Tag Archives: Mike McQueary

Penn State, Meet Dr. Loftus

Posted on by
1

Plug: If you are in any way following the Jerry Sandusky child rape case and not following Sara Ganim’s exemplary coverage in Harrisburg, PA’s, “The Patriot-News,” now’s the time to mend your ways.

PROSECUTION witness Mike McQueary keeps hitting the fan, or so it would seem. His statement about catching alleged pedophile and former football coach Jerry Sandusky in a Penn State shower with a 9 or 10 year old boy? It is now a theme with variations. Most critically, the story’s details keep shifting in troubling ways. Notes Sara Ganim, the reporter who first broke the Sandusky story:

  • His (McQueary’s) grand jury testimony says he heard slapping noises and saw a boy being sodomized by Sandusky.
  • His hand-written statement to police says, “I did not see insertion. I am certain that sexual acts/the young boy being sodomized was occurring.” He says the whole incident lasted about a minute.
  • In an email he sent to friends following the firing of Joe Paterno, he says “I made sure it stopped,” something not mentioned in the grand jury testimony or police statement.
  • And now [recent] testimony describes a new scenario entirely.

The new version doesn’t come from McQueary himself, but a family friend who also testified before the Sandusky Grand Jury. Dr. Jonathan Dranov, a physician friend of McQueary’s father, says he was there when McQueary the Younger first related what he’d seen in the Penn State locker room. Here’s the Doc’s version, quoted in Sara Ganim’s story:

McQueary heard “sex sounds” and the shower running, and a young boy stuck his head around the corner of the shower stall, peering at McQueary as an adult arm reached around his waist and pulled him back out of view.

Seconds later, Sandusky left the shower in a towel.

This version shifts the ground quite a bit. If true, McQueary has gone from being a direct witness to a child rape, to someone who heard and saw things that made him think he had.

I cannot type that sentence without thinking of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, the groundbreaking research psychologist whose memory research first codified the “false memory syndrome.” I had the honor of hearing Dr. Loftus speak in Seattle at a Mystery Writers of America function in the early days of “Butcher, Baker.” What she said then is all the more relevant today, as memory research advances and tells us more about the inner workings of the brain. Loftus’ key finding, drawn here from a Nature article, is that memories, by their very nature, are changeable.

“…Memories can become scrambled, sometimes in the process of attempting to retrieve something. You might relate a story to a friend but unwittingly include some mistaken details. Later, as you attempt to recall the episode, you might come across your memory of the scrambled recall attempt instead of your original memory.

Memory is malleable. It is not, as is commonly thought, like a museum piece sitting in a display case. “Memory is,” as the Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano once said, “born every day, springing from the past, and set against it.”

I am not much troubled by the initial variation in McQueary’s account, where he tells police that he witnessed sodomy, but is less certain that he saw penetration. I mean, I’m guessing he’d have to get pretty close to witness penetration. But Dranov’s account seemingly punts those variations out the window. I say “seemingly” because the question at hand is: whose memory is scrambled or, rather, the most scrambled? Dr. Dranov’s or Mike McQueary’s?

I answer with another question. Who benefits from the various versions of the incident now circulating? Because, you know, in legal cases it’s often less about seeking the truth than shifting the blame.

  • Clearly, Mike McQueary does not benefit from the critical variations in his shower account. In fact, it may serve to reduce his credibility.
  • Former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and ex-Vice President Gary Schulz do stand to benefit. They face charges of perjury and failure to report a crime. Dr. Dranov’s account potentially takes them off the hook.
  • Jerry Sandusky may also see potential benefit if Dranov’s account holds. McQueary is a key witness and Sandusky’s attorney will no doubt call him the linchpin of the prosecution case. He’ll attack the inconsistencies, attempting to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt. He’s up against an MD, for chrissakes. Who are you going to believe?

I am not implying that Dr. Dranov is lying to protect several very important Penn State personalities. During the grand jury presentment, I presume he had no idea what was about to come down. But it’s not a stretch to suggest that his instincts all the way back in 2002 were to protect Penn State’s athletic program. Nor is it a stretch to suggest that his memory would evolve in that direction by 2010. Let’s look at what else he told the grand jury:

Dranov told grand jurors that he asked McQueary three times if he saw anything sexual, and three times McQueary said no, [according to the source.]

Was Dr. Dranov asking Mike McQueary? Or telling him, albeit “subtly”? Was (is) Dranov trying to lead the witness, even inadvertently, somewhere out to “bad-memory-land”? It will be interesting to hear what, if anything, Mike McQueary’s father has to say. Oh yeah, it gets complicated…

Pennsylvania Gothic

Posted on by
Reply

Every day or so, there’s something new coming out of the woodwork in the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault saga. One should expect it, I suppose. The timeline of victims coming forward now appears to reach back to the ’70s. Let’s see if I can keep all the details straight in this increasingly gothic tale.

  • Joe Amendola, the Sandusky attorney who (mistakenly) let his client do a TV interview, himself impregnated a teen while he was acting as her attorney. Ok they did get married.
  • Quote of the day: When Joe said he’d be fine having Sandusky around his kids, his ex-wife wrote the following on her Facebook page: OMG did Joe just say that he would allow my kids to be alone with Jerry Sandusky?”
  • The Sandusky “I-just-like-to-horse-around-with-boys” defense appears to have backfired. Victim advocates report the Sandusky interview is prompting more victims to come forward.
  • The Mike McQueary saga, meanwhile, is turning into a twist-and-turn reality show, largely conducted behind the scenes. There are new questions arising out his recent assertion that he went to the police. The problem is that neither campus nor borough police show any record of McQueary talking to them in 2002.
  • The New York Times reports that McQueary did talk to police after the 2009 grand jury investigation of Sandusky began. The report adds he was relieved to unburden himself. Is it possible this is what McQueary means when he says he went to the police? One would hope not, but it is more Pennsylvania Gothic if he does.
  • As if all this wasn’t enough, there are now reports that fired-head-coach Joe Paterno went to the hospital Wednesday night, for an undisclosed ailment. Update: Paterno has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Whew, that’s a lot of drama. On second thought, maybe it’s too kind to call this a gothic tale. It’s more like a South American soap opera, with tragic consequences. And for all you Hermans out there, this is an example of some very fine reporting. I personally single-out Sara Ganim of The Patriot-News in Pennsylvania, but there’s plenty of credit to go around.

Here & There

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s blog is a grab-bag of stories, culled from a range of sources. We’ve still got crime on our mind.

First up, Frozen Ground film news fresh from Alaska.

  • We have a couple of shots of Nicolas Cage in Anchorage. In this slideshow, Cage is seen on the Frozen Ground set. And what would a Nicolas Cage story be without some smack from gossip site TMZ? Their spy camera captures him purchasing a $2,000 ivory-handled knife.
  • The Anchorage Daily News reports that Alaska filming on “Frozen Ground” could wrap by Friday, November 18 — a one-month shooting schedule.
  • The Alaska backlash against film subsidies, meanwhile, is starting to heat up. More on this issue in another post.

We also have an update on the Mike McQueary story, in what amounts to another round of media counter-attack. I’m guessing anyone who follows the news is already aware of these revelations.

What’s worth comment here is that the basis for much of the reporting is a 23-page grand jury presentment. A summary document. It leaves out details. That gives the folks involved a brief-window to manage the news by releasing self-serving details of their own. My money is still on Sara Ganim, the intrepid reporter who first broke this story.

Run To Daddy

Posted on by
1

The mother of one of Jerry Sandusky’s victims has been quite outspoken about (then) graduate assistant Mike McQueary’s reaction to catching the coach sodomizing a ten-year-old boy in the Penn State gym:

“I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” said the mom of Victim Six. “[McQueary] was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized … He ran and called his daddy?”

I am not here to judge Mr. McQueary’s reaction, although from this distance it seems less than noble. Many commentators have piled on, using the mother’s reaction as a starting point. There is another truth here, though, and it’s worth mentioning. Most people do not know how they’ll react when faced with a fearful or stressful situation. They think they do, but they don’t. As my standby expert, FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, notes in “Dangerous Instincts,” the truth is much more nuanced:

“Many people tell me that they would scream bloody murder if someone attempted to assault or kidnap them. What I’ve learned from interviewing… victims, however, is that your natural reaction to a threat is not necessarily predictable. Some people are mute through an entire encounter. Their fear incapacitates them. Others have told me that they kicked and screamed, [or] cried uncontrollably… I’ve learned that different people react to fear in different ways and that your reaction is unpredictable unless you plan and practice in advance.”

Lest you think this unpredictable reaction applies only to violent encounters, an anecdote: Some years ago I was awakened from sleep by the sound of scratching in my living room. I got up to investigate, thinking it was my cat, only to find a burglar trying to remove glass from a cantilevered window and gain entry to my home. I tried to say something. I opened my mouth to speak. Nothing came out. Fortunately, he started to talk, which gave me time to recover my voice.

So the run to daddy reaction, while reprehensible, is a well understood reaction to fear. Unpredictable behavior in an unpredictable situation. No free passes here, given Penn State’s institutional culture of sweeping things under the rug. Just a recognition that the criticism should perhaps move a little farther down the timeline. And hey, as a society maybe we need a little more planning and training for dealing with such situations.

Speaking of which, while looking up the fear-reaction passages in O’Toole’s book, I came across this. Too soon to tell what the truth is, but… If you’ve read the grand jury presentment in the Sandusky case, I will leave you to your own assessment:

“Not all pedophiles are psychopaths, and nonpsychopathic pedophiles can feel remorse and guilt for their behavior. A psychopathic pedophile, however, is someone who is sexually attracted to children, victimizes children, and feels no remorse about this behavior. They will take greater risks to access a child in order to make the crime more exciting, will disregard the consequences of their behavior, will not accept responsibility even when caught, and are more likely to recidivate if the opportunity presents itself.”