Transcript of The Wedding | Episode 2

In the last episode, Stacey Love told us about her time in high school and how she and Brett Fischer began a romantic relationship, but this isn't just a story of one 19-year-old who got swept up in a whirlwind romance with her former teacher. It's a story about the place where it happened, and the community that watched it unfold. I wanted to know what the reaction had been when Stacey and Brett first got together, so we started reaching out to every teacher she could remember. A few still worked at Centennial; some had left years ago, and others were no longer alive.

We all just loved Brett. We've all thought very highly of him. Very student-centered. Very positive. Very supportive.

This is retired Centennial Choir teacher Tim Russell. He had Stacey as a student and was a teacher alongside Brett. He also remembered having Brett's older sister in class.

I had his sister my first year at Centennial. Just an incredible voice. Now, she I knew as a soprano.

Tim also remembers the rest of Brett's family.

I just never heard anything negative about him. And part of that, part of that was from the family he was from. Very supportive. His dad was a, I think, a Baptist pastor.

The Fischers were known throughout Gresham. Brett's dad was a pastor at a local church. His mom ran a daycare center. One of his sisters was even a teacher at Centennial Middle School and coached Stacey in volleyball.

They were always at concerts and, yeah, just, you would have thought it was just a really blue-chip family.

Tim described his 23 years teaching at Centennial as "heaven on earth." He had a singular focus on building an outstanding choir program. He didn't involve himself in the happenings outside the music department.

You know, I'd hear comments every once in a while, but it was never anything that, not necessarily that I didn't take seriously. It didn't involve me, and I just beat feet back to my choir room.

Admittedly, he was in his own world.

I was just so engulfed in my little heart of the island.

So much so that the first time he learned about Stacey and Brett's relationship was when they got engaged.

It was just a really big surprise. It would never feel like a teacher dating a student was ever a good thing to do. I lost contact with a lot of the kids after they graduated, and Stacey was one. I didn't realize what she was doing and where she was going with her relationship with Brett. I think if I'd had a good private sit-down with her, I would have probably said, "What in the world are you doing?"

What would you have told her?

It's very difficult for this to end well.

Tim's not wrong. A power dynamic was already starting to emerge between Brett and Stacey. But like I said, this isn't just a story about Stacey. It's about Gresham, her family, and the community that watched it unfold. I'm Sydney Gladow, and this is Not Just A Terrible Story.

You know, obviously Stacey and I are very close, and Stacey was always very strong. Kind of the black sheep. I mean, she's the one that would say things that none of the, I don't think the rest of us, it wasn't that we weren't saying it, we just didn't even pick up on what was going on.

Stacey and Raquel are from a big family with 4 kids. Stacey is the second youngest and Raquel's the oldest.

I always kind of felt like I was a little mom, and I loved that, actually. That was part of my identity.

Raquel also knew Brett's family. She was in the same grade as Brett at Centennial. She remembers him and his older siblings.

His older sister was like the queen of the school because she was an actress, and so she was in the plays and very popular. And his older brother, I remember being really good-looking. He had this big family, and they were successful, and his dad was a preacher and all that kind of stuff. I thought about why my parents didn't freak out when Stacey started dating Brett. And I think it's because they saw his family as being almost higher status than us.

When we started to ask people about Brett, we heard a lot about his family. It was almost the first thing people went to.

And they sort of had a higher standing in the community, and so I think my parents really, they wanted that, right?

Raquel and Brett are around the same age. Both about 9 years older than Stacey. They had that dynamic of two people who grew up in the same small town and went to school together. They were even middle school boyfriend-girlfriend, if you could call it that. So Brett was a known entity to Stacey's family.

When he was interested in Stacey, at first I thought it was weird, but then I felt like I knew him, so I thought, "Oh, you know, it'll be okay." And who wouldn't be interested in Stacey? She's fun and dynamic and a cool person.

Raquel's boyfriend at the time, Sean, was older than she was.

Sean and I were dating, and Sean was 6 years older than me, and so it didn't seem like that big of a difference.

So that made it easier for her to justify the 9-year age gap between Brett and Stacey. But she remembers not everyone felt that way, especially her friends from high school.

It was like, "Oh yeah, Brett's dating my little sister." And everyone was like, "What? Brett is dating your little sister? Stacey?" They always remember her as being, you know, the kid's sister or whatever. So it was kind of a, just like a weird thing, but it was also like, just don't talk about it. It just, it was a little bit of a salacious thing. So then people didn't want to say anything.

All of this struck Raquel's boyfriend, now husband, Sean, as weird. And he's the type to speak his mind.

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

Sean had concerns about Brett from day one, and he did not hold back in sharing those with Raquel.

He did not like Sean. He did not like Sean from the beginning, and I think it's because he was afraid Sean could see through him.

He was not very friendly. I think in retrospect, he was concerned I'd get on to him, what his meme was.

It wasn't long after Stacey and Brett started dating that Raquel moved to Texas to be closer to work and Sean. After that, they only had FaceTime with Stacey and Brett on family holidays. One Christmas, when Raquel and Sean were back in Oregon to visit.

They had this game they were playing, bop it or whatever. The way he played it was like an over-the-top child, like he was not a child, but he was pretending to be one. He was trying to be more her age, right? It was obvious that he was not really being himself. That's all I'd ever tell Raquel, is that he's hiding something. But the rest of the family seemed okay with it, right? I seemed to be the odd one out.

Sean's unease about Brett never faded, but without anything solid to point to, he felt like his concerns didn't carry any weight, even with Raquel. She appreciated his directness, but ever the big sister wanted to keep the peace in the family.

It's actually something I regret. I wish I could go back and handle it differently, but I really hold him back on a lot of things. Got myself in the middle, so I would try to share some of the things but soften it, which of course then completely negates the points that he would have been trying to make. So I think he really wanted to have more of those conversations, even with my parents, and I did not let that happen, unfortunately.

My experience is not just on this situation, but when anything's been brought up in the family, it doesn't seem like they're actually surprised. It's just something that they've not discussed.

Yeah.

Her family really kind of holds it and pushes it down and doesn't really get it out. So when it comes out, it's either a huge explosion or doesn't really address the.

Very passive-aggressive kind of.

Very aggressive issue.

That's almost exactly how Stacey described her family the very first time we sat down with her.

My parents are like very traditional-type people, and I could tell that they weren't totally comfortable with me dating him, but I could tell that they also didn't know how to tell me that. I could just kind of feel it.

Stacey's told me a fair bit about her upbringing. Mormon family, nice suburban neighborhood. Her parents grew up without a lot, so they worked long hours to compensate and provide for their kids. Stacey and her siblings were latchkey kids, left to their own devices after school. And when the parents were home, there wasn't a lot of communication about feelings or the hard parts of life. Very little curiosity about Stacey's inner world. Stacey's quick to make it clear that she's not blaming her parents for any of this. Even so, she spent a lot of time in therapy teasing out the nuances of her family dynamic.

We really ran a lot of the house and raised each other, and just kids raising each other sometimes isn't the best thing. I just feel like that dynamic, you know, made me a little vulnerable. I really wanted that connection. I wasn't necessarily getting it fully fulfilled at home, which I think made me a bit vulnerable to, like, overlooking red flags. And it felt good to get that attention and to get that validation.

Stacey put it simply. Today she has a friendly relationship with her parents, meaning they see each other at holidays and catch up over the phone, but they aren't close. And even after all these years, they haven't really unpacked what went down with Brett. When we first reached out to Stacey's parents for an interview, her dad quickly declined. Her mom wasn't sure and needed some time to think about it, but ultimately she did agree to talk to us.

I'm Kathy Clough. I am Stacey Love's mother.

Kathy was nervous, so we started off with a few easy questions. Where are you from?

Blackfoot, Idaho. That's between Pocatello and Idaho Falls and southeast, so it's quite a ways from Boise.

When did you move to Gresham?

We moved to Gresham in 1979, April of 1979.

And then we got into it.

My first memory of Brett was him as a student alongside of Raquel. He was just an all-around good kid, played sports. They weren't best friends, but they were friendly, and we just thought he was a good kid. We knew that he came back there to teach. Everybody thought that was a really good thing, you know? It was, he was this all-American kid that went out and got his education and came back to the school to teach.

They weren't close, but the Clough family had known Brett for about 15 years at this point. Kathy started to see Brett with some frequency when Stacey's little brother started high school. He played football all four years, and Brett had been Centennial's JV coach. Kathy and her husband were at most of the games, and Kathy remembers Brett would often come sit with them to watch.

He didn't come to sit down by Stacey. I think Stacey was even dating somebody at that time, and he was with the family when we were watching football. And so, like, Brett was just joining, like he was a good old boy. At that point, he was very, very personable, always had good manners. He really was likable, which is probably part of the persona that he wanted to, I mean, you know.

Kathy also remembers running into Brett at the ice cream shop where Stacey worked during high school.

He worked at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream place. Twice when we were there, he came in, and I thought that seemed really weird, and so I asked her about that, and she said, "Oh yeah, he loves ice cream, so he always comes in." And the first time I didn't think it was anything big. The second time I thought it was starting to seem weird to me. I said, "You know, there are lots of places to get ice cream. Why would you always, I mean, you know?" That started sounding weird to me.

But she didn't tell the school or talk to anyone about it.

I think I would have felt really stupid going in and saying, "Gosh, she's working at Baskin-Robbins, and he's going there all the time." I mean, I just think that that would be passing judgment when I really didn't have any reason to be. It just wasn't that blatant. I wish it had been more blatant.

We asked Stacey about Brett coming to see her at the ice cream shop, and she doesn't remember her mom ever being there at the same time as him or having a conversation with her mom about it. But we talked to Stacey's classmate, who also worked there, and she said she remembers Brett coming in more than a few times. As Stacey graduated high school and went off to college, Kathy's concerns about Brett were sidelined, but they all came flooding back after Stacey's freshman year in college. That was when she learned that Stacey and Brett were spending time together.

We talked about the fact that he was the same age as Raquel. I mean, that was like 10 years' difference, and that was a big difference. I said, "Are you sure you want to date somebody like that?" And she said, "No, no, I'm not really. We're just friends." And they were just friends until they weren't. And then red flags went all over the place with me. Once I voiced my opinion about what she was doing, she basically shut us out and let me know that it really wasn't any of my business.

Stacey had told me this story about the time her mom really voiced her opinion about their relationship, and you've heard some of it too. Remember when Brett came into the bank Stacey was working at and asked her to go away for the weekend? He wrote up the cute invitation on the back of a bank deposit slip. Here's Stacey's recollection of that moment.

I remember my mom finding that slip because it was that little window of time I was living back with my parents, and my mom being like, "What is this?" And I was like, "No, Mom, it's going to be okay." Just dismissed it, and I was just like, "It's not a big deal. Everything's fine. There's nothing, like, that's inappropriate." Because in my mind, I had already started to justify it. My family knew about it. It was never something I hid, but I think she knew, seeing an overnight stay, we were either sleeping together or we were going to sleep together on that trip, which is, I think, where she was starting to get a little worried.

During our interview, I asked Kathy if she remembered more about Brett and Stacey's weekend getaway.

I do remember that, and I thought that was weird. Awfully, awfully icky. We brought it up, and we said, you know, "Stacey, you were raised like this. What's happening? What's going on here?" And she basically said, "I don't care what you think." At that point, it was like she had taken the bait. And had we stopped it before that, we could have had some influence, but at that point, we didn't have any more influence.

Stacey has a lot of thoughts about how she wished this conversation had gone, wished her mom had centered her concerns on more than just premarital sex, that her mom had said more, pushed harder, and most painfully, that she herself had been more receptive. But this is where it ended, and maybe without either of them knowing, they'd crossed a threshold and closed the door on any meaningful conversation about Brett. Kathy said Brett and Stacey's relationship snowballed after that weekend away together. The speed of everything caught Kathy off guard, especially compared to Stacey's dating experiences before Brett.

This was the first time that she was getting serious. Her prior dating had been so simple, and so she went from that to Brett. I mean, it's just like she walked into a fire.

This relationship didn't just feel fast, Kathy. It was moving quickly. During this time, Stacey and Kathy were friendly, but they weren't close. Stacey found closeness elsewhere, in Brett's world. She began seeing a lot of his family who also lived nearby. We reached out to Brett, his family, and some of his friends, and no one responded to our request for comment. So you'll have to get a sense of their family dynamic through Stacey's eyes.

I remember the first day that I met his mom. It was at his brother's house. I think it was like for a trailblazers game or something like that. I don't know that she knew I was a student going into that, and it somehow came out in our conversation. She kind of grilled me. I remember the family kind of like watching and being like, "Oh, she's doing her thing because she, you know, she's not someone who's scared to ask questions or call things out as they need to be called out." I somehow got, like, a check of approval. I'm not really sure how. I know she asked me a lot of questions, but somehow she felt okay with it.

Brett's mom's blessings extended to his big family. He and Stacey became regulars at the Fishers Weekly Taco Night and went to his brother's house to watch trailblazer games. Stacey really liked Brett's family and fit in easily. She especially hit it off with Brett's sister, who lived in LA.

She came up with her boyfriend, and we went down to my parents' beach house. I specifically remember, like, running and jumping off the dock altogether, and I remember her saying, like, "If you don't marry her, I will."

Back at home, Brett and Stacey were spending a lot of time together. They hung out at his house and went to social things as a couple. A big part of their social circle was Brett's colleagues, who also happened to be some of Stacey's former teachers at Centennial. Stacey said she had a lot of memories of socializing with other teachers, but she doesn't remember a big introduction or reveal of their relationship. Brett was really close with one teacher in particular, and they frequently went to a pub down the street from Centennial. Stacey pointed it out when she was showing Katie and me around Gresham.

Do you remember the first time meeting teachers when you guys had started dating?

I think it was that teacher friend that they used to go there all the time, and that's probably where we met. I definitely spent time, a lot of time, drinking beer with them at pubs, for sure. They would smoke cigars and drink beer. That was their thing.

Did it ever come up that you were a student?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I had that teacher too, and they had a very close friendship, and he thought I was cool, and it was fine. And it was those things that kind of normalized it. It was like, "Okay, maybe this isn't so weird. Maybe it's not crazy."

We reached out to this teacher, and he did not respond to our request for comment, but Stacey told Katie and me he wasn't the only teacher she spent time with.

His friends really liked me. I got along with them really well, and other teachers really liked me too and would say, like, "You're almost not like a student. Like, you're really mature."

Do you have any memories of a specific instance of Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so saying this to you?

Well, I remember saying that to me.

He was Stacey's social studies teacher.

And he kind of said it like, "Oh, God, you were never even like a student anyway, so it's no big deal. It's not awkward for us." Maybe it would have been a different situation had I not been who I was, but I think that I kind of got, like, the seal of approval from a lot of the teachers that they had liked me and they thought, you know, I was a solid person, and I think that that made it a lot less weird for people.

Stacey told us that at this point, she and Brett were spending most nights together.

He would leave early to go teach, and I would get ready to go to college. So we basically traded off between his house and my apartment, a lot more at his house just because it was a nicer place and more room, and he was closer to his school.

Brett's house wasn't very big. It was that typical craftsman home you see all over Portland, with small rooms and charming woodwork. Brett's sister had helped him decorate, so it was cozier than your average bachelor pad. His bedroom was a renovated attic space with sloped ceilings.

I was staying there a lot, so I was, like, putting clothes away, and it wasn't like I was snooping. It wasn't like I was going through things. I remember opening that drawer. I was kind of starting to move in-ish, and it wasn't like I was snooping. It wasn't like I was going through things. He left for school, and I remember, like, these white nightstands with a little drawer. I remember opening that drawer, and there was one of the pictures, like, he had on the podium, of a student.

A young female student.

And I don't know. It's in his nightstand, so I can put those pieces of the puzzle together.

Stacey stopped dead in her tracks. There were a million thoughts running through her head. She had given Brett her photo, just like this one, and she was flooded with memories of how he pursued her when she was a student.

I'm kind of a freeze person. I think I just, like, put it back and shut the drawer really quick and was like, "Oh, wow." I just started instantly to justify it in my head, you know, like, "You're jumping to conclusions. Maybe he just had it, and he had it in his pocket, and then he just put it there."

But then another day, not long after, Stacey was tidying up Brett's house.

As I was kind of, like, organizing clothes, I ran across, like, a small little paper bag that had just tons of handwritten notes in them from students back and forth.

To be clear, these weren't teacher appreciation cards, not thank-you notes on stationery in envelopes. They were notes written in pencil in what Stacey described as loopy, bubbly teenage girl handwriting on lined paper ripped from somebody's spiral notebook and folded into tiny squares, the kind Stacey remembers seeing flying around the hallways of Centennial. Just the sight of these stirred something in her.

I didn't read them. I didn't go through them, but it was enough to be like, "Whoa, okay." And in my mind, I thought, "Yeah, well, I know he used to be flirtatious and what have you, but we're spending all this time together, and we're doing all of these things together. So, yeah, he was kind of testing the boundaries, but here we are, and we have a real relationship, and we're building something, and we were spending so much time together, it was hard to imagine him doing anything inappropriate."

Stacey doesn't remember confronting Brett about the photo or the notes.

I think it just was so overwhelming and terrifying. And then when I contrasted that to us spending time together, the two didn't really make sense, and so I think I just kind of justified it in my mind.

Justify it, box it up, and compartmentalize Brett's conflicting behavior. Try to push it away and forget. Not an easy task, because these instances weren't just isolated red flags. There were rumors about other students during high school. Early on in their relationship, Stacey had confronted Brett about a particularly painful rumor. Stacey heard this rumor from her best friend when she and Brett started dating. Remember, that was a year after she graduated high school.

Do you remember at what point you found out that he had had sex with?

Yes. My friend told me.

Her best friend, who she trusted to tell her the truth and not to shook her coat at.

She said, "Hey, you should know, like, he and were sleeping together in high school. They weren't just sleeping together. Like, they were having nonstop sex, like, all over the place." And I remember confronting him about it that night. I was really upset about it, and I just remember being convinced that it was okay and that it really wasn't that big of a deal. I think that there was some ownership of how it happened and why it happened. And then I think I said, like, "You can't sleep with underage girls."

It's weird how a fact can change in meaning over time. Something that came out of his own mouth that at the time felt like due diligence now feels like predatory.

Right. Yeah.

Stacey doesn't remember exactly what Brett said to smooth things over or how her anger cooled over the course of their long, tense conversation, but looking back at these red flags is painful for her. We asked her if there was anything she ever felt like could have made her pause and reevaluate.

It's not something I ever had words for or a roadmap or even could see. My gut tells me that had I been more educated on this type of behavior and what usually comes from those relationships, because that's what I think the young brain doesn't have. It doesn't have the emotional capacity to process it, or at least the way I was raised or the tools I was given. I kind of needed that from probably an outside source, is what I would say.

But she didn't have those tools. This was her first adult relationship. There was a clear power dynamic at play. At the time, Stacey was 20 and Brett was 29. It seemed to Stacey that Brett was all in.

I do remember a pressure from him of making it legit or making it real or kind of, like, locking it down to where it didn't seem as scandalous as it was. And other people might not like to hear this, but I think other people who were kind of in the inner circle of that probably kind of wanted that to happen a little bit too. It was so fast. The whole thing was so fast. Kind of like the shortest amount I've ever heard of, I think, of someone truly dating to getting married. I don't even know how fast you can plan a wedding, but I did it.

And that's how, not even a month after her 21st birthday, Stacey found herself about to marry her former teacher. The morning of Stacey and Brett's wedding, Stacey woke up at her friend's house. The night before was slumber party vibes with a big dose of anticipation. Stacey had worn her new red pajama set, and they both used Biore pore strips the night before. They ate pancakes for breakfast. A bit later at the wedding venue, her nerves elevated.

I was in my parents' living room. I can remember being on the sofa and having this conversation with her where she got a little bit emotional. She was talking in a very low voice, almost like she didn't want to be telling me what she was telling me, and she just said, "I found these letters. It just makes me feel really uncomfortable."

On our wedding day, she and I were getting ready, and it was just the two of us. I know she intentionally planned this. We were in the room, and she goes, "You do not need to do this."

And I remember saying at the time, "Get out. There's red flags here. You need to listen to your intuition. Something is not right. You don't need to do this."

She goes, "I will go get the car right now, and I will pull it around, and we can just leave."

I just had this moment of wanting to save her.

And I just remember thinking, "It's too far down the line for that." She saw a lot more that I couldn't see.

She was just too far in at that point. And, you know, listen, she wanted that fairy tale with him. Who wouldn't, right? Like, I don't blame her for that. Got his hooks into her when she was really young. He called the shots and laid out what would be a really, you know, great life for them, and that's she wanted that.

So Stacey walked down the aisle and married Brett Usher. Stacey said her and Brett's wedding reception was a big fun party, theatrical, almost a bit fake. She and Brett did the dance from Pulp Fiction. Everyone was letting loose on the dance floor, lots of toasts from friends and family.

For me, it was the largest wedding I've been to, I think, in a long time. So it was very nice. Very nice. Hard to back out of a wedding like that, I would say.

Stacey still has the photos in a large, oversized wedding album with little corners holding the pictures in place on the page. She brought out the album on one of our trips to Portland. The photos read very early 2000s, some moody black-and-white shots, various configurations of the wedding party on an outdoor staircase, lots of candids from the reception. You'll hear from Katie first.

Isn't it so funny to have hard copies?

I know.

This was our wedding day. There's my sister behind. These are his best high school friends. There's his dad.

Everyone's dressed up and smiling in every picture, but there's so much tension simmering under the surface.

Here's you and all your former teachers.

Yep. That is hilarious. So this is a photo kind of if you were looking at the dance floor, looking out into the crowd. And this is a photo of at least one, two, three, four, five, six teachers that were from the school, you know, all adult educators fully aware that we were getting married and they were participating in it. It's almost like they're watching a spectacle, which is kind of funny to me to look back on. It makes me wonder, like, we got married.

I was re-listening to the Sean interview yesterday. One thing that he said was, "A lot of people owe Stacey an apology, and she hasn't gotten it yet." And that kind of, like, started to make me have some feelings.

Yeah, me too. Just a lot of people in this room that probably could have stopped a lot of damage from happening.

After the wedding, Brett and Stacey settled into their new married life.

For the most part, our day-to-day life, when we were in good spans, it was fun. We'd go our separate ways, do our jobs. We'd come home and make dinner and usually watch shows and go to sleep. I would say it was a lot of pleasurable stuff, like going to the movies or watching The Sopranos or having great dinner and wine, but not a lot of, like, vulnerability or deep connection necessarily.

But when things were bad, they were bad. The imbalance in their power dynamic played out in everyday life. Rumors of Brett pursuing students haunted her. She often had an uneasy feeling, but at some point, she stopped listening to her gut and muscled through the rough patches. She cut herself off from most of her high school friends. This is another time in life where Stacey says she abandoned herself, de-prioritizing her own needs and wants in preservation of Brett's happiness. Not long after we met Stacey, she took us back to the house she and Brett lived in during this time, Brett's house, the one with the old newspapers on the basement ceiling, the location of their first date and backdrop to their courtship and first year of marriage.

How cute. It is cute. Oh, they put a door mirror thing on the back.

Yeah, this is the house.

I feel like I could see coming home to this house, like, newly wedded couple, and, like, it's this, like, thing from the outside that everyone's like.

Totally.

"Look at her go."

I know, totally. I mean, we just were at this All-American high school. Come to this beautiful house. It, like, normalizes the whole thing. It's like, there's something wrong here.

The house is a classic Pacific Northwest craftsman. It's painted dark green with sizable steps and a big front porch. She said they used to sit on the porch in the evening and play cards. In the beginning, when Brett had a roommate, he'd play too.

I remember his roommate taking a picture of us on those steps right there, and I was, like, sitting in his lap, and we looked so happy. And we were happy. This is the duality of it.

The house has a nice little yard with a literal picket fence. Stacey thinks the fence must be new.

As you turn around the corner, this is, like, the dining room.

Here.

We walk around the side of the house.

And then it goes into, like, a kitchen, galley kitchen. And then there's two bedrooms on the back and then an attic kind of bedroom on the front. Cute little backyard and then a detached garage back there. It's a nice, nice neighborhood.

What are you thinking when you, like, look at it?

You know, it's like I was thinking about this the other day. When we first started dating, I started struggling with depression, which I'd never been a depressed person. And I ended up going on depression medicine. I just, like, feel that here. And I think it's probably so much of this dysfunction and so much of the abandonment of myself to make the situation okay and really trying to make the most of it and trying to think positively. And we did have really fun times too. So it's like that, again, that duality of, I'm not trying to say I was a prisoner here.

Yeah. That makes sense. Like, change of scenery. You think everything will feel better.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. I've been a Band-Aid person a lot in my life.

We all know Band-Aids don't last forever. Usually, you have to rip a Band-Aid off, and it takes whatever else with it.

I knew something was wrong. Deep down, I knew something was wrong. I knew something was going on. And I was going to church at that time, and I was not a big prayer person, but I remember saying a prayer like, "Please show me what is happening, what is going on."

And then one Sunday in January of 2005, she knew.

And then there was a knock at the door. And I just was like, "Huh, that's weird." So just, you know, opened the door, not knowing what I was going to see. Ten men standing there in Homeland Security gear.

They were Department of Homeland Security special agents alongside Gresham police detectives.

It's funny. I used to hear that knock so vividly in my head. I could hear it like it was yesterday.

That's next time on Not Just A Terrible Story. Thank you so much for listening to Not Just A Terrible Story.

If you or anyone you know is experiencing sexual violence and needs help, please visit rain.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.