JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It's a name you don't hear often in the news anymore, but one that's hard to forget: Jerry Sandusky. The former Penn State assistant football coach is serving up to 60 years in prison on child sex abuse charges. He still says he's innocent, but one of his sons -- Matt Sandusky -- insists he's not.
Matt spoke with News4Jax anchor Staci Spanos while he was in town speaking to Jacksonville's Exchange Club. He talked about how he was adopted by Jerry and now travels the country talking about what he said Jerry did to him.
Matt wants others to hear his story, learn from it, and heal from any abuse they may have experienced -- just like he's healing.
"The very first memory I have I was about 3 years old. I was sitting on the edge of a bed. My biological dad was sitting beside me, my mother and my grandfather were pounding on the door trying to get in. What my dad was doing was burning my toes with a cigarette lighter," Matt explained while speaking recently at Jacksonville's Exchange Club .
Matt said that difficult start to his life primed him to be the perfect prey. Matt claims he fell victim to his predator, Jerry Sandusky -- whom he met as a troubled youth.
Jerry would go on to be his foster father and ultimately his adoptive dad. During his Jacksonville speaking engagement, Matt said that the abuse started with a simple but sinister grooming process when Sandusky picked him up one day to watch a football game.
"I got into the car, shut the door and he put his hand on my left knee. He didn't squeeze my knee, he didn't move it, he didn't ask anything about it. I just knew it made me super uncomfortable as a 9-year-old boy, but as I would do many times over the years, I told myself it felt weird because it wasn't natural to me," Matt explained.
When Staci asked Matt what kind of guy Jerry Sandusky was, he told her, "90 percent of the time that I spent with him and the Sandusky family was everything that I wish every single child would have in their lives."
"That's very hard for people to understand because they seem to be this great person and behind closed doors they're a monster," Staci followed up.
"Yeah, and that's how society wants to reckon with these issues," Matt said. "We want to paint the people that do these crimes, these heinous monsters. It's hard when we have to justify and come to the realization that they are parents they are coaches, they are loved ones in the child's life, in our lives, they're friends of ours and that's hard for us to grasp and why we still have a hard time dealing with this issue."
Staci Spanos also spoke with child safety expert Stacy Pendarvis, who implements safety programs in schools across the country. Pendarvis said one statistic shows 95 percent of sexual abuse is preventable through education -- and that education needs to start at home.
"So I always tell parents start today. All a parent needs to do is say I saw a story on the news today about sexual abuse, I want to have a conversation about it. It's a perfect introduction even if you've never had a conversation with your child. And then every opportunity you can get, talk about it," Pendarvis suggested.
Matt said no one was there to talk to him about what was acceptable behavior, and subsequently, he said Jerry Sandusky abused him for years.
When Jerry Sandusky was brought to trial in 2012 on dozens of charges of child sexual abuse involving 10 victims, Matt -- at least outwardly -- appeared to support Sandusky.
"I didn't stick by him," Matt stated. "I need people to understand that I was protecting myself. This was the biggest secret I had in my life. I didn't want anybody to know what he had ever done to me and what he had forced me to do to him."
"For 20 years, every single day, all I could think about was making sure no one found out what ever happened to me," he explained.
Matt said he has severed ties with the Sandusky family, including Dottie Sandusky -- Jerry's wife, and the woman he once considered his adoptive mother. None of the Sandusky siblings support him, and one of them, Jeff Sandusky, is serving up to 7 years in prison for pleading guilty for child sex abuse charges.
Matt has since founded the Peaceful Hearts Foundation, dedicated to the healing of sexual abuse survivors. And he has a message for anyone who is suffering the trauma of abuse.
"Number one, I would say you're not alone. Number two, I would say it wasn't your fault, you're not to blame for any part of it. Number 3 is you are loved. You are deserving of love. And number 4 is you can heal from this, you will heal from this."