Exclusive: Indictments in Two States For Aaron Fisher's Stepfather Raise Serious Doubt About Case Against Sandusky

Immediately after interviewing him the first time in prison (in March of 2013) I had my doubts that the case against Jerry Sandusky was anything close to as legitimate as the conventional wisdom has unanimously maintained from the start. However, it took me a very long time to come to the conclusion that he was almost certainly innocent of most if not all of the charges for which he was convicted and effectively sentenced to die in a maximum security prison.

A large part of what took me so long to fully change my mind (other than I knew it was literal career suicide to defend the most hated man in America), is that I could never see a clear and logical path to total innocence.

To me, the primary blockage of this path had always been Aaron Fisher. I always knew that there were many problems with his story (four different timelines, no sex in the first version, guided by his therapist/co-author, an inability to testify in two tries in front of the grand jury, very odd answers in his national television interview, etc.), but I was very disinclined to believe that his claims were all untrue.

It simply can not be overstated how important Aaron Fisher is to the entire case against Sandusky. If he is not telling the truth then literally the entire case falls apart like a house of cards (especially with Mike McQueary's credibility in tatters).

At first, I believed Fisher because: he had come forward first and well before it was obvious there would be money awarded, allowed himself to be known by his real name (after the New York Times essentially outed him), wrote a book, did a major television interview, and (at least at first) publicly stated that he did NOT blame Penn State for what had allegedly happened to him.  

All of this gave him at least some credibility in my mind and, because his case was totally separate from anything having to do with Penn State or Joe Paterno, I never got too deeply into the details of his claims.

That all changed late last year when news broke out of Georgia that Eric Daniels, Fisher's now former stepfather, had been arrested and charged with 109 counts of child molestation, including molestation of one of his own children. It instantly struck me as INCREDIBLY "coincidental" that two consecutive male authority figures in Fisher's life (his mother writes in his book that she was, at first, glad that Jerry came around so that Aaron would have a male other than Daniels in his life because she suspected Daniels of abusing her children and eventually got a restraining order against him) would not just be criminals, but two of the worst serial pedophiles that anyone could ever even imagine.

In short, basic common sense told me that this scenario (regardless of what the CSA "experts," who think everything is a sign of child abuse, might claim) was highly improbable.

Here is the incredibly horrendous and extensive list of charges against Daniels in Georgia:

/sites/default/files/DanielsGAcharges.pdf

And here, obviously sparked by evidence found in Georgia, is the very recent criminal complaint against Daniels in Pennsylvania for crimes allegedly committed against his own daughter about a decade ago.

/sites/default/files/document_right_side_up.pdf

At this point I started to reexamine the entire issue of Aaron Fisher's credibility and what I found was that there were excellent reasons why the prosecution (as, ironically, detailed in the recent report from the PA Attorney General) did not decide to press charges against Sandusky based only on Fisher's ever-changing story.

I asked Jerry in my second prison interview with him whether he had ever suspected that Aaron might have been abused by Daniels and he said that he had actually suggested this theory to his lawyer before the trial had even begun (and well before Daniels had ever been arrested for child molestation). Joe Amendola, who had absolutely no way of knowing about my conversation with Jerry, confirmed to me that Jerry had indeed suggested this possibility.

At this point I contacted two of Aaron's friends who had been in a car with Aaron driving when he crashed it during the grand jury investigation (an accident he would strongly and absurdly imply was somehow nefariously provoked by Jerry). Neither friend thinks that Aaron is telling the truth about Jerry. One of them, who had been together with Aaron and Jerry at least once, is "positive" that Aaron is lying. Both said that most of Aaron's friends feel the same way about the person they all knew to be a drama queen and storyteller.

But even more compelling to me was the story that one friend who had spent time with Jerry and Aaron together told me about what happened when Aaron would stay over night at his house.

Aaron's friend said (on the record, in an interview I have on tape) that Fisher stayed overnight at his house many times well before Aaron ever met Jerry and that he wet his bed often, including the very first time he was there. This was story was verified (also on tape) by his father. (I should also note that some other things which the boy claimed Aaron would do while in his bed on sleepovers were very strange and disturbing.)

This is incredibly important because the prosecution elicited testimony at trial indicating that Aaron's bed-wetting had started after he met Jerry and that this was somehow "proof" that Jerry had molested him. Instead, not only was this testimony not truthful, but the bed wetting actually existed during a time period far more consistent with Aaron having been abused by his stepfather and not by Jerry.

Further fueling this theory is that Aaron's mother, Dawn Hennessy, wrote in his book that she feared Eric Daniels abusing (she does not say sexually) Aaron so much that she would actively try to "protect" him from Eric. Bizarrely, I also have a Facebook posting of Dawn speaking to Eric's father, after Eric's arrest, and admitting to him that she had suspected Eric may have abused her kids (though she does not mention Aaron by name).

Here is that Facebook conversation:

/sites/default/files/aaron_fishers_mom.pdf

Of course, none of this proves that Aaron Fisher was sexually abused by Daniels and not Sandusky (I have long ago accepted that the burden of proof that I am being held to in this case is FAR FAR greater than the prosecution was held to during the actual trial). However, there is plenty here to substantiate a theory which makes far more sense than what we have been told.

Interestingly, here are the charges involving Fisher and those involving Daniels. Check out what is in yellow and ask yourself if they sound similar or not.

/sites/default/files/Fisher_%26_Daniels_Docs.pdf

So, here is what you have to accept to believe Aaron Fisher's current story:

That the two consecutive primary male figures in his life were heinous serial pedophiles.

That two people with no incentive to lie are not telling the truth about Aaron's bed wetting.

That Aaron not mentioning sex acts in his first version of his story is irrelevant.

That his high school had no good reason to doubt his story and they were just totally incompetent.

That Sandusky agreed to voluntarily be interviewed by investigators regarding Aaron's allegations, even though he knew he was guilty and his lawyer was telling him not to do so.

That his peers almost universally doubting Fisher's story was simply because they are all crazed Penn State football fans.

That Aaron claiming four different/conflicting timelines of abuse (including one which including abuse after he reported abuse) is irrelevant.

That Aaron not being able to testify fully in his first two tries in the grand jury (before finally reading his testimony) is irrelevant.

That Aaron, by his own admission, never telling his mother any of the details of what happened with Jerry, is irrelevant.

That Aaron threatening to quit the case in the middle of the investigation is not a sign that he wasn't sure that he was doing the right thing.

That Aaron having a therapist (who would end up being his co-author as well as the therapist for the only other victim who claimed sex at the time of the arrest) help him find his memories of abuse is irrelevant.

That Aaron (during his ABC 20/20 interview) smiling while recalling Jerry as a "teddy bear" and saying that hearing Jerry call him a liar made him "feel like crap," were remotely consistent with someone who was viciously sexually abused for years by him.

That Aaron going from being indigent to wealthy because of all of this is irrelevant.

On the other hand, here is all you have to accept to believe my theory:

Aaron Fisher was abused by a stepfather (or maybe he just knew of abuse he had committed against his "siblings") against whom there is FAR more evidence of pedophilia than there ever was against Sandusky.

He never talked about it until he was helped by his therapist who naturally guided Aaron towards making his allegations against Jerry, who was currently the primary male figure in his life.

Aaron's claims seemed credible because Aaron actually had been abused and because Jerry was such a touchy feely guy and the therapist (as indicated in Fisher's book) thought that it was very suspicious that Jerry would leave Penn State to focus solely on the Second Mile.

Aaron, once he started getting lots of attention for these claims, became locked into the story and has been richly rewarded for it.

The "avalanche" of supposed victims, which comes after it is clear that there will be big money for any accuser, seals in the public/media mind that Fisher must be telling the truth and he becomes a hero.

No one in the media has the guts or even the curiosity to press him on his story and so the house of cards is allowed to maintain itself because literally no one (other than me) has any incentive to even question him.  

As usual, I would strongly maintain that my scenario makes a heck of a lot more sense than the conventional "wisdom." Again, if I am right, the ENTIRE case against Sandusky (and therefore Penn State and Joe Paterno) falls apart because it was Fisher's claims on which the entire prosecution case was literally built.