Patriot News and PSU settlement atty Rozen trash victim D.F. to protect Corbett

While the Patriot News concludes that Victim D.F. wasn't found credible by PSU's settlement attorneys or Frank Fina, it is more likely the date of his abuse drove the decisions about his "credibility."

By
Ray Blehar

On Wednesday, I wrote about the new D.F. lawsuit and PSU's best chances for fighting it.  Today (September 4th, 2014), the Patriot News reported that D.F. was interviewed "years ago" by police and concluded he was not found credible by the prosecution and by PSU settlement attorney Michael Rozen.  This shameless trashing of the victim demonstrates that the P-N will stop at nothing to quash any information that shows the foot-dragging by Tom Corbett's AG office put children in danger.

In a familiar maneuver, P-N reporter Charles Thompson cherry picked the statements in the lawsuit to make it appear D.F.s abuse didn't occur during the Sandusky investigation.  To wit:

The civil case hinges on two specific incidents, both allegedly occurring when the boy was about 12 years old.

• A shopping outing in 2008 or 2009, during which the former coach allegedly pulled his car over to the side of a road and forced the plaintiff into oral sex.
• A 2008 Penn State home game against Coastal Carolina University. The game was a rout, and the teen said Sandusky left early, took him back to his home, and raped him.

 The lawsuit is very clear that D.F. is alleging abuse occurred during the Sandusky investigation:


11. Plaintiff participated in Several programs provided by Defendant-The Second Mile from the years 2004 through 2012. 

12. Defendant-Sandusky had recruited, groomed and coerced the Plaintiff throughout the years that Plaintiff attended Defendant-The Second Mile.



Thompson also cited former prosecutor Frank Fina's rebuttal of AG Kathleen Kane's statement that two victims were abused during the Sandusky investigation as likely evidence that new victim, D.F.,  is one of those victims and isn't credible.  

Prosecutor Joseph McGettigan stated (and Fina concurred) that they interviewed someone who they learned of in 2012 who claimed to be abused in 2009, but didn't find him credible.

The more likely reason this victim was not "credible" was because his abuse happened between 2008 and 2012 -- during the Sandusky investigation.  As I reported earlier, the prosecutors likely manipulated dates on the Bills in Particulars in order to get specific outcomes in this case.  One of those outcomes was to conceal that victims were abused while Sandusky was under investigation.

Once again, the "paper of record" in the Sandusky case is carrying water for former AG Tom Corbett and making an evidentiary leap based on the AG prosecutor's words -- instead of examining the "reality" of the Sandusky case's prosecution.  

Not only were dates and locations of crimes manipulated in the Sandusky case, but Frank Fina went to the extreme to prosecute two cases with unknown victims.  In the case of the janitor incident, he didn't have a victim or an eyewitness or any evidence of crime beyond the hearsay testimony of janitor Ronald Petrosky.  Petrosky's testimony was inconsistent on the date, location, and circumstances of the crime.  And Fina himself had to pull a fast one - changing the crime scene location during a sidebar - to rebut defense attorney Karl Rominger's argument that if Petrosky's testimony was he could only see legs, then too only could the eye-witness (James Calhoun).  


It is hard to imagine any incident could be less credible than the account of the janitor -- but that's what Fina and the PN want you to believe.