Fisher needed more therapy.

Who was Jerry Sandusky?

This intense therapy targeted Jerry Sandusky, who may have been the most outstanding defensive coach in college football history. Penn State was nicknamed after his accomplishments. With the famous Joe Paterno as head coach, Sandusky had helped coach so many great linebackers that they called Penn State “Linebacker U.”

Sandusky had another interest. He founded his Second Mile charity in 1977, named for Matthew, chapter 5, verse 41:

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Dreams for Children Like Fisher

 

Sandusky had dreams. He dreamed of a world where no child went hungry or without a chance at a better life. A churchgoing Methodist, he believed in staying in school, avoiding drugs, alcohol, and even tobacco, and training the body to be fit. To be clean in spirit, fair and honest, to tell the truth, for that is the road to success that you can live with in the small hours of the night.

His charity taught kids the old Christian values. He was famous in this university football-centric community as more than a great coach, a trainer of athletes of promise who became great, but as a man who had the same dream for troubled kids, to see them fulfill their promise under God’s great abundance.

Over the years, he had taken a hundred kids personally under his wing, to football games and restaurants, and for some, to his home, as he had for young Aaron Fisher, who, with his guidance, became the track star of his school.

A Medical Issue

There was something more, something that no one knew, although Aaron Fisher would have known it if Sandusky had forced the fellatio that Fisher said he gave and received.

This never came out at the trial, but Jerry Sandusky was born with vestigial testicles. It meant he could not have children. His sperm count was too low. He had almost no testosterone and, consequently, nearly zero sex drive.

He adopted six kids and fostered many others. He founded a charity to help children, and the fact is he did not have functioning testicles, never had them.

He was an anomaly – just like the child pervert is an anomaly. But he was the opposite. His playfulness with children, love, and attraction to children were not perverse. He did not know what perversion meant except as an intellectual concept.

Sandusky appeared as the exemplar of Christ’s tender precept, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

He was of the stuff of the kingdom of heaven.

“For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb,” as was Sandusky. “… and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,” as was Sandusky

“He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

Of all the misjudgments that I have yet heard, this was the greatest, the most false, the most off-target.

That a man whose doctors said could not be interested in sex, not like men with normal testosterone levels, who, doctors said, even with Viagra, would not be capable of doing the foul deeds Aaron Fisher and later others who knew about the money and the story Fisher had told.

Funny, neither Aaron Fisher nor any of the men who testified ever said anything about Sandusky’s conspicuous deformity – the near total absence of testicles.

In the deadly targeted momentum to take a man down because he was different from the rest of men, it should have been recorded somewhere that Sandusky did not do things they said because he couldn’t. But it was never said.

I will disclose the doctors’ records in a subsequent story to verify this.

Second Grand Jury

After a year of therapy, Fisher was ready to try the grand jury again. The no-nonsense prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach wanted Fisher to narrate the story in his own words. No more yes or no answers.

Gillum had a suggestion.

Under the Angel Act, if he, the expert, deemed the child too fragile, and if the judge agreed, Gillum could testify as though he was the child. They would not need Fisher.

Eschbach did not think it would fly with a target so highly regarded as Sandusky. Imagine the ridicule they might face when she leaked the grand jury minutes to a friendly reporter to get some pretrial press and help the jury know about the case before the trial, just in case they were sequestered.

The public would believe the victim was so incompetent that his psychoanalyst had to testify on his behalf.  No, she and Gillum would have to team up to give Fisher “some more coaching and emphasized that he had to state exactly what happened.”

On November 16, 2009, Fisher appeared for the second time before the grand jury. He was 16.

Through tears, Fisher tried to tell his story.

He stumbled with words. He began to sweat. As he approached the topic of oral sex, he grew as white as a ghost. As the jurors watched, he could not say what his mother and everyone wanted.

Every eye was on him. He slid off the chair and sank to the floor. Then he vomited.

Personas

His persona in front of the grand jury was a helpless baby who could not bring himself to lie or tell the truth.

On the other hand, he could make up anything with his therapist – just like he did in school. But, unlike his classmates and teachers, Gillum believed everything he said.

After his second flop at the grand jury, the therapy progressed apace. Gillum helped Fisher “recall” more things Sandusky did to him,

Fisher claimed he had nightmares of “all those times Jerry was doing things to me and making me do things to him” – things he had forgotten before Gillum “peeled the onion” and restored “hidden layers” of abuse he had forgotten, which Sandusky had supposedly done to him just a few months before.

But he was yet another person with young women.

As Fisher’s girlfriend at the time said:

“He and his mom never stopped talking about how much money they’d get. How excited they were.

“I believed in part of the abuse story, but I knew it was exaggerated for the money. Do you ever think you say something sooo many times for soo long you actually start to believe it? I think that’s what happened with Aaron, I think his mom drilled it into him.”

His neighbor Josh Fravel said Fisher would tell him how he would buy a sports car and a Jeep with the money he would get.

Friends Dubious

And his friends were skeptical. Big bragging, girl-crazy Aaron Fisher forced to give and receive fellatio from an old man, and not speaking out, not fighting him off, but going back again and again.

And the story about him not knowing what Sandusky was doing to him, acting like he was too young, at almost 15, to know about sex.

Fisher had told his friends he was having sex with girls since he was 12. During the same years he claimed Sandusky abused him, he claimed he bedded so many girls he had to keep them on a list to remember them all.

Did Not Know What Fellatio Was?

His friend Theron Mauch said Fisher would stay at his house before, and during the time Sandusky supposedly abused him.

Of his friend who claimed he knew not about sex, Theron said Aaron “always used to jack off at my house whenever I was asleep…. He’d either be watching porn on my TV or on the computer when I was asleep and I was ‘what the hell are you doing?'”

So Fisher claimed he did not know what Sandusky was doing when he (supposedly) put Fisher’s mouth on his penis when he was almost 15, when the lad was already watching porn with women doing the same thing to men in the videos for years.

Many of his friends, like Dylan Emel, Jamon Gharet, or Sierra Nicole Foster, thought he was lying. They knew Fisher would have reported any abuse, and as to being forced, he was an athlete, a wrestler. He could have fended off Sandusky. Fisher would never have kept going back for abuse and not said anything.

Gillum Explains All

As for how Fisher would explain his going back again and again to Sandusky’s house after he abused him, Gillum said Fisher had “dissociated from the grim reality of abuse, as victims do.”

After he made his millions, Fisher bought his mother fine cars.Between his second and third grand jury appearances, Fisher kept telling stories.

He told his therapist, “I went from nightmares about Jerry abusing me to nightmares about Jerry having people come after me and kill me and my family and take things from me. They were so graphic in detail that even after I woke up, I could recite everything that happened and everything that was said. Those nightmares were my reality.”

It became his reality, it appears. Fisher said a man in a dark suit came to his school and approached him between classes, sent by Sandusky.

“I did nothing but watch the entrances of the school to make sure somebody wasn’t going to come into the school and talk to me and throw me into an anxiety attack,” Fisher said.

The therapist Gillum stoked these fears by saying he thought Sandusky had killed the former district attorney and that the Philadelphia Eagles were part of a coverup.

In the same month, Fisher, speeding 70 mph in a 25-mph speed zone, drove his car into a tree, fracturing his skull. His passenger went to the hospital for six months.

Fisher showed little concern about his friend, but his mother wondered whether Sandusky had sabotaged the car.

Fisher was reported to have been hospitalized three times for anxiety or “conversion disorder” while under Gillum’s therapy.

Gillum explained to Fisher that his torment was an outward manifestation of the “deep psychic pain from deep in your unconscious.”

Meanwhile, Fisher claimed he experienced panic attacks and abdominal pain. He said he attempted suicide, slicing his forearms with a razor and trying to hang himself in his closet.

But his best friend, Jamon Gharet said, “he never had any cuts not that I’ve ever seen, not on his arms or anything, and this was a guy that you know kind of prided himself on his body because he was a sprinter.”

Third Grand Jury

By March 2010, Eshbach admitted the case would live or die on Fisher, for “after a year of looking, the investigation was unlikely to find additional victims.”

By November, Eshbach told her boss there were no other victims, and the case was “dead in the water.”

An anonymous tip led the prosecutors to interview former Penn State quarterback Michael McQueary. We will examine that story in the next installment of this series.

Before we conclude on Fisher, who will appear in the ongoing narrative, let us touch on this third grand jury appearance.

Everyone knew he could not be trusted to answer the questions the way the prosecutors and his mother wanted him to answer.

No more questions this time. This time, they would write out what he was supposed to say, and he would read it to the jury.

When Fisher, now 17, made his third appearance, he wept copiously, or rather he blubbered as he read a prepared statement.

The profusion of tears triggered the well-known nasolacrimal reflex, which Judas Iscariot was believed to have experienced, which caused excess tears to drain into the nasal cavity. It caused a bitter free fall of tears and snivel, blotting out some words on the pages he tried to read.

But he spit it out that, as an overnight guest in Sandusky’s house, he was forced to give and receive fellatio with Sandusky in the basement on many visits.

Jerry Sandusky was indicted and arrested on November 5, 2011, four days after Aaron Fisher’s 18th birthday.

The conflicted Fisher said of his arrest, “I was happy, yes, but I was more crying and you know I wasn’t expecting it.”

MK10Art’s painting of Aaron Fisher

Stay tuned for the next installment of this series. We’ve only just begun. 

Much of the information in this story comes from the important and incredible work of John Zieglar:

John Ziegler Interviews re: Aaron Fisher

Long-time Aaron Fisher Friend Reveals Why He Is Very Confident Fisher Lied About Jerry Sandusky

Friends of Aaron Fisher Say He Lied About His Relationship with Jerry Sandusky

Aaron Fisher’s Neighbor Explains Why He’s Certain Fisher Lied About Jerry Sandusky

Woman Who Organized Rally For Sandusky “Victim” Aaron Fisher No Longer Believes Him

Another Friend of Aaron Fisher Says They Don’t Believe He Was a Sandusky Victim

3rd Close Pal (An Abuse Victim) of Aaron Fisher Says Why He Knows Fisher Lied About Jerry Sandusky

Aaron Fisher’s Neighbor Describes Witnessing the Money Grab Against Jerry Sandusky Begin

Aaron Fisher Posts Odd Facebook Video Which Should Make You Go “Hmmmm…”

Acknowledgments

Several people have been instrumental in uncovering the truth about the Sandusky case, dedicating countless hours to researching, interviewing, and writing about what happened.

• Former chair of English at UC Berkeley and author Dr. Frederick Crews has written numerous articles on the Sandusky case. He is a literary critic and has done extensive research on Freud and recovered memory therapy.
• Filmmaker/podcaster John Ziegler, who created the website framingpaterno.com, has generated scores of podcast interviews and offers in-depth research into the case.
• Investigative reporter Ralph Cipriano has written comprehensive stories  for bigtrial.net exposing what mainstream media wouldn’t write about.
• Author Mark Pendergrast wrote the book, The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment, which documents the case, the media hysteria, political landscape, and repressed memory critique.
• John and Patti Galluppi, family friends of the Sandusky’s, created the website Justice for Jerry, which provides documents and breaks down the alleged facts of the case and the stories of the various accusers.
• NCIS, Special Agent John Snedden has investigated and commented on the myriad flaws and anomalies in the case.

The author acknowledges that without the above researchers and writers, who all preceded him in this investigation, he would not have been able to conceivably attempt to investigate the conviction of Jerry Sandusky.