Judge Allows Sandusky to Put on Disorder Testimony at BetLM

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (CFB/Newsfeed) — Jerry San­dusky won a court rul­ing Fri­day that will let him have an expert tes­tify about a psy­chi­atric con­di­tion that his lawyer says helps explain let­ters he wrote to his accusers and other actions being con­strued as him groom­ing victims.

Judge John Cle­land granted a motion that sought to put evi­dence of “histri­onic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der” before jurors in Sandusky’s child sex­ual abuse case.

Cleland’s order also said the for­mer Penn State assis­tant foot­ball coach must make him­self avail­able for pros­e­cu­tors so they can pre­pare rebut­tal psy­chi­atric testimony.

The Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion‘s diag­nos­tic man­ual calls histri­onic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der “a per­va­sive pat­tern of exces­sive emo­tion­al­ity and atten­tion seek­ing” and “often char­ac­ter­ized by inap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­ally seduc­tive or provoca­tive behav­ior” and rapidly shift­ing emotions.

The defense motion said peo­ple with the con­di­tion would not nec­es­sar­ily be groom­ing boys to molest them but instead might be try­ing to “sat­isfy the needs of a psy­che” with the disorder.

“The jury should not be mis­led into believ­ing these state­ments and actions are likely groom­ing when they are just as likely or more likely histri­onic in ori­gin,” wrote defense attor­ney Karl Rominger in the June 11 filing.

Tes­ti­mony in the 68-year-old for­mer coach’s crim­i­nal trial is expected to resume Mon­day. He faces 52 charges he abused 10 boys over 15 years. He has denied the alle­ga­tions, which led to the ouster of the uni­ver­sity pres­i­dent and its long­time coach, Joe Paterno.

Dr. Glen Gab­bard, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Hous­ton, said histri­onic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der is over­whelm­ingly diag­nosed in women and could in no way be seen as a rea­son or expla­na­tion for the abuse of children.

“That diag­no­sis, if he has it, would be com­pletely irrel­e­vant to any­thing hav­ing to do with crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­ity for acts of pedophilia,” said Gab­bard, who is an expert on per­son­al­ity dis­or­ders.

“It would make no sense to use this as a defense,” said Gab­bard, not­ing he could not diag­nose San­dusky. “You are still very much in con­trol of what you do and what you say.”

The diag­no­sis involves some­one who suf­fers highly emo­tional shifts from one state to another, he said, some­one who is overly dra­matic, seduc­tive and likes being the cen­ter of atten­tion. The clas­sic exam­ple, Gab­bard said, would be Mar­i­lyn Monroe.

“These are peo­ple who act like your friend when they just barely met you,” he said.