BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Dorothy Sandusky took the witness stand Tuesday and answered a question that has dogged her since lurid child-sex-abuse allegations were lodged against her husband last year.
How's her hearing?
"I think it's pretty good," she said.
The question - from her husband's attorney, Joseph Amendola - and her answer were aimed squarely at undoing the damage done by multiple witnesses who claimed they had been molested within earshot of the 69-year-old adoptive mother of six.
For months, people have wondered how she could not have known, if the allegations against her husband, Jerry Sandusky, were true.
How could she not have heard something, given that accuser after accuser has said Jerry Sandusky molested them in the basement of their home?
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Her answer Tuesday suggested there had been nothing to hear.
As she stressed in no uncertain terms Tuesday, she never saw or suspected anything inappropriate occurring between her husband and the dozens of young visitors he invited to sleep over each year.
Her testimony concluded a day in which the former Penn State University assistant football coach's defense cast questions over several elements of the prosecution's case.
Jurors heard an audio recording of a conversation between a state trooper and a lawyer for one of Sandusky's accusers in which the pair discussed elements of other alleged victims' allegations. Defense lawyer Karl Rominger argued that leak may have influenced the account of abuse that the accuser eventually told.
Another defense witness testified that the mother of the man identified as Victim 1 told neighbors that she would "own (Sandusky's) house" once her son's civil suit was settled. Called to the stand, the woman denied the conversation ever happened.
But it was Dorothy "Dottie" Sandusky who commanded the attention of the Centre County courtroom Tuesday.
Dressed in a lime-green sweater set, she described a home that operated much like a boardinghouse, booked to constant capacity with a revolving door of friends, overnight guests and children - hers and other people's.
"We enjoyed helping kids, but we knew we couldn't take any more into our family," she said, referring to the couple's six adopted children.
Because of her status as a witness, Dorothy Sandusky had spent most of her husband's trial on 51 counts of child sex abuse absent from the courtroom.
