Page 56 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Sandusky: Right.
Costas: But you’re a man who, by his own admission, has showered with young boys. Highly
inappropriate.…Multiple reports of you getting into bed with young boys who stayed at your
house in a room in the basement. How do you account for these things? And if you’re not a
pedophile, then what are you?
Sandusky: Well, I’m a person that has taken a strong interest…I’m a very passionate person in
terms of trying to make a difference in the lives of some young people. I worked very hard to
try to connect with them…
Costas: But isn’t what you’re just describing the classic M.O. of many pedophiles?…
Sandusky: Well—you might think that. I don’t know.
Sandusky laughs nervously, launches into a long defensive explanation. And then:
Costas: Are you sexually attracted to young boys—to underage boys?

Sandusky: Am I sexually attracted to underage boys?
A pause.
Costas: Yes.
Another pause.
Sandusky: Sexually attracted, you know, I—I enjoy young people. I—I love to be around them.
I—I—but no, I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.
Graham Spanier let that man roam free around the Penn State campus.
But here’s my question, in light of Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff and Harry Markopolos and
every bit of evidence marshaled by Tim Levine about how hard it is for us to overcome our default
to truth: do you think that if you were the president of Penn State, confronted with the same set of
facts and questions, you would have behaved any differently?

2.

Jerry Sandusky grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania. His father headed the local community
recreation center, running sports programs for children. The Sanduskys lived upstairs. Their house
was filled with baseball bats and basketballs and footballs. There were children everywhere. As an
adult, Sandusky re-created the world of his childhood. Sandusky’s son E.J. once described his father
as “a frustrated playground director.” Sandusky would organize kickball games in the backyard and,
E.J. said, “Dad would get every single kid involved. We had the largest kickball games in the United
States—kickball games with forty kids.” Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, adopted six children and
were foster parents to countless more. “They took in so many foster children that even their closest
friends could not keep track of them all,” Joe Posnanski wrote in a biography of Sandusky’s boss,
Joe Paterno. “Children constantly surrounded Sandusky, so much so that they became part of his
persona.”
Sandusky was a goofball and a cutup. Much of Sandusky’s autobiography—titled, incredibly,
Touched—is devoted to stories of his antics: the time he smeared charcoal over the handset of his
chemistry teacher’s phone, the time he ran afoul of a lifeguard for horseplay with his children in a
public pool. Four and a half pages alone are devoted to water-balloon fights that he orchestrated
while in college. “Wherever I went, it seemed like trouble was sure to follow,” Sandusky wrote. “I
live a good part of my life in a make-believe world,” he continues. “I enjoyed pretending as a kid,
and I love doing the same as an adult with these kids. Pretending has always been part of me.”
In 1977, Sandusky founded a charity called the Second Mile. It was a recreational program for
troubled boys. Over the years, thousands of children from impoverished and unsettled homes in the
area passed through the program. Sandusky took his Second Mile kids to football games. He
wrestled with them. He would give them gifts, write them letters, take them on trips, and bring them
into his home. Many of the boys were being raised by single mothers. He tried to be the father they
didn’t have.