Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,44

the two men pled guilty only to “child endangerment” so that all other charges could be dropped.

3 Just as this book was going to press, Spanier’s conviction was thrown out by a federal judge, the day before he was to finally report to prison. Whether or not the prosecution will appeal the ruling is—as we are going to press—unknown.

4 This was not unusual for Sandusky. He showered all the time after workouts with Second Mile boys, and loved playing locker-room games. “What happened is…the horsing around would lead to him starting like a soap battle,” one former Second Miler testified at the Sandusky trial. “There was soap dispensers beside each one of the showers, and he would pump his hand full of soap and basically throw it.”

5 The idea that traumatic memories are repressed and can be retrieved only under the direction of therapy is—to say the least—controversial. See the Notes for a further discussion of this.

6 The evidence gathered by Ziegler on this point is compelling. For example, when Dranov testified in the Spanier trial, he said he had met with Gary Schultz on an entirely separate matter late that February, and had brought up the issue of Sandusky “since this was maybe three months after the incident and we hadn’t heard any follow-up.” Will we ever know the exact date? Probably not.

Ziegler is the most vociferous of those who believe that Sandusky was wrongfully accused. See also: Mark Pendergrast, The Most Hated Man in America. Some of Ziegler’s arguments are more convincing than others. For a longer discussion of the Sandusky skeptics, see the Notes.

7 The prosecution’s report on Allan Myers is a doozy. An investigator named Michael Corricelli spoke to Myers’s lawyer, who told him that Myers now claimed to have been raped repeatedly by Sandusky. His lawyer produced a three-page account allegedly written by Myers detailing his abuse at the hands of Sandusky. The prosecution team read the account and suspected that it hadn’t been written by Myers at all but rather by his lawyer. Finally the prosecution gave up, and walked away from one of the most important figures in the entire case.

8 Courtney had doubts about Sandusky’s innocence. But in the end Sandusky’s cover story was just too convincing. Someone that goofed around with Second Mile kids all the time in public. Curley then called the executive director of the Second Mile, John Raykovitz. Raykovitz promised to have a word with Sandusky and tell him not to bring any more boys on campus. “I can only speak for myself, but I thought Jerry had a boundary issue, judgment issue, that needed to be addressed,” Curley explained. Sandusky needed to be careful, he felt, or people would think he was a pedophile. “I told him,” Raykovitz said, “that it would be more appropriate—if he was going to shower with someone after a workout—that he wear swim trunks. And I said that because…that was the time when there was a lot of stuff coming out about Boy Scouts and church and things of that nature.”

9 This is not a literal transcription of what Spanier said, but rather a paraphrase, based on his recollections.

Part Three

Transparency

Chapter Six

The Friends Fallacy

1.

By its fifth season, Friends was well on its way to becoming one of the most successful television shows of all time. It was one of the first great “hang-out comedies.” Six friends—Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross—live in a chaotic jumble in downtown Manhattan, couple and decouple, flirt and fight but mostly just talk, endlessly and hilariously.

The season begins with Ross getting married to a non-Friends outsider. By midseason the relationship will be over, and by season’s end he will be back in the arms of Rachel. Phoebe gives birth to triplets and takes up with a police officer. And, most consequentially, Monica and Chandler fall in love—a development that creates an immediate problem, because Monica is Ross’s sister and Chandler is Ross’s best friend, and neither of them has the courage to tell Ross what is happening.

At the beginning of episode fifteen—titled “The One with the Girl Who Hits Joey”—Chandler and Monica’s subterfuge falls apart. Ross looks out his window at the apartment across the way and spots his sister Monica in a romantic embrace with Chandler. He’s thunderstruck. He runs to Monica’s apartment and tries to barge in, but the chain is on her door. So he sticks his face into the six-inch gap.

“Chandler! Chandler! I saw what you were doing through the window. I saw

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