Silent No More Analysis

From Silence to Courage
Benjamin Buffet
UCLA

ABSTRACT
In his book, Silent No More, Aaron Fisher recalls how he was eleven and a half when Jerry Sandusky started making advances toward him, confusing the young boy to the point where he didn’t know what really was going on. Jerry Sandusky had it all planned out. The abuse made Aaron feel confused, angry, and abandoned. He didn’t know how to tell his mother what was happening to him, and for so long he kept his feeling bottled up inside. Aaron kept himself in complete denial. His mother failed to notice that something was terribly wrong. Aaron’s school, Center Mountain High, gave his tormentor full access to Aaron during school hours, even allowing Sandusky to pull
Once Aaron finally realized that what Jerry was doing to him was wrong, he did not want to feel anything. Aaron told himself that nothing was going on. He kept his feelings of guilt, shame, disgust, and embarrassment all bottled up inside of him, until it eventually was too much for him to handle and he had to tell someone. He was fifteen when he finally told someone, so it was after years of abuse. It is also clear that Aaron felt very conflicted about how he was supposed to be feeling thankful for all the things Jerry Sandusky was doing for him, which was all part of Sandusky’s manipulation of Aaron. As time went on and the abuse grew worse, Aaron feared that no one would even believe him, “when it started getting clearer that something really bad was going on, I was afraid no one would ever believe me” (Fisher et. al, 2012, p. 32). The sexual abuse Aaron was enduring affected him in several ways. Aaron struggled with what was happening from the first time Sandusky made his advances, he felt something wasn’t right with the behavior of Jerry Sandusky. Aaron also had to keep himself in constant motion when he returned from the Sandusky home to help him cope with what has happening to him. These activities kept himself from thinking about it, “I needed to get away from all the questions that I was asking myself” (Fisher et al., 2012, p. 28). He spent time with his friends. He writes in detail about having fun snowboarding
Should she have known something was amiss with the relationship of Jerry Sandusky and her son? I say yes and no. Yes, the sleepovers were inappropriate and there was no legitimate reason for them. Having preteen boy sleep over at a grown man’s home is unusual. The frequency that this occurred would alarm me and as a mother I would have questioned it, no matter the social status of the man or family whom the child was staying with. I understand the perspective that this man presented himself so well as a supposed mentor and good role model that helped so many boys. I understand the misguided honor that came with such a pillar of society wanting to be involved in her child’s life and the charade that Jerry Sandusky saw potential in her child and only wanted to help. However, Jerry Sandusky was spending too much time with this child, time that should have spent with his mother. Aaron expressed anger about this, he writes about how he felt abandoned by his mother, and how mad he was that she let Jerry essentially take her place, doing things that she used to do with Aaron. This was a man everyone trusted. There were signs from Aaron that something was going on in her son’s life, but she tried to take appropriate action. To her credit, she did take him to the doctor once the bedwetting started, but the doctor told her it was normal and never asked