Retired county judge to hear testimony in Sandusky case
AP file photo In this Nov. 22, 2019, file photo, former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, arrives at the Centre County Courthouse to be resentenced in Bellefonte, Pa. Jerry Sandusky's legal effort to have his decadeslong child molestation sentence reduced will be the subject of a hearing Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Times Observer file photo by Delaney Chase Judge Maureen Skerda speaks at her retirement party. Skerda will be on the bench to hear an evidentiary argument filed by attorneys for Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State University assistant football coach.
AP file photo In this Nov. 2, 2011 file photo a sign for The Second Mile charity is seen outside the organization's headquarters in State College, Pa. Kyle Rittmeyer, who is to take back the allegations he made at trial during a hearing Sept. 8 in front of retired Warren County Court Judge Maureen Skerda.
AP file photo In this Nov. 22, 2019, file photo, former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, arrives at the Centre County Courthouse to be resentenced in Bellefonte, Pa. Jerry Sandusky's legal effort to have his decadeslong child molestation sentence reduced will be the subject of a hearing Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Times Observer file photo by Delaney Chase Judge Maureen Skerda speaks at her retirement party. Skerda will be on the bench to hear an evidentiary argument filed by attorneys for Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State University assistant football coach.
AP file photo In this Nov. 2, 2011 file photo a sign for The Second Mile charity is seen outside the organization's headquarters in State College, Pa. Kyle Rittmeyer, who is to take back the allegations he made at trial during a hearing Sept. 8 in front of retired Warren County Court Judge Maureen Skerda.
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BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- Fourteen years after testifying against Jerry Sandusky, one of his accusers is expected to return to a Centre County courtroom Sept. 8 and take back the allegations he made at trial.
Ryan Rittmeyer was known to the public only as "Victim 10" when Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, went on trial in 2012. Rittmeyer now says Sandusky never sexually abused him.
Senior Judge Maureen Skerda has set an evidentiary hearing for 9:30 a.m. Sept. 8 in the Annex Courtroom at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte. Sandusky is expected to be there. A court order directs officials at SCI-Laurel Highlands to transport him to Centre County for the proceeding.
Sandusky, now 82, was convicted in June 2012 on 45 counts involving the sexual abuse of 10 boys. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison and has maintained his innocence.
Rittmeyer met Sandusky as a child through The Second Mile, the youth organization Sandusky founded. He later became one of the men who testified for the prosecution at Sandusky's trial.
His account today is markedly different.
In a sworn affidavit dated June 30, 2025, Rittmeyer says Pennsylvania State Police first interviewed him in November 2011, when he was 24. He says that when those interviews began, he had no clear or certain memory of Sandusky sexually abusing him.
Rittmeyer claims investigators continued questioning him about his experiences with Sandusky and encouraged him to reconsider those experiences. He says he was told that trauma could cause fragmented memories and that, over time, the investigative process affected what he came to believe had happened.
He eventually testified that Sandusky had sexually abused him.
He now says that testimony was false.
Rittmeyer also makes clear in the affidavit that he did not undergo formal recovered-memory therapy or participate in memory-recovery sessions.
About a year after his testimony, Rittmeyer says, he received a $5.5 million civil settlement.
His estranged wife, Jasmine Rittmeyer, has provided a separate affidavit.
She says that after Sandusky's arrest became public in 2011, she asked her husband whether Sandusky had ever behaved inappropriately toward him. According to her affidavit, he told her Sandusky had not abused him.
Reporter Frank Parlato, who has spent several years investigating the Sandusky case and has worked with Sandusky's legal team, says he also expects to testify Sept. 8. Parlato says information developed through his investigation became part of Sandusky's latest court petition.
Also scheduled to testify is Frank Fina, a former deputy attorney general and one of the lead prosecutors in the Sandusky trial. Fina now faces allegations that he coached and led witnesses in ways that encouraged false testimony and unreliable memories. He has also been accused of financially benefiting from a trust established for at least one of Sandusky's accusers.
Sandusky's attorneys are presenting Rittmeyer's recantation as newly discovered evidence in their latest attempt to obtain post-conviction relief.
Skerda initially dismissed the petition without an evidentiary hearing Feb. 27, but that dismissal was later rescinded. On June 3, she scheduled the Sept. 8 hearing on evidence surrounding Rittmeyer's recantation.
Skerda retired as president judge of the Warren-Forest County Court of Common Pleas at the end of 2025 and continues to serve as a senior judge.
The Sept. 8 proceeding is an evidentiary hearing in Sandusky's post-conviction case, not a new trial.
Sandusky remains incarcerated at SCI-Laurel Highlands in Somerset County.