text: It’s been so many years since Debra Long has seen or talked to her son that she’s not sure she would recognize him. 
   
   Long keeps an old photo album with fading family pictures. There’s one of Matt at 9. There’s another taken shortly after his wedding. 
   
   In her Centre County home is a framed picture of Matt from his prom. He’s posed and smiling in front of a draped backdrop in a bow tie, leaning into his high school girlfriend. 
   
   That relationship ended ugly, Long remembers. When they broke up in 2002, Matt was charged with harassing the woman and her new boyfriend, and later pleaded guilty. 
   
   It came as no surprise to Long. 
   
   “That’s how Jerry taught him to act,” she said. 
   
   Matt Sandusky is not part of the legal case against the former Penn State football coach and his adoptive father, Jerry Sandusky. But in many ways, Matt’s story has become intertwined in the saga. 
   
   It’s a complicated story. 
   
   Matt lived with the Sanduskys through many of the years that abuse is alleged to have happened under the roof of their modest two-story home. 
   
   Within several hundred pages of evidence collected by investigators during a grand jury probe of Jerry Sandusky are several police reports about the 68-year-old’s youngest adopted son. 
   
   Well before Sandusky was accused of being a child molester, Matt’s biological mother was the lone voice of concern when Sandusky took her son into foster care in 1996. Notes to her attorney show she challenged the court, made accusations of stalkinglike behavior against Sandusky and suspected abuse. 
   
   And so Long became one of the first people investigators thought to interview after a teenage boy from Clinton County made allegations in 2009 that were the onset of a case that would lead to Jerry Sandusky’s arrest and end the career of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. Even the circumstances around his move into the Sandusky home have their own backstory. 
   
   Jerry Sandusky was in Los Angeles preparing for the 1995 Rose Bowl game when he made calls back to Centre County and arranged for Matt to move to Sandusky’s house directly from juvenile detention, where Matt was being held after his arrest for setting fire to a barn. 
   
   Family and friends have said the relationship between Matt and Jerry Sandusky was controlling and rocky. 
   
   Matt’s biological brother, Ron Heichel, remembers being a teenager in the 1990s and trying to reach Matt at the Sandusky home. 
   
   Sandusky’s wife, Dottie, answered the phone. 
   
   “And she said, ‘He’s not your brother anymore.’ This was before he was even adopted,” he said. 
   
   A source close to Jill Thomas, Matt’s ex-wife and the mother of his three children, told The Patriot-News that Jill agreed to be interviewed by police as part of the Sandusky investigation. 
   
   
   
   According to the source, she said Matt was estranged from Sandusky for a long time, and only talked to him a few times during their marriage. 
   
   When Jerry Sandusky would call Matt, she told police, Matt would keep the conversations private. But every time he hung up the phone he would go to the bathroom and throw up. 
   
   When contacted, Jill Thomas confirmed that she has been a part of this case and was even supposed to be a witness at a pre-trial hearing for Jerry Sandusky. She never took the stand. Instead, prosecutors summarized her concerns about Sandusky. 
   
   After the hearing she told The Patriot-News that the statement the prosecutors gave the judge did not express all of her concerns, and she wasn’t consulted before it was written. 
   
   
   
   Saved documents 
   
   Last spring, as the grand jury investigation was wrapping up nearly three years of testimony, Long was subpoenaed to testify about the relationship between Jerry Sandusky and her son. 
   
   She told grand jurors she witnessed stalking behavior and suspected something was wrong based on a drastic change in her son’s attitude. 
   
   On a hunch, she says she asked Matt if Sandusky had touched him, and she said he simply answered, “I don’t want to talk about it.” 
   
   When contacted by phone, Matt said, “I have nothing to say. I have no comment about anything.” His attorney did not return messages. Jerry Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola, says he’s not worried about Matt’s testimony before the grand jury. 
   
   Amendola said that Long has been bitter toward Sandusky since Matt’s adoption and said that Matt’s own testimony would discredit her. 
   
   But Long saved the documents and her notes from court appearances in the 1990s, including a letter from a school-based probation officer, which suggests that Sandusky’s home wasn’t a good fit for Matt. She stands by her claims that Sandusky stole her son. 
   
   A continuing theme in her notes: Sandusky is causing Matt to alienate himself from his biological family. 
   
   Since Sandusky has been charged, her story has received national attention, and Long says the FBI has received the paperwork she kept from her court battle. The FBI is conducting an investigation parallel to the state’s, and it appears to be more focused on a possible cover-up. 
   
   
   
   Highs and lows 
   
   Within several hundred pages of evidence collected by investigators during a grand jury probe of Jerry Sandusky are dozens of reports on Matt. 
   
   Now 33, Matt once was Matt Heichel. He came from a poor, single-parent household in Centre County — a small home he shared with his mom, sister and brother. The children witnessed their mom in an abusive relationship, something later documented in a court case that would determine the fate of Matt’s brother. 
   
   So, maybe it made sense for Matt to go live with the former defensive coordinator and his wife, Dottie, as a foster child just days after he set fire to the barn. 
   
   Long’s parental rights were never terminated. It wasn’t until Matt turned 18 and became a legal adult that he was formally adopted by Jerry and Dottie. 
   
   But the relationship had some steep highs and lows. 
   
   Police records — mentioned and requested from prosecutors in a motion filed by Amendola — show that a teenage Matt ran away in 1996. In 1994 the police were called to Sandusky’s home to investigate a theft of cash and clothing that Matt had been accused of stealing. 
   
   About four months after moving to the Sandusky home, Matt attempted suicide with a girl living at the Sandusky home. 
   
   In 2003, after Matt married and moved out of the Sandusky home, the father-son relationship had become strained. 
   
   On May 3, 2003, State College police were called to Matt’s home for a trespassing complaint, according to a police source. Jerry Sandusky had been told he wasn’t welcome there, but had come over anyway, the source said. Jerry Sandusky told an officer he was trying to get back a carpet cleaner, and after he was given the appliance, he left, according to the source. 
   
   As soon as Sandusky was arrested in November, Thomas asked the court to bar Matt from taking her children to visit their grandfather. She later issued a statement saying her son was seeing a therapist because after her children told her Sandusky had “inappropriately touched” her young son. 
   
   The therapist “could not rule out that Jerry Sandusky was grooming my son for sexual abuse,” she wrote, and said she opposed any visitation allowed by the court. 
   
   ‘Abandonment issues’ 
   
   Matt had joined The Second Mile around age 7, along with his younger brother, Ron Heichel, a bigger and more rambunctious kid than shy and reserved Matt. 
   
   One year and one week apart in age, the brothers were inseparable, Ron Heichel said. 
   
   “We did everything together. Brother things,” he said. 
   
   And that included plenty of trouble. 
   
   The day of the barn fire, Ron Heichel was suspended from school and went deer hunting. Otherwise, he’d have been right alongside his brother, he said. 
   
   When Matt was caught, he was sent to juvenile detention and never returned home. It was devastating to the family, Ron Heichel remembers. 
   
   “It was a very trying time — losing your best friend in the world,” he said. “One day he’s here and one day he’s not. That’s one of my biggest issues in life, is abandonment issues. That is definitely a key moment in my life.” 
   
   Ron says he tried to stay connected to his brother, but never felt welcome in the Sandusky home. 
   
   He’d always felt that Jerry Sandusky favored Matt over him, and he remembers feeling incredibly jealous and hurt when Sandusky befriended his brother but seemed to want nothing to do with him. 
   
   “Looking back on it now, I’d say I was more troubled than Matt was, but Jerry didn’t see it that way,” he said. 
   
   
   
   Different paths 
   
   There is no doubt their lives would take drastically different paths. 
   
   After some time, Matt’s grades began to rise, and he ended up attending Penn State, although he never graduated. 
   
   He recently married for the second time and has three children. He has reunited with Sandusky and has a good relationship with Dottie. 
   
   Ron Heichel calls the State Correctional Facility at Mahanoy his home. He was convicted last March of first-degree murder and is serving a life term, even though he maintains his innocence in the 2009 shooting death of a Centre Hall father of four and is appealing his conviction. 
   
   In a strange way, the two cases collided. 
   
   Early in the Centre Hall murder investigation, one trooper recognized Long from nearly 15 years ago as Matt’s mom. That trooper was now assigned to Sandusky’s investigation as well and wanted to talk about Matt. 
   
   That’s how Matt and Long ended up getting a subpoena to testify before the grand jury. 
   
   Then, when Ron Heichel’s murder case went to trial, there was another intersection. The judge assigned to the case was the same woman who had been the guardian for Matt when Matt was in foster care with the Sanduskys. By then she had been elected judge. 
   
   
   
   Legal flexibility 
   
   The Patriot-News asked two attorneys familiar with child protective services law to look at the documents Long kept about Matt’s foster care placement. 
   
   There are no glaring deviations from standard practices in the 1990s. But there are things that, in hindsight, catch attention. 
   
   • Long had already been approved to be a foster parent for a nephew who was taken from his home, and after Matt left, she took care of three more. Why was she fit to take care of someone else’s child but not her own? 
   
   • In a letter from school-based probation officer, Terry Trude expressed concerns about Matt’s placement with the Sandusky’s, even though he acknowledged that Matt should remain in foster care. 
   
   • And a letter in response to concerns made by Long indicates that not all procedures were followed in Matt’s case. 
   
   But the child welfare system is complicated. Creativity for the benefit of a child is encouraged. The criminal adult system is much more black and white. In juvenile court, there is a lot more flexibility. 
   
   And documents are sealed. 
   
   A spokesman for the Department of Public Welfare said there has been no internal investigation opened related to Sandusky since the scandal broke, and everyone began scrutinizing each minute of Sandusky’s life. 
   
   But before the allegations, Sandusky was a well trusted and respected member of the community, hailed as a guardian of children. His charity, The Second Mile, was a statewide and nationally recognized haven for troubled youths and had a relationship with the county Children and Youth Services for foster care placement. 
   
   “This is not Joe who lives on Maple Avenue. This is — at a time when community based juvy placements are just getting off the ground — an organization that stands out because it is attached to Penn State and the notable Sandusky,” said Frank Cervone, a Philadelphia lawyer and executive director of Support Center for Child Advocates. 
   
   “That’s the narrative of these 15 years of Sandusky,” Cervone said, referring to the grand jury presentment that identifies 10 alleged victims abused over a decade and a half. 
   
   “Is this an example of the clouded judgment created by the Penn State/Sandusky mentality? I imagine it probably is, but again, I’m not reading this whole picture.” 
   
   That’s why it’s hard to say if there’s anything different about Matt’s foster care placement. 
   
   The fact that Long was able to care for other children, “it could be entirely odd,” Cervone said. “It could be entirely normal. We don’t know what Matt’s issues were. ... He wasn’t removed from her care because of any behaviors or limitations of hers. He may have been placed because the court wanted him placed. It was almost 20 years ago, a very different world. I’m betting the kid’s acting out and not going to school and the court looks at it and says, ‘We’re going to put you someplace where we know you’re going to go to school.’ ” 
   
   But Jason Kutulakis, a midstate attorney who has worked with Children and Youth Services for several years, called it “creepy” and “weird” that Sandusky would make a phone call — as he describes in his book — and essentially say, ‘Hey, I want to take that kid home.’ 
   
   “I can tell you, from my perspective, he has no tools to counsel a delinquent kid who allegedly committed an arson,” Kutulakis said. “That’s a crime where they start bringing in experts right away.” 
   
   Juveniles who commit arson are typically sent to inpatient care for intensive psychological evaluations and not to private homes, according to Kutulakis and Cervone. 
   
   “But keep in mind who you are dealing with,” Kutulakis said. “One of the most prolific defensive coordinators in the country. If he had made one of those calls before, that might not have seemed unusual.” 
   
   What doesn’t make sense, he said, is that because Sandusky had no formal psychological training, he had the same skill set as Matt’s biological mom. 
   
   So why couldn’t he just go home? 
   
   “Presumably, she could afford and provide the same type of care he was providing, and that’s what bizarre,” he said. “It seems to me Matt should have gone into licensed care.” 
   
   About a year after Matt’s case began, then-Gov. Tom Ridge overhauled child protective service laws. Before that happened, kids were placed more often on their own conduct, not their parents’ conduct. 
   
   That might explain why Matt was removed from his mom’s home and sent to another family, Kutulakis said. 
   
   Another possibility: No one else wanted him. 
   
   “He’s a fire setter,” Cervone said. “Fire setters are radioactive in child placements. They were probably going to have a degree of difficulty placing him. I’m assuming that Second Mile had a relationship with the probation department, so this is the natural pathway, and Sandusky and his wife are among the placement resources.” 
   
   
   
   Sandusky writes in his book, “Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story,” that after Matt attempted suicide, “It got to the point where the authorities were going to take him away from us, but fortunately two people stepped in and, in our eyes, saved that young man’s life.” 
   
   One was a psychologist, who wrote a letter that Long saved, telling the judge that Matt should go back into the Sandusky home. (Matt wrote a similar letter to the judge asking to return.) 
   
   The second person, Sandusky wrote, was Judge David E. Grine, now retired and a senior judge in Centre County. Grine said he could not comment on the case. 
   
   “When you get a psychologist weighing in like that, and it’s between the psychologist and the mom, who are you going to believe?” Cervone said. “I thought it was pretty compelling ... and, the boy’s desire to go back there.” 
   
   But not everyone was in agreement. A school-based probation officer, Terry Trude, wrote a letter voicing concern about Matt’s safety, days after the 1996 suicide attempt, saying he did not believe the Sandusky home was the appropriate place for Matt. 
   
   “That was a pretty strong letter, and I would be shocked if there weren’t safeguards put into place to address those issues. ... All those are red flags, but we don’t know what evidence was presented in court,” Kutulakis said. “We don’t know what was actually presented to the judge. The problem is there’s a vacuum, due to time and lack of records, to know exactly what took place.” 
   
   Finally, the probation department admitted that protocol wasn’t followed in that a long-term plan for family placement was never established. 
   
   Unfortunately, Cervone said, that wasn’t unusual in the 1990s. 
   
   
   
   A focal point 
   
   It’s not clear if any of this backstory will ever play a role in the criminal case against Sandusky. 
   
   Clearly, Matt was a focal point for investigators. But unless he takes the stand — likely in a defense role — we won’t know what he told the grand jury about the relationship or how he feels about Sandusky’s role in his life. 
   
   Long says she can’t explain why her son won’t talk with her. 
   
   Eventually, Ron Heichel and Matt also grew apart, though they never completely stopped talking. And Matt still confided in his brother. 
   
   Ron Heichel remembers one conversation vividly. They were still teenagers; Heichel thinks he was 13 or 14. 
   
   “He asked one time, ‘Have you ever thought about having sex with another man?’ I said, ‘No, why would that even come up?’ ” 
   
   The questions got more graphic. 
   
   Ron Heichel says he was disgusted. 
   
   Years later, he approached the subject again. 
   
   “I asked him, since all this came out, and I suspected something back then because he would ask weird questions. He said, ‘No, don’t be ridiculous.’ ... He’s forgetting that I was his brother for all of these years, I know when he’s being sincere.” 
   
   
   
   
   
   Story so far 
   
   
   
   Former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, 68, is facing more than 50 counts of child sex abuse against 10 boys, most of whom he met through his children’s charity, The Second Mile. 
   
   Sandusky was first charged Nov. 4, then arrested a second time in December after a three-year investigation by a statewide grand jury. 
   
   Almost immediately, the scandal engulfed Penn State. 
   
   Two top former officials, Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley, were charged with perjury and failing to report an incident brought to them in 2002 by graduate assistant Mike McQueary. 
   
   Schultz and Curley stepped down hours after the charges were filed, and university President Graham Spanier and football coach Joe Paterno were fired days later by the board of trustees. 
   
   Paterno, who was diagnosed with lung cancer days after his firing, died Jan. 22 from complications of his treatment. 
   
   More than 85 people, some angry with the decision by the board of trustees to fire the 85-year-old coach, are running for one of three seats opening on the board of trustees, and angry alumni are calling for a wholesale change in how the board is comprised. 
   
   While the state grand jury continues to meet, federal investigators are also at work, and they appear to be focusing on areas the state’s case hasn’t gone: Penn State and The Second Mile. 
   
   Gov. Tom Corbett, who as the state’s attorney general started the investigation into Sandusky, has defended the length of the investigation and rejected claims that it was stalled for political reasons. He has also defended accepting campaign money from board members at Penn State and The Second Mile. 
   
   Penn State and The Second Mile are also conducting internal reviews, the NCAA opened an inquiry and the U.S. Department of Education is investigating compliance with the Clery Act, the federal law mandating that universities report crimes. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ||||| BELLEFONTE -- Matt Sandusky, through his attorney Andrew Shubin, said that he met with prosecutors this week to say for the first time that he is a molestation victim of Jerry Sandusky, his adopted father. 
   
   Matt, 33, was adopted by Jerry and Dottie Sandusky as an adult, after going to live with the family as a foster child. He has denied ever being abused by his adopted father until now. "This has been an extremely painful experience for Matt and he has asked us to convey his request that the media respect his privacy. There will be no further comment," Shubin said in a statement. 
   
   Shubin also said Matt was prepared to testify truthfully at trial, if called by prosecutors. It is unclear why he did not testify. 
   
   In March, The Patriot-News reported that Matt had a rocky relationship with his adopted father. His biological mother told The Patriot-News she believed Sandusky had stolen her son from her. 
   
   His biological mom, Debra Long, testified before the grand jury in early 2011 about strange behavior she says she witnessed between her son and Sandusky. 
   
   Matt testified, too. But Sandusky's attorney, Joe Amendola said at the time that he was not worried about Matt's testimony, and that Long was making false allegations because she was angry at the Sandusky family. 
   
   During testimony at trial, Victim 4 told jurors that one time Jerry Sandusky began touching him during a shower, Matt Sandusky was present, but left the shower when the assault began.
target: – Jerry Sandusky has a new accuser: His adopted son. Matt Sandusky told prosecutors this week that Jerry molested him, his attorney says. It's the first time Matt has made such allegations, though his biological mother testified before a grand jury last year regarding an unsettling relationship between her son and the former coach. Matt had been willing to testify in the current trial, the attorney says, and it's not known why he didn't, the Patriot-News reports. Matt lived as a foster child with Jerry and Dottie Sandusky, who adopted him when he reached adulthood. As far back as 1996, when the Sandusky family took Matt in, his biological mother, Debra Long, raised concerns that the former coach was stalking her son. A March profile of Long in the Patriot-News cites a "rocky" relationship between Matt and Jerry; the two were estranged for an extended period, says one source. When Long asked her son if Jerry had touched him, he replied, "I don't want to talk about it," she says.