Alleged Victims Tell "Dr. Phil" of Abuse by Jerry Sandusky and Pedophile Ring Involving Ex-coach

By Christian Red
New York Daily News
September 29, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/alleged-victims-dr-phil-abuse-jerry-sandusky-pedophile-ring-involving-ex-coach-article-1.1170897?localLinksEnabled=false

Greg Bucceroni alleged on Friday that he was once offered $200 “to engage in child sex with Jerry Sandusky.”

Travis Weaver said he found himself “pinned on the bed” of a Philadelphia hotel room held down by former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky after the 14-year-old had come out of the shower.

“I told (Sandusky) I was going to call the cops. He just laughed at me,” Weaver said on the “Dr. Phil” TV program Friday. “(Sandusky) told me no one was ever going to believe me over him. I was scared. I believed him.”

Weaver’s graphic account of the abuse he says he suffered at the hands of Sandusky was part of his interview with Dr. Phil McGraw Friday. Weaver appeared alongside Greg Bucceroni, a Philadelphia native who has said in several interviews with the Daily News that he was sexually abused by now-deceased Philly businessman Ed Savitz during the late ’70s. Weaver first went public with his story in June — shortly before Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of sex abuse of minors.

Bucceroni told The News in July that he met Sandusky at a Second Mile fund-raiser in 1979, two years after Sandusky had founded the organization. Earlier this month, Bucceroni sent emails to Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn claiming that the school’s late football coach, Phil Foglietta, paid him to have sex with him in 1979, and that Foglietta was part of a pedophile ring that included Savitz and Sandusky.

Poly Prep is being sued by 12 plaintiffs alleging that the schools’ officials knew about Foglietta’s abuse for decades, but covered it up because they feared it would damage the fund-raising and the school’s reputation.

Bucceroni alleged on Friday that he was once offered $200 “to engage in child sex with Jerry Sandusky” and that Savitz and Sandusky "were always exchanging photos (of naked boys), kind of like baseball cards.”

Marci Hamilton, a Benjamin Cardozo School of Law professor and Weaver's attorney, told The News that pedophile rings are not uncommon.

“Pedophiles operate together to find and abuse children, and share images of them,” Hamilton said. She cited a recent lawsuit she filed against the Philadelphia Archdiocese, in which plaintiff Mike McDonnell alleged he was passed between two priests as a boy.

A Philadelphia Daily News article published Friday had several on-the-record sources who called Bucceroni's credibility into question, including the former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell. Rendell challenged Bucceroni’s claims that Bucceroni told Rendell about Savitz’s abuse in the late ’70s or early ’80s, when Rendell was the Philadelphia district attorney.

Savitz died of AIDS in 1993 before he was to go to trial on multiple charges of sex abuse of minors. Authorities did seize more than 2,500 photos of Savitz’s alleged victims and Bucceroni says he thinks he was in many of those photos.