Jerry Sandusky‘s adopted son Matthew says his life with the disgraced football coach’s family was “fine” until it was time to go to bed.
“Any other time that we were in the home with the family, it was fine,” Matthew Sandusky says in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, airing Thursday. “You’d look at that family and you would say, ‘Wow. I wish that I had brothers and sisters that cared about me. I wish that I had a mother who cooked dinner every night for the whole family. I wish that I had all of these things.'”
But those feelings would disappear at the end of the day. “But then at bedtime, his ritual began,” he continued.
Matthew first met Jerry when he attended his camp for underprivileged children as a child, and often stayed the night with the family before moving in with them full-time when he was 16.
He has previously said that Jerry molested him over the course of seven years, beginning when he was just 8 years old.
In 2012, Jerry was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse and was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. Matthew, although he wasn’t one of the 10 boys Jerry was convicted of molesting, did receive a settlement from both Penn State and a separate law firm.
The interview, Matthew’s first comments since accusations were first publically leveled against Jerry, will air on OWN’s “Oprah Prime” on Thursday at 9 p.m. EST.