Transcript of The Guys at the Door | Episode 5

Before we get started, a quick heads up. This episode contains references to child sex abuse material and educator sexual misconduct. When we last left Stacey, it was January 2005. Stacey and her former teacher, Brett Fischer, had been married for 3 years. That same month, Brett's classroom computer was flagged for visiting pornographic sites during the school day, and it led to an investigation.

I was getting, like, a 1% story, and everyone's getting a 1% story.

Stacey was blindsided a few days later when he resigned in lieu of termination.

You know, I was 24. Just remember just being in, like, total shock.

Child sex abuse material was traced to that same computer, and the case got referred to the Department of Homeland Security.

And then there was a knock at the door. That sight of more than 10 men standing there in Homeland Security gear.

Those agents from DHS were there to search their apartment, and they took their home computer to investigate. Meanwhile, the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission conducted its own investigation and revoked Brett's teaching license. You heard about that in episode 3, when nearly 2 decades later, Stacy saw that investigation report for the first time.

What is this?

This is the investigation Here's Stacey reading that report.

Mr. Fisher knowingly used his school computer equipment to receive sexually explicit materials. The sites observed provide enough evidence sufficient to establish this as child pornography.

The TSPC investigation answered a lot of our questions.

It was like he was always looking for the girls that he could meet in high school, and then after they graduated, he would try to date them.

But it also left important questions unanswered.

Fisher was not prosecuted in U.S. District Court or Multnomah County Circuit Court. I do not know why.

Why?

Other questions cut deeper, because after the federal agents came to their door, Stacey stayed married to Brett for 7 more years. Why did she stay? And why did she finally go? I'm Sydney Gladue, and this is Not Just a Terrible Story.

I'm Chloe Hedgemethale, a reporter at The Observer. I've worked on a lot of investigations, but some stories never leave you. When Gareth was 14, he thought he was the luckiest boy at school. He was sleeping with his young, attractive female teacher. Years later, when he understood the harm she'd done, he went looking for justice. but the people who knew stayed silent. To them, he was just a lucky boy. So he came to me. When I started pulling at the threads of his story, I never imagined where they'd lead. To witnesses I unearthed standing in a courtroom testifying against his teacher. To listen to Lucky Boy, search for it wherever you get your podcasts.

I just received a text message. And then he said, okay, sorry for the mix-up. At least I accidentally texted a female.

I received a phone call from one of the His name is Bob, and he's a police officer. Bob Semenchuk.

Robert Semenchuk.

Robert Semenchuk.

Bob Semenchuk.

The women were asking how you targeted them. Do you have any answers to give them? Why did you choose those women? From The Globe and Mail, In Her Defense, Season 3: Breach of Trust. In the days that followed Brett's resignation and the DHS search, this story entered the rumor mill in Gresham, Oregon. It was only a few days into February 2005, and Brett was home and jobless. Both of them were spinning out. Stacey was working at Nike, but the day after federal agents knocked on their door, she called in sick and never went back. They'd been married 3 years at this point, which is a long time when you're only 24. She decided to give their marriage a year. She thought surely that'd be enough time to rebuild their lives after a big mistake. But Gresham began to feel like a pressure cooker. So in February 2005, they packed up all their belongings and relocated to Dallas, Texas, where Stacey's sister Raquel and brother-in-law Sean lived.

The only word that comes to me is escape. It was just escape. There was no— Therapy. There was no, like, long conversations.

Stacey remembers needing a fresh start, but Brett's affairs weren't exactly in order when they left.

Even his attorney did not recommend that we left because he was under investigation, but we did it anyways. I was really embarrassed. I mean, thinking like, it's embarrassing enough to marry your teacher, and then it's like double embarrassing to then have that teacher be fired for something like that.

As they settled into their new life, Brett got a job at a wine bar, and they tried to pretend like nothing happened. But all the events of the last month had taken a toll on their relationship.

I guess I would describe it like 2 good friends, 2 good roommates. We would go play tennis in the morning. It would be warm and sunny, and I love that, to be honest. But it was fun when it was fun. And then it really sucked when it really sucked.

It sucked because there was no running away from the situation that drove them from Oregon. Not really, because Stacey never stopped being suspicious of her husband.

And I just had this feeling that something was happening again. I remember asking him, like, you know, you said you were going to stop basically looking at pornography. And he, like, blew up. And he took our coffee table, like a wooden glass coffee table, and, like, smashed it. I never saw him angrily smash things or throw things or, you know, that type of behavior. So it was really alarming and scary. Just looking back, I mean, that's like the girl I wish I could reach back to and go, just get yourself out of the situation. Like, it is so bad.

Remember, at this point, Stacey and her family didn't know the full truth behind why Brett left his job. But that gnawing feeling the one she had before the federal agents knocked on their door, was still there. She knew something was off. And Stacey wasn't the only one who felt that way. Shawn, Stacey's brother-in-law, had always been suspicious about Brett's behavior.

Because I knew his story, right? She had been his student. He'd been her teacher. That obviously put a red flag for me and made me suspicious. And he never made me feel any better about who I— Suspected he was.

And now Brett was under investigation. And he told Stacey it was because he looked at pornography. To Shawn, that story never added up. He remembers he watched Brett like a hawk during family gatherings, especially around his and Raquel's daughter. We'll call her Kayla.

They came down here to live. That's when I got a pretty good look at him with our oldest daughter. She was preteen at that time.

One afternoon, Shawn remembers Brett was paying extra attention to Kayla. Brett and Kayla were in the family pool, off to one side. Shawn remembers that Brett had both his hands up against the wall on either side of Kayla, talking closely to her in a way that felt inappropriate.

That made me feel strange. And then they come in and she goes to her bedroom and he ends up back there too.

Shawn intervened immediately. But here's the thing. Shawn was looking for this behavior from Brett, so he was able to jump into action. From then on, Shawn remained vigilant in keeping tabs on Brett, where he was, and who he was with.

I mean, I think the thing about it is the brazenness. I mean, he'd already been interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security in their condo in downtown Portland. He already lost his job. He already had all of that going on and then came down here. It was just brazen.

Raquel remembers confronting Brett and Stacey about Brett's behavior towards Kayla. For both he and Stacey, it was a little bit of a reaction of, you guys are overreacting, you're making more of this than you should. It kind of caused a rift between Stacey and I because I also was concerned, and I was just like, we don't want him to be alone with her.

And, you know, that was very uncomfortable.

Katie and I were both surprised that Stacey had never told us about Brett's behavior with Kayla. The whole story was laced with the red flags we'd been talking about for over a year at this point. When we asked her about it, she said she didn't remember the interaction.

Well, I never knew about this stuff with my niece until we did the podcast, so that was new information for me.

What Stacey did remember was how Raquel and Shawn felt about Brett at this point.

My sister had expressed, like, We feel uncomfortable with Brett's past. And that kind of hurt my feelings. The people I'm closest to that I respect the most and love me the most feel like my husband might be a predator.

Stacey's done a lot of work to understand her past, to figure out why she couldn't fully see the red flags Raquel and Sean saw so clearly. But that understanding hasn't made the pain of looking back any smaller.

My sister, again, the person I respect the most and to this day respect the most, Saying, like, I feel uncomfortable with your husband being around my daughter. It makes me want to cry thinking about it, just that they were in that position to have to have that conversation with me and that I was so out of touch with reality. But it was something I was trying to deny, something I was trying to overlook, something I was trying to think, like, that's just— you're overthinking, you're being too sensitive.

Brett losing his teaching license made Stacey feel ostracized in so many aspects of her life, and now it was creating distance in her most important relationships. Dallas was a short-lived experiment for Stacey and Brett. Within 9 months, the tides were changing. Stacey doesn't have a clear answer for how or why she knew she needed to leave, but Dallas's charms were wearing off, and the friction in her relationship with Raquel made it less comforting to stay.

Outside of my family and being able to see them and amazing Tex-Mex and being able to swim in a warm pool at nighttime in the summer, pretty much I wanted to leave everything else. I wanted to go back to hills, huge trees, and I just wanted to go back to what I knew.

Looking back, she thinks this moment was tied to something that happened the year before when federal agents showed up at their door. That day, Stacey made herself a promise.

I said, I'll give him a year, and then I'll figure out what I need to do. And that was my moment where it snapped into place for me, and I was like, I'm out. I don't want this. It's not a conversation. There's no compromise. I'm doing this for me now. This is my moment to do for me what I need to do.

This isn't the moment she left him, but it was a moment she finally stood up for herself.

I basically said, I'm not running from your secrets. I'm not hiding for you. It was something that he needed to grow past if we were going to stay together.

So Stacey moved back to Portland and Brett followed. For the next few years, things between them were up and down, but Stacey kept trying to make it work. We don't know what exactly was going through Brett's mind at this point. He's declined our requests for an interview, and so have his friends and family. We sent him a detailed list of specific questions. Including some about his time in Dallas and the allegations concerning his treatment of Kayla. He has chosen not to respond to any of it, but here's what we do know. By the start of 2006, Brett's teaching license was officially revoked, and he learned there would be no further legal consequences. When they got back to Portland, he worked at a beverage distribution company for a few years, and then in 2008, he decided to reenter the education space. He was hired as an executive success coach at Inside Track, a college and career student coaching program. On Brett's own LinkedIn, he says he coached at 12 different universities and that Inside Track provides one-on-one student success coaching. We don't know exactly how old the students were that Brett was coaching, so it's possible that despite his past, Brett had one-on-one access to young adults.

It's not clear if his teacher's license revocation ever surfaced during the hiring process. We reached out to Inside Track, but they declined to comment. A few years after Brett started working at Inside Track, he was promoted. And then in 2016, after 8 years of working there, he left. We don't know why. But here's where the world gets a little small. While I was digging into Stacey's story, I went down a rabbit hole based on some memories I had from my own high school years. There was a teacher at my high school named Daniel Weber. I never had his class, but I knew about him. He was funny, always standing in the hallway laughing. And in 2011, when I was a sophomore, he was caught having a relationship with his teacher's assistant. He lost his teaching license for this. The entire situation is spelled out in the final order document. Here's a voice actor reading from the finding of fact.

Weber had engaged in an inappropriate romantic relationship with a female student who had recently graduated high school. Weber's romantic relationship with this student began before she graduated. Weber's relationship with this student included sexual conduct. Weber told school administrators that he was in love with this student and that no sexual activities occurred until after her 18th birthday.

To be clear, a teacher having a sexual relationship with a student, even if they are 18, still violates the Oregon Teachers Code of Conduct. But why am I blabbing on about some teacher from my high school? Because like Brett, he also went on to get a job at Inside Track after he lost his teaching license. Daniel Weber started as a lead student success specialist in 2012 and was promoted to program director in 2023. We could not reach Daniel Weber for a comment. I reached out to Inside Track again, this time to ask about Daniel Weber. They also denied this interview request. Since I reached out to Inside Track, Daniel Weber's LinkedIn page has vanished. Inside Track won't confirm whether he is still employed there or not. If Inside Track hired Brett Fischer or Daniel Weber after their TSPC revocation orders were made public, those documents should turn up in a simple Google search. And a company that hires a lot of former educators from Oregon may want to be familiar with the TSPC website. And do a manual search. That extra layer of screening is important, not just at schools, but also private companies, because if someone wasn't charged and convicted of a crime, the information in the TSPC final order won't show up in a criminal background check.

In Brett's case specifically, the fact that investigators found the computer in his classroom accessed child sexual abuse material never would have shown up in a criminal background check. Because that finding didn't lead to charges. At this point in our investigation, I really wanted to know why Brett was never charged. So we kept looking for answers, this time with someone who knows the ins and outs of the prosecutor's office.

So my name is Kristi Keating. I'm a licensed attorney in the state of Washington, and I'm also a certified parent coach.

We spoke with Kristi in episode 3 about grooming. But now we wanted to talk to Kristi about prosecuting cases of educator sexual misconduct because she's done it. Kristi successfully prosecuted Dean Junker, a former teacher at the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bellevue, Washington. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison for sexual misconduct with a minor. So we asked Kristi if she saw a lot of sexual misconduct cases against educators during her time as a prosecutor.

The answer is no, I didn't. And that is not indicative of the prevalence of the cases.

Educator sexual misconduct cases are extremely underreported, and very few are prosecuted. Brett's case was reported and investigated, but he wasn't charged. Christy agreed to review some of the documents we found about Brett's case to see if there were any clues we were missing. We showed her the report of the preliminary investigation, which TSPC originally wrote up back in October 2005. Christy isn't a licensed attorney in the state of Oregon, But we were hoping she could set us on the right track.

I want to, with deference to the prosecutors involved in this case, sort of highlight that there are a lot of different considerations that a prosecutor goes through when determining whether or not to file charges. And we're constantly trying to fix and improve the way statutes are written because we're finding loopholes or ways that we suddenly can't prosecute when we thought we would be able to. Then we have to look at things Like the forensic chain of custody, when we really get into the nitty-gritty of the evidence that we have, does it establish beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest legal standard that we have? Does it establish beyond a reasonable doubt that this individual committed the crime? This was back in 2005, so that's 20 years ago. The ability to forensically prove something and prove the chain of custody. of images forensically would've been different 20 years ago than it is today. In order to file charges, all you have to have is probable cause, which is a much, much lower standard. But we don't file cases based on probable cause. We typically file knowing that we will be able to get ultimately over the hurdle of beyond a reasonable doubt.

So with all of those caveats or explanations for why someone may not file, when I, you know, when I read this, I'm like, wow, I want to know what those reasons were because at first blush, I would have questions. There certainly are some very concerning facts shared in the 2-page document that you shared with me.

Kristi helped us see the case from a prosecutor's perspective, but there's something missing from this document— Stacey. And it isn't just failing to acknowledge that she was groomed by her teacher, but also that spouses have a level of victimhood, even if they weren't the target of the actions. How is a person supposed to know what their partner is doing? Like, she went on to have children with this man.

I mean, the short answer is you don't.

You don't.

And especially because most offenders are never, ever caught. There is no record.

For Stacey, this case never ended. She's lived with the weight of these unanswered questions every day since 2005. And because Brett was never charged, She never got the one thing she needed to move on, a clear explanation. So we're all left guessing. Maybe it was the chain of evidence, but maybe it was something else. After all the time we'd spent reporting this story, we weren't any closer to an answer as to why Britt Fisher wasn't charged. That was until a document landed in my inbox from a records request we'd filed 9 months earlier.

9 months.

I didn't think it was ever gonna come.

Happy birthday.

It arrived on my birthday in 2025. I opened my email expecting a coffee shop discount. Instead, I found a Department of Homeland Security report. Hey, it's Sydney. I wanted to tell you about a show I love. Well, 2 shows I love. Frozen Files and Ice Cold Case. Both are the brainchild of journalist and podcaster Madison McGee. For Madison, covering unsolved cases is personal. Her father was murdered when she was 6 years old, and his case is still unsolved. In her limited series Ice Cold Case, Madison investigates his murder herself, bringing listeners into the interviews, family conversations, and frustrating roadblocks she encountered along the way. After you finish Ice Cold Case, check out her weekly show Frozen Files. In each episode, Madison walks you through the evidence, the unanswered questions, and the decisions that deserve a closer look without ever losing sight of the people affected. Find Ice Cold Case and Frozen Files wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes of Frozen Files drop every Monday.

I'm Chloe Hedgemoatthew, a reporter at The Observer. I've worked on a lot of investigations, but some stories never leave you. When Gareth was 14, he thought he was the luckiest boy at school. He was sleeping with his young, attractive female teacher. Years later, when he understood the harm she'd done, he went looking for justice, but the people who knew stayed silent. To them, he was just a lucky boy. So he came to me. When I started pulling at the threads of his story, I never imagined where they'd lead— to witnesses I unearthed standing in a courtroom testifying against his teacher.

To listen to Lucky The email was from the Department of Homeland Security. Attached was their original investigation report from 2005. The report was brief and heavily redacted, but it gave us a zinger. Brett Fischer, quote, admittedly accessed child pornography at school. End quote. Again, that term is no longer used. It's now called child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. But even with that admission from Brett, he was never charged. And the report stated that just 2 months later, the case was closed. So we decided to go straight to the source, the federal agents who authored this report. Jim Cole.

I am retired after 36 years total of law enforcement. Um, the last 20 with Homeland Security Investigations, uh, serving as both a special agent and a supervisory special agent.

And his partner, Josh Findley.

My name's Josh Findley. I'm a retired special agent from Homeland Security Investigations from about 2004 to 2024.

Josh and I were partners, worked these cases together for a number of years out of the ASAC Portland office.

Both Jim and Josh were at Stacey and Brett's loft the night of the search.

Jim and I have both worked hundreds, if not 1,000, of these kind of cases. There are just, like, little tidbits from each case that stand out. The thing that made it stand out is that we didn't get to charge him. It pissed me off that we didn't get to charge him. Like, we didn't miss very often.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing just 30 seconds into our interview. We'd finally found the people who could speak to why Brett wasn't charged. I asked Josh to start from the beginning. He remembers that in January 2005, he got a call.

Detective Mike McGowan out of Gresham PD called me up and said that they had a report that a teacher at Centennial High School was viewing what we refer to as CSAM. on his computer in the classroom.

CSAM is the acronym for child sexual abuse material.

So we went out there with Mike and his team. The IT guy was phenomenal.

The IT guy was Ron Hopps, and he had done his due diligence to make sure the evidence was collected.

He had the list of the websites and what times the websites were accessed, and then he had downloaded the security footage To show that Brett was the only person that went into the room and the only person that came out of the room in between those timestamps. He would have been a great investigator. He just didn't know, like, what he needed to do. Like, if, if they would have called us, like, earlier instead of kind of doing their own investigation, I think it would have turned out different.

2 days after IT first flagged the computer use, DHS was contacted. By the time federal agents searched the district computer in classroom 110—

We didn't find anything on that computer.

But the search wasn't over. Federal agents decided to search Stacey and Brett's personal residence. You've heard the story of what happened that day from Stacey's perspective. The knock at the door that still echoes in her head. Jim and Josh were 2 of the agents standing at her door. And then there was the agent who whisked her out of the situation.

Here's Jim.

Bob was not a technology guy. So, yeah, that was likely Bob that took her to the coffee shop.

Bob passed away by the time we spoke to Jim and Josh, so we were never able to learn his side of the story from that day. This wasn't Jim and Josh's first knock and talk, as they called it. This was a routine consent search, which is when law enforcement shows up at a suspect's door and gets their permission to search.

You know, we kind of had our routine down of how we would get consent from people.

We would have gone in and done as thorough a search as we could do without turning things upside down and that kind of thing. And obviously, the focus would have been on the digital devices and that computer in particular. The digital forensic examiner would have come in and, and run some software on that computer using technology specifically to look for CSAM files.

Ultimately, the search yielded negative results. And because they didn't find any evidence of CSAM stored on any of Brett's devices, They weren't able to file charges.

It was kind of a sad situation because at that time the law did not allow us to charge with access with the intent to view, which now it does. Now that's a crime. But at the time it wasn't.

You heard that correctly. In 2005, viewing CSAM online without downloading or physically possessing it was hard to prosecute. It wasn't until 3 years later, in 2008, that lawmakers clarified the definition of possession of CSAM to include accessing by computer with the intent to view. So what would have happened if someone was found guilty of access with intent to view?

Intent to view doesn't usually garner prison time, or not a lot of prison time. It does make them a convicted felon, though, and a sex offender. The intent to view is, like, the lowest level charge within the gamut of child exploitation federal charges. And so, like, it usually ends up with a probationary sentence.

Was this, like, dumb luck? He just didn't download it?

I think he knew what he was doing, and I think he took steps not to get caught.

How many more cases do you guys think would have been charged By that, had that been a law sooner?

A ton.

Lots. Yeah, lots.

I actually saw my jaw drop at the same time as Katie's when we heard Jim and Josh say this.

If there was any way to prosecute him, we would have. We had a great relationship with our prosecutors. If it only happened 3 years later.

I'm left wondering how different Stacey's life might have been if the law had changed just 3 years earlier. Maybe that knock that has haunted Stacey for decades might have instead felt like an intervention, the moment when the truth finally came out. But there was one more piece of closure from this conversation with Jim and Josh.

With many of the other cases we've had, having to, to say to a spouse that their husband is under investigation or suspicion of engaging in these types of crimes is I know that I'm delivering a bombshell in most cases. It took a bit, like, of experience and maturity to figure out what we were doing by delivering that news, because we weren't prepared to really provide any support for that. We weren't trained to do that. It was over time I started to recognize Like, the offender's family is also victimized.

Someone else finally saw Stacey as a victim. Within moments of hanging up with Jim and Josh, I called Katie to debrief what we just learned. We have our answer.

I know. I, I was like, oh, within 5 minutes of our interview, we Now understand why that couldn't happen. To hear Josh say that they were frustrated that they couldn't prosecute, like, I mean, how many times have we read the TSPC investigation report and had all these conversations?

We frantically texted Stacey to see if she could jump on a call with us. I don't even know where to start. So they definitely remembered the case.

Really?

Yes, because it's one of the few cases they've ever not been able to prosecute.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

What?

And, and yeah, where do I even— okay, so basically, if the evidence had been collected— Like you heard, Jim and Josh told us there were 2 things working against them. First, they weren't able to properly investigate. Before Brett became aware, his internet activity was flagged by the school. And second, access with intent to view was hard to prosecute at the time.

Wow.

And that law was passed 3 years after.

Wow.

That's crazy.

And they said, like, we had great relationships with the prosecutors. Like, we would have sent this case. Like, it would have happened. But because there was no evidence of downloading or sharing and distributing, that they couldn't.

Hmm.

That's insane to me.

Yeah.

Jim said, I have come to appreciate after years of doing it, when I show up at someone's door, the bombshell that I'm often dropping on them. You know, he's in this role and like the system that he operates in isn't thinking of the family and how he does that.

That's a trip.

Yeah.

Wow. That's crazy that they remember it that well too. I mean, that makes me feel better. Like I'm not crazy.

No, you're not crazy. You're not crazy at all.

Like no human knows that day except for them. It's so crazy. Wow. There's something inside of me that like, The fact that they were in that loft with me, and they're the ones that came to the door, and then they're coming up and speaking, it just means a lot to me.

This conversation with Jim and Josh felt like a bow on our investigation. We had an answer as to why Brett wasn't criminally charged. But it's a little more complicated for Stacey. We spent an hour on the phone that afternoon circling around the life that could have been hers.

But it's like, it feels like so unjust to me because I would have actually been given the correct information. It's like, on one hand, I wish that would have happened, but then I wouldn't have my kids. I mean, everything happens for a reason.

But even after that hour, Stacey hung up the phone and went back to the life that she lives today.

Even, like, pulling into the parking lot, I felt like high school Stacey was there with me going to this game. You know, those lockers opening and closing and people shuffling in and out. It was funny to walk in, and it always felt so big to me there, but it felt so small to me.

That's next time on Not Just a Terrible Story. Thank you so much for listening to Not Just a Terrible Story. We are an independent production. You can support us by sharing this podcast with a friend and leaving a 5-star review wherever you are listening right now. Or hop over to our Substack, terriblestory.substack.com. There's a lot of great free stuff over there— archival photos, resources, and stories that didn't make it into the show. And you can also get early and ad-free episodes as a paid subscriber. To get in touch, send us an email at terriblestorypodcast@gmail.com. This podcast was created and produced by Katie Klein and By me, your host, Sydney Gladue. Story editing by Lacey Roberts. Show art by Casey Brunell. Original music and mixing by Sean Simmons. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Maria Paleologus is our strategic growth advisor. Support provided by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. And a very special thank you to Stacy Love, whose bravery, honesty, and determination made this series possible. May her truth-telling give others permission to trust their own stories, use their voices, and know that they are not alone. If you or anyone you know is experiencing sexual violence and needs help, please visit rainn.org. That's R-A-I-N-N dot O-R-G.

Or call the National Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE or text HOPE to 64673. If you'd like to learn more about educator sexual misconduct, Check out the show notes for additional resources.