Central Mountain High School - Jerry Sandusky

Jerry Sandusky

Central Mountain is the high school that originally brought to light the alleged sexual predation of minors by former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky. The school district reported an incident involving Sandusky and Central Mountain student Aaron Fisher (identified in court papers as "Victim 1") after Fisher and his mother, Dawn Daniels, reported it to authorities in the Spring of 2008.

On November 22, 2011, it was reported that Fisher, by then a 17-year-old senior at Central Mountain, was forced to leave the school because of bullying. The other students blamed Victim 1 for Penn State University's firing of football coach Joe Paterno.

Fisher and Daniels have claimed that principal Karen Probst and vice principal Steve Turchetta actively tried to persuade them not to report the incident to police. Although the Grand Jury indictment against Sandusky stated that the school called the police immediately upon being notified, Fisher and Daniels have both stated this is false. In an interview with ABC News' 20/20, Fisher and Daniels said that when Probst was notified of Fisher's charges, Probst replied that Sandusky had "a heart of gold" and would never harm a child, and that Fisher and Daniels needed to "go home and think about it" rather than report the incident to police. Daniels and Fisher later learned that school officials only reported the incident after they left Probst's office.

Earlier, in an interview with Huffington Post, Daniels (identified in the story as "Mother 1") said she first grew suspicious about Sandusky when she learned that Turchetta--who also serves as the school's head football coach--had given Sandusky nearly unfettered access to her son during school hours without any parental notification or permission. Sandusky had even taken Fisher off campus on several occasions. Daniels also reported (a) that she'd been chastised, and told by, a grandmother in a market "that Turchetta brought up at his weekly football parent meeting, presumably with family members of the football team. According to Daniels, the woman added, 'Coach Turchetta said these charges are never going to stick and he'll walk away'"; (b) "that her son developed a close bond with a 28-year-old volunteer coach, which Turchetta abruptly ended"; and (c) that "her son told her that Turchetta was in his face, yelling at him: 'With what you've done already, no 28-year-old man needs to be around you.'" Later, Fisher and Daniels learned that Turchetta had his own concerns about the relationship between Fisher and Sandusky, but made no further inquiries.

The volunteer coach, Thom Hunter, detailed his own relationship with Fisher, his friends and track teammates, and the school which ultimately terminated his position. Neighbors and friends also spoke of gift-giving, car trips and arguments around the relationship between Fisher and Sandusky. Sandusky's attorney spoke of a night alone in a hotel room with Fisher, with "a pull-out cot ... paid for". A friend spoke at length of a 3-boy trip with Sandusky to a swimming pool, ending with Fisher alone in the car with the coach and "Sandusky holding the boy’s hand". Hunter and others spoke of a car accident Fisher suffered, and the process of comeback. Hunter also described the process of his interaction with another coach at the school, of Hunter's then being told to “stop showing up to practices”, and of the "Bring Tom Back" t-shirts thereafter "printed ... ozens of team members".

"'That’s Jerry — he was always a very physical kind of teddy bear, like an overgrown kid,' Amendola said when asked about the friend’s account . 'He would hug kids, he kissed kids, but it wasn’t sexual.'" Amendola also questioned Victim 1's accounts—saying that Victim 1 "has, over time, exaggerated his claims of being molested" -- and spoke of Sandusky's gift-giving habits, in response to the reporting.