PennLive Editorial Board Caught Lying About Victim 9's Abuse

On June 25, 2014, the PennLive Editorial Board wrote this falsehood about Victim 9's abuse:

"As of now, there is no publicly-available proof of Kane's claim that the perplexing delays in bringing charges against Sandusky allowed him to continue abusing boys past March 2009."

PennLive's  June 14, 2012 column (below) definitively reported that abuse occurred through Victim 9's sixteenth birthday in 2009.  According to the trial transcripts, his birthday was July 29, 1993.

"For nearly four years, until 2009, he said, he slept at Sandusky's house almost every weekend. The abuse occurred on most of those occasions, he said.

Sometimes he would scream and tell Sandusky to stop molesting him, he said, but "there was no fighting against it."

The man said he finally had enough when he was 16 in 2009 and called his mom to come get him at Sandusky's home. "I didn't tell her why," he said."

-- Matt Miller, PennLive, June 14, 2012

PennLive's obfuscation of the truth continued when the editorial board cited two articles as proof of "inconclusiveness."  Both articles fell well short on providing a full review of the facts.

"However, court records that might confirm or reject her claim about Victim 9 are inconclusive, according to reporting by PennLive's Charles Thompson and the Philadelphia Inquirer."

Neither reporter provided a quote from the transcript of the Sandusky trial, in which Victim 9's testimony under cross-examination was definitive that he was abused until the age of 16.  Thompson stated that the  "start and ending dates of that relationship were never precise, however, and by some interpretations of his testimony the abuse may have stretched into 2009."

What is imprecise is Thompson's statement.  You can read the relevant part of Victim 9's transcript below, which is definitive that the abuse stopped at age 16.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "Prosecutors in court documents said the abuse ended in 2008. On the stand, the victim was unsure about the year it ended. In a 2013 lawsuit, he claimed the abuse continued until 2009."

There is no uncertainty or equivocation by Victim 9 at all about when it ended.  The Inquirer is lying too.

The Inquirer's reference to the court document was specific to the (revised) May 18, 2012, Bill of Particulars -- which stated the date of the crimes ended in 2008.  However that doesn't tell the full story.  The previous Bill of Particulars from February matched the Victim's testimony, stating that 2009 (and age 16) was the end date of the abuse.  You can read those below.

It really doesn't matter what the Bill of Particulars said because it was a pre-trial document. The victim's testimony is what the jury heard.  Victim 9, who was 18 when he testified, was not trying to overcome a distant memory like many of the other victims.  His abuse had stopped just two years earlier. 

No amount of lying and obfuscation by news reporters after the fact changes the Victim's testimony.  As the Inquirer noted, his lawsuit also contends he was abused until 2009. 

The Soon to Be Told, Untold Story

In what has become a disgusting ritual in this case, the PennLive editorial board and its staff biased its reporting based on a skewed view of the evidence.  Once again, PennLive omitted evidence and published known falsehoods to keep the stink off Governor Corbett, the Pennsylvania government officials, and others who let Sandusky continue to be a public menace for decades.

Then PennLive editorial board closed it column with this jaw-dropping statement:

"Instead, we have proof of distressingly sloppy work by the state's chief law enforcement officer."

After reading a 339 page report detailing an inexcusably slow investigation that was filled with procedural errors, the editorial board criticized Kathleen Kane for sloppy work?

PennLive's lack of journalistic ethics is without limits and the gauge on their morality has been broken for years.