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Michael McQueary
Jerry Sandusky is a convicted sex offender and former assistant coach for the Penn State football team. Sandusky had just retired as defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team when Mark McQueary, who was then the assistant coach of the football team, witnessed him molest an underage boy in the locker room showers in February 2001. Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a nonprofit organization to aid Pennsylvania’s underprivileged youth, in 1977, and he met his victims through their participation in the organization. Sandusky was a beloved figure in a community that took great pride in their football team, and the allegations shocked everyone when they finally came to light in 2011. Sandusky is alleged to have begun assaulting children as early as 1994. The court and the public blamed the delayed investigation and trial on Penn State’s leadership, claiming they had willfully protected Sandusky, enabling him to commit further acts of abuse.
Jerry Sandusky Quotes in Talking to Strangers
The Talking to Strangers quotes below are all either spoken by Jerry Sandusky or refer to Jerry Sandusky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3 Quotes
You should have known. There were all kinds of red flags. You had doubts. Levine would say that’s the wrong way to think about the problem. The right question is: were there enough red flags to push you over the threshold of belief? If there weren’t, then by defaulting to truth you were only being human.
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Chapter 5 Quotes
If every coach is assumed to be a pedophile, then no parent would let their child leave the house, and no sane person would ever volunteer to be a coach. We default to truth—even when that decision carries terrible risks—because we have no choice. Society cannot function otherwise. And in those rare instances where trust ends in betrayal, those victimized by default to truth deserve our sympathy, not our censure.
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Jerry Sandusky Character Timeline in Talking to Strangers
The timeline below shows where the character Jerry Sandusky appears in Talking to Strangers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Five: The Boy in the Shower
...football team. The Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania, Laura Ditka, interrogates McQueary about witnessing Jerry Sandusky, who had just retired as defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team, molest an...
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...State’s athletic director. Curley told the school’s president, Graham Spanier. An investigation took place, and Sandusky was arrested. Afterward, eight young men came forward to testify that Sandusky had abused them...
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The most egregious element of the Sandusky case was that while McQueary witnessed the abuse in 2001, the investigation into Sandusky’s behavior...
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At the height of the scandal, Sandusky spoke to NBC sports anchor Bob Costas. He claimed not to be a pedophile despite...
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2. Gladwell summarizes Jerry Sandusky’s sports-centric childhood growing up in Washington, Pennsylvania. Sandusky grew up surrounded by the many children...
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...incident came in 2008 from a boy named Aaron Fisher who did feel uncomfortable with Sandusky’s physical behavior. Fisher met with a child psychologist over the course of a year, eventually...
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...advised the prosecutor’s office to talk to McQueary, who had supposedly witnessed an incident between Sandusky and a child. In McQueary, the prosecution finally had a credible witness to corroborate claims...
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4. Gladwell compares the Sandusky scandal to the Larry Nassar case that unfolded a few years later. Nassar was a...
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...case presents an example of how “default to truth” influences a clear-cut case, however, the Sandusky case isn’t so simple.
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5. After the public learned of the accusations against Sandusky, former Second Mile member Allan Myers rushed in to defend him. Myers insisted he had...
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Another notable Sandusky victim is Brett Swisher Houtz, a Second Mile kid who had been very close with...
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Gladwell asserts that the Sandusky case was more complex than the Nassar case because Sandusky’s victims hadn’t complained or confided...
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Courtney considered Sandusky’s reputation for having a playful, goofy demeanor around the Second Mile kids in public and,...
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...Curley and Schultz were charged first. Spanier, who had sincerely believed the men’s claims that Sandusky’s conduct was mere “horseplay,” refused to distance himself from them. Gladwell argues that Spanier’s loyalty...
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