Three Things to Watch for in the Jerry Sandusky Trial

Former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s trial is beginning, as jury selection is underway this week.   He faces 52 counts of raping and molesting young boys.

Trials are unpredictable creatures, and I’m with Yogi Berra:  I hate to make predictions, especially about the future.  But having represented numerous child sexual abuse survivors and having covered high profile rape and molestation trials for a dozen years, I can make some educated guesses about how some of it will go down.

Brace yourselves for:

1.    Sharp attacks on the “victims.” Eight young men are expected to testify that Sandusky molested them.  Sandusky’s defense will attempt to cast doubt on their credibility by hammering them on cross-examination about any inconsistencies in their testimony, any motive to come forward – such as financial – or any conspiring they may have done with each other or with prosecutors.  The defense will be given broad latitude by the judge to go after anything in the accusers’ past that makes them look like liars.  At times we may forget it’s Sandusky on trial, rather than these young men.

“Blaming the victim” is agonizing for witnesses, and for sexual abuse survivors watching the trial, who often become re-traumatized during high profile trials like this, reliving their own experiences.  But there’s no getting around that this is how our system works.  Every defendant has a constitutional right to confront and cross-examine witnesses against him.

2.    Jurors who are reluctant to believe child sexual abuse happens.

Despite decades of consciousness raising by abuse survivors, many people have a hard time believing that child molestation happens by guys who don’t have shifty eyes and don’t hang out in alleys in trench coats.  Add to that that the one group who knows it’s real — child sexual abuse victims  — are generally excused from juries in cases like this, and that a very human form of denial can permeate the jurors’ collective minds and be tough for prosecutors to overcome.

Denial is a powerful defense mechanism in the human psyche.  In my experience trying these cases, everyone pays lip service to the idea that child molestation is terrible, but few want to believe it happened in a case right in front of them.   Many people don’t understand how child molestation is different from other crimes:  victims are less likely to report it at the time, or ever; they are more likely to recant their stories; many blame themselves; many believe they “love” the perpetrator and continue to seek out time with them even while they are being abused.

3.    Jurors who don’t want to convict a once popular coach from the hometown college.

The Sandusky trial is taking place in Centre County, PA, where Penn State is the dominant institution.   Jury selection isn’t finished, but already jurors include a rising senior at the college, a retired soil sciences professor with 37 years at the university, a man with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the school, and a woman who’s been a football season ticket holder since the 1970s.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the advantage this gives the defense.  Sure, jurors will all swear to be impartial, but it’s tough to weed out unconscious biases for the hometown team after a lifetime of rooting for it.

I don’t know whether Sandusky is innocent or guilty.  Only the jury can answer that at the conclusion of the trial.  I don’t believe in calling a defendant guilty or not guilty before the jury, because they are the ones in the courtroom every day analyzing the evidence.  But I do believe the evidence will have to be powerful in this case to overcome these three obstacles for the prosecution.

Fasten your seat belts.  It’s going to be a rocky trial.

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of Avvo.com.

Watch Lisa Bloom’s latest interview with the Daily Beast discussing the trial: