Jerry Sandusky changes his legal strategy to try to overturn his sex abuse convictions. A judge wants him to explain why

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — As he was approaching the end of his career, Jerry Sandusky told his legendary boss Joe Paterno he wanted to find a way to maintain “visibility” with Penn State University even after leaving the storied college football program. Sandusky’s name would end up having far more visibility than either he or the school ever imagined.

The coach who called himself the “Great Pretender,” now 82 years old, was given what amounted to a life sentence in 2012 for sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. Many of them were connected to The Second Mile, a charity Sandusky started in 1977 as a group foster home, which had grown to encompass a broad range of programs for disadvantaged young people.

Sandusky’s legal team has spent most of the last year arguing he deserves a new trial, citing the sworn statement of one of his accusers recanting his allegations.

“I now regret my role in facilitating what I have come to view as a deeply flawed prosecution,” wrote Ryan Rittmeyer, known in the trial as Alleged Victim No. 10, in a 2025 affidavit. Now nearly 40 years old, he was scheduled to publicly recant his allegations in court on Tuesday.

Rittmeyer is the only victim of Sandusky who has recanted, and he is connected to only six of the 45 counts against the coach.

With only five days to go until Rittmeyer was scheduled to change his testimony in a courtroom, Sandusky’s defense attorneys unexpectedly withdrew the request for a new trial, with the defendant saying he thinks Pennsylvania judges’ minds are already made up, and he wants to spend his time instead trying to move his legal arguments to federal court.

“Every one of those issues can be heard together by judges who have not already made up their minds about me,” Sandusky said Wednesday in an audio statement from prison provided to CNN.

“I’m innocent. I intend to be alive when the truth is heard.”

After a closed conference with attorneys over Zoom on Friday, the judge decided against canceling Tuesday’s hearing, but a spokesperson for Sandusky says Rittmeyer will not appear. Instead, Sandusky will appear remotely from prison to confirm he stands behind the decision to drop his latest petition, an assurance demanded by prosecutors.

“There should be a record of defendant informing the Court that he has discussed withdrawing the claim with counsel, that he understands the consequences of that, and that he agrees with that decision,” wrote lawyers with the state attorney general’s office.

The case Penn State has tried to put behind it with over $109 million in legal settlements paid by the school to individuals who had made sexual abuse allegations – one that meant jail time not only for Sandusky but also for former school President Graham Spanier and two other university officials who failed to stop him – is returning to the spotlight in the same courthouse where a jury said “guilty” 45 times.

Rittmeyer now says his testimony was ‘induced’

The allegations against Sandusky – a man so closely tied to the football program that had united State College, Pennsylvania, for decades – shocked the state.

“This is a case about a sexual predator accused of using his position within the community and the university to prey on numerous young boys for more than a decade,” Pennsylvania’s then-Attorney General Linda Kelly said as charges against Sandusky were announced in 2011.

Sandusky has tried almost nonstop since his sentencing to have his June 22, 2012, conviction overturned, arguing first that his lawyers bungled the case. The state Superior Court denied his request for a new trial in 2019, but ordered him to be resentenced. A lower court ultimately gave him the same sentence as before: 30 to 60 years in prison.

Sandusky’s trial included graphic and disturbing testimony from the man then known as Alleged Victim No. 10. But now, the affidavit from Rittmeyer submitted by Sandusky’s attorneys says he doesn’t really remember the abuse he described on the stand.

In their earlier petition for a new trial, Sandusky defense attorneys said lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan relied on the heavily debated theory that the trauma of abuse can cause memories to be repressed by sexual assault victims.

“I was told – both directly and indirectly – that trauma may have fragmented my memory, and that I could safely affirm details I did not fully recall,” Rittmeyer said in his affidavit. “I was assured this was common and even expected.”

Rittmeyer never had any formal therapy sessions to recover repressed memories, he said in his affidavit, but later discovered “many accusers, like myself, were encouraged to reconstruct traumatic narratives despite significant memory gaps.”

At the trial in 2012, Rittmeyer testified he and Sandusky had oral sex multiple times at The Second Mile, a program he had been referred to while in foster care. He testified Sandusky threatened that Rittmeyer would never see his family again if he told anyone.

Although he denies he committed any deliberate perjury, Rittmeyer now says he was “induced” to say on the witness stand what prosecutors wanted.

“I was led to believe that failing to testify in the manner prosecutors expected would allow a dangerous man to escape justice,” he wrote. “I internalized their version of events to the point of confusion between memory, suggestion, and expectation.”

Rittmeyer did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment on his sworn statement and whether he had any reaction to Sandusky’s efforts to drop the matter in state court.

“McGettigan failed to disclose that the accusations were changing and that the men were now ‘remembering’ information never before disclosed,” Sandusky’s defense attorneys argued in a court document.

Days after his arrest in an interview with NBC Sports’ Bob Costas, Sandusky denied abusing young boys or having a sexual attraction to them, but acknowledged some alarming details in the allegations against him were true.

“I have horsed around with kids. I have showered (with them) after workouts,” he said. “I have hugged them and I have touched their leg without intent of sexual contact, so if you look at it that way, there are things that would be accurate.”

Sandusky’s attorneys at the law firm of Tucker Arensberg did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the hearing.

Sandusky’s trial produced shocking testimony from other victims

The shadow of Penn State’s influence in this borough in the center of the commonwealth continues to hang over the case. Every single judge in Centre County recused themselves ahead of Sandusky’s original trial because of ties to the university, The Second Mile charity, or Sandusky himself. For the upcoming hearing, a semi-retired judge from several counties away, Maureen Skerda, will hear from Sandusky Tuesday to confirm he wants to drop his efforts to have Rittmeyer’s affidavit considered in state court.

Skerda already excluded other claims from Sandusky that one victim profited from a trust set up with prosecutors’ help after the trial and that Sandusky’s trial attorneys were ineffective.

At the trial, victims described in detail multiple instances of oral sex when they were teenagers – sometimes in a basement, sometimes in a shower.

“He got real aggressive and just forced me into it,” the man identified as Alleged Victim No. 9 testified. “And I just went with it; there was no fighting against it.”

One man who later said he also had been sexually victimized was Matt Sandusky, who first met the coach through The Second Mile program and was later adopted by him. He came forward after Sandusky’s trial had already started, and charges were never filed in his case.

Penn State leaders criticized – and in some cases, jailed – for inaction

University officials got involved – reluctantly, an investigation would later find – when then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno and other athletics officials he had witnessed Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in a shower at Penn State’s football training building in February 2001, after Sandusky had officially retired from the university but still had nearly unfettered access to campus. Leadership, including Paterno, did not report the allegation to police, despite state law requiring them to do so, the investigation said.

The grand jury later discovered a janitor had previously said he saw Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in the same building months earlier but hadn’t reported it at the time out of fear all of the janitors might be fired. Sandusky had also been confronted about showering with an 11-year-old boy in 1998, prior to his retirement, but said nothing sexual had happened, and the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute him.

After Sandusky’s conviction, Penn State hired former FBI director Louis Freeh to conduct its internal investigation into how the school responded to McQueary. His 267-page report, which involved more than 430 interviews, blamed senior leadership of the university and its athletics program – including the revered coach known as “JoePa” – for not following up on allegations of abuse by Sandusky.

“These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities,” the report said.

The university did not formally accept the conclusions of the Freeh Report, and Paterno’s widow Sue said in a statement she considered it “deeply flawed, reached unsupported conclusions about Joe and unjustly criticized the culture of Penn State.”

The Paterno family sued the school in 2014 but dropped that suit in 2020 after the chairman of Penn State’s board of trustees put out a statement saying it “takes great pride in the many contributions made by Joe Paterno” and “the extraordinary contributions of Sue Paterno.”

Scandal cost Penn State over $100 million

University audits in 2016 and 2017 revealed Penn State had paid more than $109 million in settlements to at least 33 people who said they were sexually assaulted by Sandusky, some of which was covered by insurance. Rittmeyer said he received a $5.5 million civil settlement with the university, with over $2 million of it going to his attorneys.

The idea that money was at the heart of the accusations against Sandusky was brought up by the defense at trial, and McGettigan dismissed it during closing arguments.

“The great thing about conspiracy theories is you just let them go on and on, until they collapse under their own weight,” he said at the time.

Sandusky’s attorneys originally planned to call McGettigan to testify at the hearing over “his role in shaping the testimony of (Rittmeyer),” but he died in December. Another prosecutor in Sandusky’s case, Frank Fina, is still on the witness list.

More than a decade after accounts about Sandusky’s abuse resulted in his conviction and sanctions decimated the football program, the university community has tried to move on.

Although the greater-than-life-size statue of Paterno was taken down in the wake of his firing remains in storage and out of public view, Penn State announced last week it was opening a new section of its athletic museum called the Paterno Family Football Experience Room, funded in part by an anonymous donation.

“Coach Paterno’s original office desk and workspace” are included, the athletic department announced.

But Sandusky has vowed never to move on, hoping to get his case heard in federal court.

“I need to get there as fast as possible,” he said last week. “I’m 82 years old.”

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CNN’s Lauren del Valle contributed to this report.