Adults in the Room: The Bet

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If you or someone you know needs support, text the word Hope, H-O-P-E, to 64673. Please take care while listening. I mean, this is actually very. This is frankly very teenage. I know. Hang it on a bed. I'm sitting on a bed. A few years ago, when my best friend Ella Hussagan and I started investigating our teacher's death during our senior year at Garfield High School in Seattle, we had a simple goal. It was admittedly self-centered. To prove our accusers were. Are we doing this to go to our classmates to be like, "We were right, right?" "We were right, right?" "Yeah, we were." "I just want to hear you say it one." "Then I will be happy, it's fine." Back in 1999, Ella told me she'd heard a rumor that our science teacher, Tom Hudson, had abused a boy from Post-84, the outdoors club he led. I repeated the allegations to my mom, who alerted authorities. Mr. Hudson was placed on leave and an investigation into his conduct soon followed. Not long after, he died by suicide, and many students, teachers and parents blamed us. Garfield's investigation was abruptly closed, and the claims against Mr. Hudson were never proven. For years, Ella and I wondered if we went too far, spread unfounded rumors, and drove Mr. Hudson to take his own life. Then Ella suggested we find out the truth, and finally set the record straight. Today, Ella is an attorney who takes on big institutions and companies. I'm a journalist. We know how to conduct complex investigations, but this was an old case, and we had little to go on. We pulled out our diaries from that time, and printouts, we kept up the emails we wrote to each other on Yahoo accounts. And from the back of a filing cabinet in my basement, I dusted off a brown manila envelope. Inside were records I've held on to since I graduated from college. When I asked Seattle Public Schools for its Hudson files. The first installment arrived when I was 23 years old, a cub reporter in rural Washington State. The envelope was bursting with random photocopies. Mr. Hudson's substitute teacher list, phone messages jotted down and indecisurable scribbles, faxes asking so and so to call such and such. None of this seemed useful, but at least I was making the school administration sweat a little. They didn't support us while we took the rap from Mr. Hudson's suicide, and I wanted them to know I hadn't forgotten. When we started reporting this story, I went back through the files again, slowly, taking careful notes. It felt like I was begging the files to tell me what to do next. This time, I hadn't epiphany. It was what I couldn't see that I needed to pursue. What I couldn't see were the identities of the boys who spoke up. In each document, their names had been crossed out with a thick black sharpie for privacy. Ella and I had been going about our research all wrong. We'd set out to redeem ourselves, but our vindication wasn't the point. The boys were. Ella and I had always suspected Mr. Hudson prayed on post-84 students. Could we finally uncover how far his abuse went, and explain why parents and school officials seemed so eager to dismiss the obvious warning signs? To find the answers, we would have to treat this like a cold case and retrace the steps of the original investigation that went dormant so long ago. From KW Public Radio in Seattle, this is Adults in the Room, Episode 5, The Bet. I'm Isolder After You. When we started our reporting for this podcast, Jonathan Hill was the first of Mr. Hudson's former students to share his story with us. Jonathan, the former president of Post-84, told me that when he was 15, Mr. Hudson was aroused in a shower with him. Despite Jonathan's best efforts to avoid one-on-one situations with his teacher after that, Mr. Hudson drunkenly called Jonathan multiple times in the weeks before his death, threatening to kill himself. At first, I thought Mr. Hudson's conduct toward Jonathan was heartless, wildly unprofessional, and grounds for getting fired. But because there was no physical touching, I didn't think of it as criminal. King County prosecutors have since told me that inviting a 15-year-old to shower naked alone and then layering at him could have resulted in a gross misdemeanor charge. Yes, even back in 1999. But naively, when I heard Jonathan's story, I chalked up Mr. Hudson's behavior as merely "inappropriate." During my reporting for this podcast, I've noticed how much baggage that word carries with it, especially when it comes to sexual abuse. Inappropriate, can mean a lot or nothing at all. It's an easy euphemism for when you don't want to get into specifics, and it can give cover to predators and those who defend them. Inappropriate is what the Garfield administration used to label the relationship between our principal, Dr. Al Jones, and a cheerleader, Christina Mitchell. How my journalism teacher, Dave Erick, described the gray areas in student-teacher dynamics when the Seattle Times interviewed him. And the word Eddie Hill senior, the ex-cop, the school district hired to investigate Mr. Hudson, wrote in his notes. In each of these examples, inappropriate both describes and obscures vastly different behavior. Al Jones in a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old Christina. Dave Erick asking 17-year-old me to tell him the size of my underwear, and an aroused Mr. Hudson showering naked with teen boys. I've come to see that the behavior we dismisses inappropriate is often a stepping stone to even more serious abuse. I learned this from Ella's ex. Like Jonathan, Ella's ex was coerced by Mr. Hudson to take a shower with him after a game of racquetball. We wrote about it in the messenger. As Ella's ex sees it today, that shower was an example of how Mr. Hudson would groom the boys in his club. He was very flirtatious, and he was like sort of like looking for sausage spots. If you were willing to hang out with him, he would like want to hang out. If you were willing to talk to him about alcohol and drugs, he would talk to you about alcohol and drugs. He never forced him to do anything or never made me feel super uncomfortable. And he would go as far as you let him. Mr. Hudson regularly invited boys to play racquetball with him at his gym, as a cover story, forgetting naked with them afterward. Fortunately, Ella's ex was able to distance himself from Mr. Hudson and stay out a further vulnerable situation. Based on the allegations I'd heard in high school, which included rumors about physical violence, porn, and alcohol on Mr. Hudson's boat, it was highly likely to me that these showers were the first stages of Mr. Hudson's grooming process. I was sure there were boys who didn't or couldn't draw a line where Ella's ex and Jonathan did. I knew that to do this investigation justice, we had to fair it out the full scope of Mr. Hudson's abuse. Otherwise, the school district and Mr. Hudson's fiercest defenders could characterize what happened as nothing more than inappropriate. Ella and I debated where to look next. Maybe people who were quiet back then would now be willing to talk. The documents from my public records request included some, but not all, of Eddie Hill's seniors reports from our senior year. We really don't know what he learned about what he didn't learn, right? What was there? What did the investigation find? The Seattle School District may not have concluded its had some investigation, but that doesn't mean it came up empty. What if Eddie was still around? It was time to find out. Support comes from Snow-Isle Libraries. Kick off a summer of reading at Snow-Isle Libraries. All ages are invited to read with us and attend fun events. Kids get a free book and sticker and adults get a free tote bag, whether you love graphic novels, ebooks, audio books, or newspapers, all reading counts. To start your adventure, visit your local library or go to snow-isle.org. (upbeat music) - I'm Chris Morgan, host of The Wild. Over the last 35 years I've worked in the wildest places on Earth, tracking tigers in Siberia, filming orangutans in Borneo, following humpback whales, migrating jaguars, iridescent hummingbirds, and learning from the people devoted to protecting them. These stories changed how I see the world. I think they'll do the same for you. The Wild with Chris Morgan, available wherever you get your podcasts. - My search for Eddie Hill senior brought me to a quiet, hilly neighborhood in Seattle's south end. I pulled up to a big house with sweeping views of Lake Washington. When I knocked on the door, a woman answered, "I thought I had the wrong place." But when I asked about Eddie, her eyes lit up. She was his daughter. I had caught her in the middle of cleaning. Eddie and his wife had recently moved out. She got him on the phone and we set up a meeting at Eddie's new apartment, a few minutes away. - I don't know, are you? - Eddie, please. - Oh, okay, well I called Mr. Hill back in the day. - Yeah, back in the day. - Eddie told me that when the Hudson scandal broke, he was already investigating someone at Garfield. Our former principal, Dr. Al Jones. - I wonder if you were doing the Al Jones case. - Okay. - So he was about with a student. - While Eddie looked into Dr. Jones relationship with cheerleader Christina Mitchell, he set a male student approach him with concerns about Mr. Hudson. - He told me he was in a situation that was very uncomfortable and there were other children who were uncomfortable and he thought that I should know. - And did he tell you what the situation was? - He only told me that Mr. Hudson was taking showers with boys. He wouldn't go any further. I need to pause for a moment and say, oh my God. For the last 26 years, Ella and I thought we were the reasons the school district investigated Mr. Hudson. So did others at Garfield. It's why so many people turned on us after Mr. Hudson died. So to hear that a boy told Eddie about Mr. Hudson's potentially abusive behavior, a full month before my mom made her call, well, I have to admit, it made me a bit giddy. It wasn't us everybody, someone else tattled first. But that feeling faded fast because really it didn't matter who triggered the district investigation. If anything, what Eddie told me revealed that a young boy was desperate for Mr. Hudson to stop. When Eddie started interviewing students at Garfield, he learned that Mr. Hudson's moods could swing wildly from goofy to volatile. One boy told Eddie that everyone knew to stay away from Mr. Hudson when he was angry. Another said Mr. Hudson told students on his boat to hide the pornographic magazines if other adults showed up. A third said Mr. Hudson playfully whipped him on the butt with a towel after a shower. Eddie said he started asking parents if they could share anything about their kids' interactions with Mr. Hudson, but most refused to talk. Soon after, the students in post 84 stopped talking too. So Eddie filed reports with the school district, summarizing the interviews he did conduct, including his first conversation with Mr. Hudson. I told him that they had been allegations and that I was here not to condemn him for anything, but to try to find out what was happening. If the kids were wrong, if what they were seeing or feeling wasn't true, his answers, as I remember, did not satisfy me. Eddie asked about the after hours racquetball and the showers at the gym. He admitted showers, but they were just in the normal course. We went places, there was sports, there was something like that, and we took showers. It was like, it was no big thing. And did he admit to touching anybody? - No. - No, okay. - No. A couple of the boys told me about touchy, but it wasn't like sexual touching, it was like horseplay. You know, and sometimes horseplay, you can camouflage your horseplay. You know, actually a sexual attempt, but you were just across the line, you don't know. Eddie met with Mr. Hudson a second time, but they cut that conversation short. - He wanted the lawyer. - Mr. Hudson's lawyers scheduled a third meeting with Eddie, but Mr. Hudson didn't show, which Eddie thought was strange. A few days later, Eddie heard from someone in the Seattle Police Department that Mr. Hudson had died at a motel in Everett, Washington. I asked Eddie, what did he make of all he learned back then? - Was he guilty of what the kids saw? - I don't know. I can't tell you. There was a lot of innuendos and love smoke, but I can't say that guy was guilty. You know, did he do it? I don't know. - To be clear, Eddie wasn't dismissing Mr. Hudson's actions as horseplay or innuendo. He said he didn't have enough evidence to turn the case over to police. Students, parents, and Mr. Hudson all stopped communicating with him. So Eddie said he was left with hearsay. - I question everybody. I put down on paper what I was told, but I couldn't tell you one way or the other if it actually happened, because the teacher terminated the interviews in the worst possible way. - Eddie helped me better understand the investigation, but unfortunately, I wasn't any closer to finding out the extent of Mr. Hudson's abuse. But there was someone else closely involved with the Hudson case. Cheryl Chao became interim principal of Garfield after the district suspended Dr. Jones. I can't interview Miss Chao. She died of cancer in 2013. But 16 days before she passed, she married her longtime partner, Sarah Morningstar. So I called Sarah. I wanted to know if she remembered what Miss Chao had told her about the 1999 2000 school year at Garfield. Turns out quite a lot. I met Sarah at her house near Lake Washington. She said that in October of 1999, Miss Chao was brought to Garfield as part of the Dr. Jones cleanup crew. She was supposed to be at Garfield for only two weeks. - The two weeks turned into two years? - Shortly after Miss Chao arrived, she started hearing stories about Mr. Hudson that concerned her. - And then, all hell broke loose. - Miss Chao first heard about Mr. Hudson's suspect behavior from a student teacher at Garfield. He and his partner had visited Mr. Hudson on his boat. Mr. Hudson appeared drunk, but that's not what alarmed the young teacher most. Six male students were on board as well, and two of them were spending the night. Miss Chao ran the student teacher's allegation up the chain to the school district office. From there, the district took over. Sarah was a teacher and school administrator herself and confirmed that was the policy. - And how it plays out is how it plays out. Our job says school administrators is to report it. We are not the judge and jury. - For a long time, I was convinced the so-called responsible adults at Garfield betrayed us. So it was a revelation to learn some we're trying to do the right thing. Miss Chao responded as a mandatory reporter should by elevating what the student teacher told her. After that, Miss Chao had to wait for the investigation to take its course, same as Ella and me. Sarah said Miss Chao got a lot of heat from parents and teachers in the wake of Mr. Hudson's death. - I mean, it's to havoc. It's mayhem in terms of the climate and the culture of the school. And staff either were allies of Tom Hudson's or not. And then they were seen as like, allies of the administration, right? It just was, Terrible. People like stood up in staff meetings and literally called her a murderer. She did not kill him. She didn't bully him. She reported what she was told. I understand it's really hard to believe that some of our favorite people let us down. And that's like beyond minimizing it. But it happens. And the reason why children and women don't come forward is because they aren't believed. Miss Chow was tough. She ran for political office and had dealt with public criticism. But Sarah told me this blowback from the Garfield community weighed on her. After I talked with Sarah, I felt a kinship with Miss Chow, a woman I knew for just a year. Ella and I faced similar retaliation from students, teachers, and parents after Mr. Hudson was put on leave. It's weighed on us for more than two decades. All that time, we thought we were the only ones. As for my present day investigation, I'd hit a roadblock. I had learned that multiple people at the district were getting word of a wide range of allegations about Mr. Hudson all around the same time. And that it wasn't just LNME sounding the alarm. But neither Sarah nor Eddie could tell me anything new about the scope of Mr. Hudson's abuse. Fortunately, I hadn't exhausted every lead. The first people Ella and I contacted. The ones you've already heard from throughout this series, LX, Jonathan, Toby, Rosie. They're all people we've stayed friendly with since high school. And they were more than willing to talk to us about Mr. Hudson. As for the other kids and Mr. Hudson's orbit, I didn't know how forthcoming they might be. So many of them had been angry with us back then. But if I wanted to solve this mystery, I had no choice. It was time to start reaching out. Kids get a free book and sticker and adults get a free tote bag, whether you love graphic novels, ebooks, audiobooks, or newspapers, all reading counts. How do you capture the feeling you get when you come across something you've never seen before at low tide? On the latest episode of KUOW's Arts and Culture Podcasts Meet Me Here, artist Tiniña Silva talks about how she tries to recreate those feelings in her ocean-inspired fiber sculptures for herself and for people who see her work. Listen to Meet Me Here on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. I wasn't looking forward to reaching out to former members of Post-84 for this podcast. I didn't know what stories awaited me and that scared me. When I report on sexual assault, the survivor's stories stay with me. But this was different. I knew these people. I had known Mr. Hudson. It felt deeply, uncomfortably personal. After a few weeks of texting with former classmates, I was able to locate one Post-84 alum willing to sit down with me. That's how I found myself driving to the Olympic Peninsula, a winding two-hour car and ferry ride from Seattle to meet with Ocean Mason. Ocean was one of the kids who helped save Mr. Hudson's life when he plunged into a crevasse on Mount Olympus during that Post-84 expedition. And when Mr. Hudson tried to intimidate me from writing critically about the Mount Olympus incident, Ocean was there, standing by like Mr. Hudson's bodyguard. I planned to ask Ocean about that rescue. But I also knew they were close with former Post-84 members. Maybe they would vouch for me after seeing how serious I was about this project. Ocean's story was typical of many Post-84 kids. At first, a little socially awkward, looking for belonging and ultimately finding it through Mr. Hudson's mentorship in the great outdoors. Somebody said, "You are capable of this. Here I'm going to show you how to do this. Run this chainsaw. Who hands a 16-year-old at chainsaw?" Like, "Wow, that was amazing." You know this story by now. Like so many of the people we've talked to, Ocean experienced the magic of Mr. Hudson up close. His brilliance at making kids feel like they were part of something powerful. Tom, as an adult in my life, was like, "Huge, he was the person who was guiding all of these things, right? We'd spend time together playing racquetball. I'd go to his house and we would work on scuba equipment or whatever. I was in his classroom. Like, he was just like very present in my life." As we talked, Ocean started questioning their relationship with Mr. Hudson in a way that confused me at first. I wonder what was real and what wasn't. I wonder when he and I went to play racquetball and we took showers. I wonder if that was him wanting to see me naked. I wonder if I'd come here hoping Ocean would connect me to form our post-mumbers. But it was clear Ocean was about to reveal something else. At some point during our relationship, we made a bet. And the winner of the bet was that the other person had to sing the star-spangled banner naked in front of the other. And there was a point. It was the summer before I went to college where I was hanging out with him on his boat and he was drinking. And he basically bullied me into singing the star-spangled banner in front of him naked. And I'm pretty sure he was masturbating at the time. And that's not a story. I've like told to a lot of people. The lights were off or like very dim so I couldn't see him well. But I, my memory is that he was masturbating. So he wasn't like right in front of me. But I was one side naked singing the star-spangled banner with the lights on. And he was at the other end in the dark. And you saw some sort of movement. Yeah, yeah. That would make me think that he was masturbating. I wanted to be gone. It was awful. I did not want to be there. When you finished singing, like was it just back to normal? I think I put my clothes on and just left. I don't remember anything more than that. But again, he was like, he was drunk. I would have been 18 in the boat. I think it provided him space that was away. Right? That was isolating. That let him do what he wanted to do without oversight, without connection. It was a separate space for him. And I don't know how conscious or intentional that was. But whatever the intent behind it was, that's what it provided. It provided isolation. And did you in that moment know what had happened? Was wrong? No. No. I didn't. Was something I never really talked about. A part of me felt violated. A part of me knew that it was wrong. But I didn't have any words or language for it. I was like, oh, that wasn't okay. But like he never touched me. Right? I couldn't say like, I've been assaulted. Right? There was no words for it. And it took me like over a decade to like recognize that that wasn't okay. That was like violating. If I want to tell that story, I have to tell the whole story. Because otherwise, I say, I had a teacher who was inappropriate. And what does that mean? There's that word again, inappropriate. If Mr. Hudson left Ocean feeling this violated, this confused for all these years, the word inappropriate falls very short. Ocean was 18, legally an adult when Mr. Hudson bullied them into this humiliating performance. Mr. Hudson didn't make physical contact. But it's absolutely clear to me that Ocean is a survivor of sexual abuse. I have to tell you like my heart just hurt for you because of how humiliating and how how exploitative to do that to you. It is that bad. You know, I'm so sorry that happened you Thank you I can't even tell you how meaningful and how hard it is to hear that This is why I wanted to talk to you because nobody needs to do this alone and I have felt so alone in this for so long and I don't want anybody else to have to do it alone Ocean has been hesitant to share this story with others for fear of it being minimized Partly because ocean minimized it for so long This loneliness ocean talked about it's heartbreakingly common among survivors and over time There's a growing disbelief that the abuser was able to get away with horrible acts in plain sight You know on reflection there were so many little things right like going to play Rackable and showering naked with the student Like he took us to a nude beach when we were in Hawaii. You know one year, right? That's not actually really okay Having conversations about sex with students I Have memories of yeah being like in a shower at a camp with like several boys and him and I think he was like Pretending like he was gonna drop a quarter down somebody's butt crack like it was a coin slot How is that not a giant red flag for any of us? Interviewing ocean helped me confirm a few things First Mr. Hudson's abuse extended way past what I heard in high school and Second Mr. Hudson's misconduct with boys in post 84 had likely gone on for most of my time at Garfield At least two to three years I Started to wonder if this immensely popular teacher who was clearly grooming boys to satisfy his dangerous impulses Had also been grooming parents teachers and administrators to look past his deeply problematic conduct Which meant to discover the full extent of Mr. Hudson's abuse and those who enabled it I needed to go back to that brown Manila envelope and my pile of documents Because it turned out the school district actually investigated Mr. Hudson years before I got to Garfield and I needed to find out why That's next on adults in the room On episode six of adults in the room in 1995 Seattle Public Schools launched its first investigation into Tom Hudson's behavior with students But at the time a boy involved said what happened was no big deal It was just the thing that happened with two people in a dark tendon like you know like two teenage boys might do Years later he breached out to the school district for closure creating a paper trail that landed in my inbox So what happened back there? That's coming up next Adults in the room is part of focus a dedicated documentary channel from K.O.W. Public Radio in Seattle a proud member of the NPR network K.O.W. Podcasts are made possible because of listener support If you enjoyed this podcast, please make a donation or become a monthly member at keww.org Original reporting for this project was done by me is older aftery Ella Hussagan Jeannie and all and will James our producers are will James and Alette Coulon our editor is Jeannie and all a Special big thank you to Maria Coriel Martin Music by BC Campbell additional music by Alette Coulon logo designed by Alicia via Amelia Peacock manages our marketing and promotions K.O.W. Director of new content is Brendan Swini our director of marketing is Michaela Giannaudy Boyle K.O.W.'s Chief Content Officer is Marshall Eisen. I'm his old Arraftery. Thank you so much for listening Some of the world's biggest companies have brought jobs and wealth to the Seattle region that growth has come with some real pains to you There are these hotspots Seattle has the potential to be one of those tech people are getting replaced by AI And you can't replace us with the eye yet. I'm Monica Nicholson and I'm Josh O'Micnickels We host booming a podcast about the economic forces shaping our lives here in the Pacific Northwest We get into the stories that hit your wallet and our region Listen now on the KUW app or wherever you listen.