The Rot Runs Deep | Episode 4

In this episode there's brief discussion of sexual assaults of minors. Please take care while listening Do you guys have your books like this? We're back in Portland and Katie, Stacey and I are pouring over a 1998 Centennial High School yearbook So this is a senior class. I know right? It's funny to look at these. I had those wispy banks. Did you? Stacey threw her yearbook out years ago. So she had to borrow this one from a friend When I borrowed this yearbook from my friend, it was pretty funny. She sent me a video and she tapped on the first teacher It was like pervert then tapped on the next pervert pervert As we flip through the pages Stacey pointed out several teachers that she heard whispers about and even more students Who are rumored to be victims? I can show you that photo of our class. What do they call this? They call this the 98ers, but it was like known that that class had this like pack of attractive girls We flip a few more pages and Stacey points to a photo of her and a bunch of senior girls at a pep rally inside the Centennial gym And I look at that photo. I see at least four of us that were being groomed at that time. It makes me sick During Stacey's time in high school and the decades that followed there were rumors about many teachers Rumors about teachers who made sexual comments, past notes to students, crash high school parties, invited students over and offered them alcohol and even pursued sexual relationships with students. I Just thought he's taken a liking to me because I'm a good athlete or a good student All three of them very good-looking guys just had personalities that were very magnetic and they drew kids to them constantly He had one specific person. He would just try to beat down over and over and over again And that was me. There's absolutely no reason why the student city, you know at his house at night by themselves I think they thought, you know, brush it under the rug like it was long ago. No one's gonna remember The first time they threatened me like do you know what slander is? Oh, they had me terrified We're looking back at four decades of alleged educator sexual misconduct to see how the system failed Stacey her friends and generations of Centennial students I'm sitting glad to And this is not just a terrible story You We found a total of ten documented instances of educator sexual misconduct over the last 45 years in the Centennial school district You're about to hear four of these stories Some of them alleged some of them prosecuted and some of them 20 years in the making Each case tells us something different about the type of school culture where abuse drives Like why people look the other way Why can planes get buried in bureaucracy and why abusers stay in the classroom? The first story is about Tom Iverson He was the choir director from 1975 to 1985 We learned about what happened from local news coverage that my co-producer Katie Klein pieced together So I did a bunch of digging in on Tom Iverson in his story and there are a lot of surprising parts like shocking surprising We sat at my kitchen table and poured over her research and I'll tell you at the beginning that Iverson was caught for educator sexual misconduct and was no longer allowed to be around minors That wasn't the only consequence Iverson would face, but it would take over 20 years for his behavior to finally catch up with him Katie started with an Oregonian article from March, 2000 Lauren Hadrick, who was president of the Centennial Education Association at the time Said he investigated Iverson for the teachers union and was quoted as saying I was concerned that a teacher of ours was dating high school students Read this part Hadrick said he once ran into Iverson and a girl student in a Portland area restaurant at 2 a.m. On a school night I asked him what he was doing and he said just having coffee Police were never involved then and Hadrick said that he dropped the union's investigation because parents did not want to press charges According to the reporting at the time the parents declined to file a complaint a decision that reflected the broader cultural norms of the early 1980s Lauren Hadrick died in 2016 So we weren't able to ask him more about his investigation and why he didn't further investigate or report to the police It seemed to be an open secret an Oregonian article from 2008 said that Centennial school officials told the paper they knew Iverson was dating students in the 70s and 80s Centennial's principal at the time many Richards also spoke to the Oregonian and said that Iverson was not confronted because parents never complained We reached out to several other people who worked at Centennial during this era and only one former teacher was willing to speak with us Tim Russell you heard from him in episode two He is one of Stacey's favorite teachers and Brett's colleague He was also the choir director after Iverson left in 1985 We called him up and spoke over zoom. Well, I'm sorry to say my predecessor and sent Was known for going places and doing things with students that they shouldn't have done Endered up marrying one of his students and ended up With a very tragic end of his life. So features dating students wasn't a surprise to us This was one of the first things Tim Russell learned when he took over for Iverson Many Richards was my principal when she hired me in 1985 She said Tim you just need to understand you're gonna have to prove yourself Many said I'm sorry Tim. I can't let you go on tour. I can't let you have choir retreats And it was I think my third year before she Said okay. I'll I'll pass the mantle to you and because we trust it You have the right late relationship with the kids and and unfortunately my predecessor kind of burned a lot of bridges for me In fact, it wasn't just the administration. I can't tell you how many teachers said Boy Russell you've you've got a big hole to dig out of because a lot of the teachers had been on the choir tours with with Tom as chaperones and There was just a lot of Monkey business going on We reached out to former principal many Richards after speaking with Tim Russell But she declined to call me so we turned back to the news archives looking for any breadcrumbs in 2001 a former student shared her story with the Oregonian We'll call her Sally She attended Centennial in the late 70s When Sally was a junior in high school, Iverson was her music teacher She said he took advantage of her low self-esteem and unsympathetic parents to begin a sexual relationship with her Sally also said Iverson told her he loved her But dumped her a year later to date another younger student We reached out because we wanted to hear more of Sally's story But she didn't respond and I can't blame her. It's been years since this all happened But Sally was not Iverson's only victim at Centennial. Iverson married one of his students a 16-year-old sophomore After she became pregnant according to Hendrick as well as other teachers and students who asked not to be identified She dropped out of school because she was pregnant and they had to travel to Idaho to get married Because people under the age of 18 cannot get legally married in Oregon After marrying his 16-year-old student Iverson still had an active teaching license and taught at Centennial for another three years Before quietly leaving the school in 1985 He went on to teach at three different neighboring elementary schools and even became a district music director in 1997 During this time Iverson abused at least three of his students all under the age of 14 It wasn't until late 1999 that he was finally removed from the classroom That was nearly 18 years after he married his 16-year-old student from Centennial That 16-year-old student and Iverson stayed married until 1993 And divorced after having two kids together Reborders reached out to her about their relationship and marriage years later His wife and former student said she never believed Iverson did anything wrong. Quote I don't feel as though there was anything inappropriate It just sounds like during that time a lot of people didn't believe that it was wrong Sitting at my kitchen table that day Katie explained how Iverson was finally caught Based on a timeline she constructed from numerous Oregonian articles This abuse came to light because one student told a school employee what happened to her and it was reported And then they found the second victim during the investigation A month later a third victim comes forward His victims testify in court One is quoted as saying he said not to tell anyone or he kill me. One of the victims testified that they previously reported the abuse two different times. Those teachers testified that they reported to their respective principals. One of those principals denied being told the other said he didn't do anything because he thought the teacher was making a comment about Iverson in passing. So there's nothing in writing. The teachers didn't follow up on the reports that they made. The principals didn't do anything, didn't. Prosecutors still had enough evidence to successfully convict Iverson of nine counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. Iverson died of cancer in prison in 2007, just six years after he was convicted. Tom Iverson's story is a textbook example of what experts call passing the trash. This happens when a school lets a teacher with allegations against them, go teach somewhere else, instead of documenting their misconduct and reporting it. The backs of Iverson's case are part of an upsetting pattern. Administrators knew he was dating students at Centennial. Students have been reporting his sexual abuse in the forestcraft school district for years before anything changed. From what we can tell in available records, it took the first victim speaking up repeatedly for an investigation to happen. And data shows this is often how it goes. The major case studies in research reports in this area show that vendors will often move between different school districts or states multiple times before they're reported to the police. Studies have also found that many offenders have multiple victims. Congress has tried to prevent passing the trash through federal legislation, but there are major disparities in how this plays out state-to-state. In fact, only 19 states have implemented a policy to prevent passing the trash. Katie and I turned back to the stack of papers on my kitchen table. I had a story to share with her about the Centennial Band program. Well, two stories, intertwined. The first was about the band director who started in 1980. Daryl Dyer. Dyer was known for creating an exceptional band program. So when he suddenly resigned from Centennial High School in 1995, people noticed. When Daryl Dyer had first resigned, nobody knew why, and there was just all these was first around the school. We only actually know anything about Dale Dyer because of a student who broke the story in his independent publication in 1995. Well, I love independent publications. I want to know about this. The student was Ezra Homeland. He was actually the junior class president, and very happy to divulge the full story on the phone to us. Do you have any questions for us to start off anything we can answer? Yeah, what is the foundation of this project? What is the, what, yeah, what, what are you guys doing? It was a fair question. I explained that over the past year and a half, we've been looking into cases of educator sexual misconduct at Centennial. And frankly, there are more cases than we expected. Ezra wasn't surprised. Yeah, yeah, um, well, uh, go Eagles. My first question for Ezra was how we found out about what was happening with Dyer back in 1995. I was talking to the band kids in physics class. And then I think that's when they said like, oh yeah, Mr. Dyer's gone. And then I was like, oh yeah, what's that about? And then they started talking and then the principal had come down and given a speech to the band kids like a few days later and like all the band kids were like, yeah, that was completely spony. And then they started telling more stories and more stories. And I think that's where it started. And everyone had a little like, yeah, there was something yucky or just like an awkward moment caught and like a weird little like that doesn't seem right. Like, why are they alone? Why are they out by his car alone? It seemed evidently clear that something was transpiring between them. Once Ezra had the scoop from the band kids, he started talking to other students and even some teachers. Ezra landed the band teacher. Daryl Dyer was allegedly having a sexual relationship with another student, a 17 year old girl at Centennial. He published all the information he gathered into an unsanctioned independent publication. So I put together this two page old school style, glue the paper down, glue the comics on, you know, go to kinkos, really old school way of making a newspaper. Ezra, fittingly named the paper "The Goons of Hazard," a reference to a dead Kennedy song. The next morning, with about 60 copies in his backpack, he went to school and passed around his first issue. Thrilled him in like bathrooms, dropped him around the school in every single place I could like put them. This is before like cameras. So you know, I could get away with it, locker room, everywhere I could. Then kids started making copies of it, so there were like hundreds of them in the school by like third period. So the whole school is buzzing with it. And I think it was fourth period or fifth period math class. That's when the school security guard came down in the class, pointed at me and he's like, "You come with me." And then it was on. Ezra were remembered for school administrators in the principal's office. They were like, "You have any idea what you've done. You have no idea the rules you've broken. You have no idea blah, blah, blah. Threatening me with a lawsuit, threatening me with slander, threatening me with expulsion, threatening me with all kinds of things." I was like, "Uh-oh, I really thought I might have flown too close to the sun and like, oh shit, I'm in big trouble." Then they called my mom down, she had to come pick me up and I was suspended, kicked out a class presidency. Ezra's mom told him that he did the right thing if he thought he was telling the truth, but the reaction from school leadership had him questioning everything. Until later that night, when he got a call from an Oregonian reporter who happened to be the dad of one of his classmates, the reporter came over with a crew and interviewed Ezra about what happened. So that article came out the next day and then that's when everything blew up. Multiple newspapers were at my house, channel six, channel two, channel eight. People were calling me, telling me what was happening. The new stations are here. They're asking questions. I think the administration knew they were in trouble at that point. They weren't going to be able to sweep it under the rug. This was big news in a small town. The story made headlines across local news outlets for weeks. There was one anonymous victim. We'll call her Jane. Jane's mom reported dire to the police. Here's Katie, reading an Oregonian article from March 1995. A mother's charges against an ex-centennial high school teacher go unsubstantiated by her daughter. The mother said her daughter has moved out of the family's Gresham home and is spending most of her time with dire. No. The girl who was now 18 has admitted she spent at least 10 nights at dire's house and went on a four-day vacation to Las Vegas with him. The girl's mother said she was disappointed that the criminal case was dropped but was not surprised because detectives told her they could not pursue the case without the help of the daughter. It turns out the school knew about the allegations against dire. Even before Jane's mother reported him to the police. Dire's own wife, Laurie, had reported her husband to the school several weeks earlier in January. Jane's mother said the school never contacted her about that report. It wasn't until February that Jane's mother learned of dire's relationship with her daughter and she learned about it not from the school but from Laurie who went directly to Jane's parents. After that, Jane's mother filed a complaint with the school. Only then did the school finally hire a private investigator. The school confronted dire with the private investigator's report in late February. And despite learning of dire's inappropriate relationship with Jane, the school did not fire him or report their findings to law enforcement. Instead, the administration struck a deal with dire. The school agreed not to discuss dire's relationship with Jane as long as dire resigned. But Ezra's unsanctioned newspaper upended that plan. Once the paper circulated, police caught wind of the story and launched their own investigation. Here's Katie with more of the article. Authorities will not file criminal charges against the former Centennial High School Band teacher accused by a student's mother of having sex with her 17-year-old daughter. Lieutenant Stan Grubbs would not comment on the specifics of the four-week investigation. But he said the reluctance of witnesses to come forward hurt the case. He said it might have helped police if school officials had notified police immediately after they conducted their own investigation. In 1995, dire surrendered his teaching license. In the stipulation order, dire and Jane both denied any sexual contact. Dire has not responded to our request for comment about his relationship with Jane. His relationship with Jane may have been illegal. But with the victim unwilling to cooperate, dire himself denying the allegations, and the school opting for a quiet resignation, nobody faced legal consequences. And that's exactly how they slip through the cracks. Jane's mom told the Oregonian, "This system is a joke. They are protecting him more than my daughter." That is heartbreaking and I feel for that mother who is trying to protect her 17-year-old kid and and it's like hitting a brick wall every authoritative into the wall. to be involved here. - We don't know if mom and daughter reconcile, we don't know where the daughter's at today, what she feels about any of this. - And this is something that has also haunted Ezra. - The part that concerned me the most is like, I don't know what happened to her. I don't know like how this affected her life. You know, obviously she never came back to school. I think it was great that he got exposed, but I think she was like the true victim in all of it. - The only information we have about Jane is that her parents withdrew her from Centennial and she was not able to graduate with her class that June. Ezra was back at school a few days after he was suspended and he was reinstated as the junior class president, but Ezra described the whole experience as overwhelming. His 16 year old self wasn't ready for all the attention that came with the dozens of media interviews. He even got a call from the ACLU with an offer to be a spokesperson for free speech. Ezra withdrew, he started skipping class all the time. He said his GPA went from a 4.0 to less than a 1.0. And then he developed a strong sense of skepticism and distrust for all institutions. - I would love to take the purely moral high ground and say I did it only for like moral reasons. There was a part of me like, yeah, fuck this institution for hiding stuff from us. There's also to get at 'em, you know, like, fuck you guys. - It certainly didn't seem like the administration cared as much as Ezra. And we actually found some interesting reporting that shared some insight into the administration's perspective at the time. - This article I'm about to hand you, I just can't wait to hear what you think about it because it's fascinating. It's called the high school principal admits the past few weeks have been hard, but says this place is not falling apart. - Okay, in the past few weeks, Centennial High School principal Clark Brody lost all of his hair. It's not because of the string of front page news stories detailing the rise and fall of three Centennial stars, the well-known band teacher who resigned and made allegations that he had a relationship with a student, the junior class president who was suspended for circulating a vulgar underground newspaper exposing those allegations, the football star who was arrested during school on accusations of selling LSD on campus. - No, Brody lost his hair on a bet after the school's basketball team tied for the league championship. So that's like a joke, that's like a setup. - They are equating a student selling drugs on campus with a student publishing an independent newspaper with a teacher having an inappropriate relationship with a student. They're equating those two things, Katie. - This is wild. Katie kept reading. - Students shaved his head the same week, the dire story broke. It's not just because I'm stressed, Brody said, I just hope it grows back. I mean, Brody, you should be stressed. In the midst of it all, life goes on at Centennial. This place is not falling apart, Brody said. I think the community can take reassurance that we don't avoid these problems. Although things have quieted down by Tuesday, Brody said the school found another underground newspaper in a girl's bathroom. He knows it's not the last. I am ready for spring break, Brody said, that's for sure. - The like light-natured comments of this is wild where I'm hearing students have to write newspapers and distribute them for their truth to be heard. - Yeah, yeah. Like it's more an exchange of gossip than a serious introspection into what actually is happening at that high school. - That's wild. - Dyer wasn't the only Centennial bandage here with allegations against him. Like I said before, this is actually two stories intertwined. Doug Potassi was the assistant band director and boys' water polo coach. He worked alongside Dyer for five years until 1987. Here's Katie summarizing what happened. As a Gresham high school teacher in the 1980s, Potassi was accused of exposing himself to a teenage boy and fondling another student. A court sentenced Potassi to five years of probation after he pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. - Potassi left Centennial at some point and moved on. He got a job in sales for Pacific office automation. We weren't able to track down the circumstances of his departure from Centennial and TSPC did not provide us with documents on him. Other than the record of his license expiring in 1988, Potassi also did not respond to requests for comment in time for the airing of this episode. The story of what he did to the two students at Centennial stayed largely hidden for almost three decades until Potassi's pass resurfaced in a 2024 Oregonian article. The headline of that article reads, "Former employees sue Pacific office automation CEO, alleging serial sexual assault." That CEO was the former Centennial assistant band director, Doug Potassi. (soft music) Three decades after Doug Potassi left Centennial high school, the news broke. His company, Pacific office automation, had settled with multiple employees, following disturbing allegations of sexual assault against Potassi. We'll put a link to the 2024 article in the show notes. The reporters, Noel Cromby and Mike Rokoway, exposed Potassi's alleged abuse over his 30-year career in sales. They also dug into Potassi's previous career in education. They spoke to the two students Potassi abused at Centennial in the 1980s. One of the victims from Centennial said that "Potassi threatened him," saying, quote, "Nobody's gonna believe you. I'm a well-respected teacher at Centennial. It's your word against mine." The two victims also talked about being ostracized and bullied by their classmates for speaking up against Potassi. Here's Katie reading from that Oregonian article. He endured disturbing incidents of bullying. Someone threw rocks through the window of his home. He received death threats. Someone poured sand into the gas tank of his prized 1968 Volkswagen Beetle. One of the victims also said, "The new allegations swirling around Potassi suggest he, quote, was not only rewarded for his behavior, but then put into a culture where he could grow it and cultivate it and hone it. It's really, really terrifying to me." Potassi denied allegations brought against him by ex-employees. He is currently suing Pacific Office Automation, his former employer. Pacific Office Automation has responded with a counter-suit. Potassi's pattern of alleged behavior didn't stop when he left Centennial. Passing the trash is a term mostly used in schools, but hearing this story, I can't help thinking that any position of power was dangerous for Potassi to hold. I'm just thinking of all the years of students who are in band who are not safe. And I think also of Stacy and students not knowing what's appropriate and assuming that if there's inappropriate behavior, a grown-up would stop it. If that's just the culture of the band, you have nothing from the outside to make you question it. It's not like one of those band teachers was safe and the other wasn't. And just like hundreds of kids moved through that. Yeah, program year after year. Decided what was okay based on the water they were swimming in. There's two things that stick out for me in these stories. First, how blatantly student safety was disregarded. And second, the culture that was allowed to flourish. There were many students that could have witnessed the beginnings of this abuse, the pattern of grooming. Whether it was extra attention, favoritism, gifts, boundary crossing. And because this was the culture of the band program, this is what these students were shown was normal. And the band program wasn't exactly an exception at Centennial. You've heard stories of educator sexual misconduct from the choir department and the English department. Former students also alleged this behavior was happening in the Cross Basketball program for years. I heard all these stories from the time I was a freshman. And these poor women now that all this is being brought back up. Other teammates see him still as this great guy. I see him as somebody that takes advantage of people and situations. I actually quit basketball one day. I couldn't take him trying to beat me down all the time. Our final story starts in 1990. When Centennial graduate, Jeffrey Stanik returned to teach and coach girls basketball at his alma mater. Over his nearly 30-year career coaching basketball at Centennial High School, Stanik was removed as a coach, rehired, left, came back again, and finally retired in 2021. And then, three years later, he agreed to never reapply for a teaching license. The final stipulation TSPC published doesn't tell you the story I'm gonna share with you today. It does not even mention allegations of sexual misconduct. During the course of our reporting, Jeff Stanik declined to be interviewed for this podcast. But he did respond via email. In his statements, he pushed back against the TSPC and school district investigations were about to detail. Specifically, he contends the investigations were flawed. Arguing the institution's investigators, lacked proper training licensing and were improperly biased against him. We'll get into his response in this episode. But let's go back to the beginning. It all started at a holiday party where several former basketball players got together in late 2021. This is just the same story. Well, Renovary does the same thing over and over and over with each girl. This is Lindsay. She asked to be identified by her first name only. She was a star player during Stanisk's tenure. She was at the party in December 2021. She told us there was about 15 former girls basketball teammates spending several graduating classes hanging out that evening. A few of the former players who were there told us the night started off easy. Just old friends reconnecting. But then, as the night wore on, the mood shifted. Small talk and casual gossip gave way to something else. One by one, some of the women started speaking openly about their coach, Jeff Stanik. All of a sudden, they were just talking about it and they were talking about the younger girls like, yeah, me too, and the hot tub. They were just like spilling their guts out to the group. From the time Lindsay was a freshman at Centennial, she'd heard allegations that Stanik pursued sexual relationships with students. But she didn't know just how widespread this behavior was alleged to be. Then they were saying names of girls that were younger than them, that he did that too, and girls that were even younger than them. There was a few people that I was surprised to find out about. It literally broke my heart that I, because I knew them. Everyone knew the rumors. But Lindsay said this was the first time she heard this many of her former teammates speaking openly about Stanik's alleged grooming and sexual abuse. It was a lot to take in because it's so hard to just hear all these stories and just know he's just chilling his living his life doing his thing. But this was just the beginning. One of the women there that night reported the allegations about Stanik to the Centennial School District. I believe that's when the investigator came in and started questioning everybody. At the time of that report, Stanik was coaching at Centennial one day a week. The school district hired an independent private investigator named Susan Nisbet. Nisbet began contacting the former students who are at the holiday party. In the meantime, Centennial reported the initial allegations to the teacher's standards and practices commission. Remember, TSPC independently licenses teachers and investigates misconduct in Orkin. At this point, the school put Stanik on leave. Susan Nisbet spent two months investigating. She found new allegations of an appropriate behavior and new information about complaints against Stanik dating back to the late 90s and early 2000s. The earliest complaint documented came from a dad in 1998. He contacted the district because his daughter did not want to return to Centennial to play basketball. While the dad praised Stanik's coaching, he shared that his daughter told him Stanik was having a sexual relationship with one of the girls in the basketball team. And that Stanik dated players after they graduated. The district reported the allegations to the campus resource officer who told them this wasn't a police matter because the complaint didn't come from the alleged victim or her parents. So the district did their own investigation. And in the investigation, they spoke to exactly three people. Stanik, who denied the allegations, the assistant basketball coach, who said he didn't see anything, and the alleged victim, who will call Jessica. The call kind of came out of nowhere. And it was just one question. It was like one question, and that was it. Jessica agreed to speak with us on the record, as long as we concealed her name and changed her voice. The call she received was from Centennial Principal Curry Heath, who was investigating the allegations. And the one question he asked, "Did Stanik have an inappropriate relationship with you?" And I answered no. Because I was still being harassed. When I would come home, you'd be at my house. And I just, I didn't want, I just didn't want to go through any more of it. I was in college, and I just wanted to move on. Move forward. After Principal Heath's call, the investigation was closed. Until 2022, when word of the holiday party got back to the Centennial Administration, Jessica was there that night. And a few months later, she was on the phone with the private investigator, Susan Nisbet, discussing her experience with Jeff Stanik. The investigator just wanted to ask me a few questions about exactly what happened if there was alcohol involved, if other teachers knew about it, students knew about it, and I just shared all that information that I had. Jessica described numerous behaviors from Stanik that she now interprets as grooming. Jessica had been coached by Stanik since her freshman year of high school. And over those years, she saw what she considered his problematic behavior in real time. She told Nisbet that Stanik supplied her with alcohol and pursued a sexual relationship with her while she was still a student at Centennial. The grooming started before I even knew it was happening. I just thought like, he's taken a liking to me because I'm a good athlete or good student or a combination. It was like little things, you know, him helping a little bit financially, him asking me to, you know, come to his hotel room on trips, give him a massage. There's absolutely no reason why the student should be at his house at night, by themselves. And that's the situation that I found myself in. Jessica said that Stanik, 35 at the time, invited her over to talk about basketball stuff. She was in her senior year of high school, either 17 or 18. Her birthday fell right in the middle of basketball season that year. Jessica remembers that when she arrived at Stanik's house that night, he started kissing her. She told investigator Nisbet that once their sexual relationships started, they had sex 25 times over several months. You would have me at first park my car in the garage, but even like the very first time I was there, another x-player came over and was like, what's happening here? And he was like, hey, you need to get going and just shoot her away. Documented in Nisbet's investigation report, Jessica shared that Stanik took her camping and brought her on a couple road trips. She also shared that Stanik invited her to social events with other teachers from Centennial. During our interview, she told us more about this. Even invited me to another teacher's party while I was still in school probably fairly turned 18 at the time. He was asking other teachers for favors for me like if I was missing class or grades or whatever else like he was doing all sorts of stuff behind the scenes. Specifically like an English teacher, he was able to change the grade because Stanik asked him. So if I missed school, he would just let the teachers know, you know, it's fine. I don't know what he said specifically, but whatever he said seemed to make everything just go away. You're a kid and you're like, okay, well, I'm getting away with it. I just didn't really stop and think like, why is he doing this? Like, what is in it for him? But there wasn't a bigger question. I wasn't asking myself. Like, I wasn't able to take a step above and be like, hey, why is this happening? Instead of like, okay, he wants to change your grade for me. Great. You're 17, 18 years old. You're really not thinking like, why somebody's doing something exactly. And then you start to like look back and then you start to like put everything together. And then you start to see, okay, there was grooming, there was him asking favors for me, there was him like trying to get in with my family and show up like my family's house and have conversations with them and like make himself look like this great guy. And if your family doesn't step in, and other teachers don't step in, and other students don't say anything, you're like, this might not be that bad. I think you kind of tell yourself that. Jessica said she eventually ended things with Stanik, but that he didn't want to take no for an answer. You know, he wanted me to not go to college and they then continued to have that relationship. And I was absolutely not interested in that. And then for a while, you know, he just of course calling and trying to contact me, but the weird part was that he was showing up at my home when I was coming home from college. I would see his vehicle in my driveway. And I'm like, what in the world's happening? Like, why are you here? This was Jessica's normal. This is what she said she had endured by the time Kurt Heath called her. And asked if Stanik had an inappropriate relationship with her. In 2022, investigators bit asked Jessica why she didn't share the truth with principal Heath back in 1998. Jessica told her that she had a boyfriend who didn't know. She was overwhelmed in college, and she was scared to tell the truth. It's common for victims to say silent when asked about their abuse. That's why experts say investigations can't rely on a single conversation. School leadership needs to conduct interviews with all potential witnesses, other students, and faculty have multiple conversations with the victim themselves. But in this case, they only called Jessica once. There's no documentation the school district ever interviewed that dad will originally complain about. in 1998, or his daughter, who refused to come back to the basketball team. The investigation report from 1998 also stated that later that fall, Stannick confronted the daughter about sharing those allegations with her father. According to an internal memo from Centennial's 1998 investigation, Stannick also discouraged the school from interviewing other students who were potential witnesses. Stannick eventually stopped contacting Jessica and she was able to go on with her life. But the experience still impacts her to this day. I think it's painted the experience when I think it's painted the relationships with others. Because this seems to be just kind of a little bit of a cloud that anytime I'm around those people, that cloud kind of tends to show up. Because it was, you know, not a positive experience. Jessica isn't the only documented victim of Stannick's alleged sexual misconduct. In February 2000, another parent complained about Stannick's behavior surfaced. The complaint originated from events that took place eight years earlier when his daughter was a student at Centennial. The parent said that Stannick chased his daughter around, peaked in her window at their home, and that they were at a party together. There is no evidence in the file that the student was ever contacted or interviewed about the allegations in 2000. We had a voice actor read with the school district's director of HR wrote at the time. We shared with Jeff that the district found there was no truth to the allegations and the investigation was closed. Investigator Nisbitt tracked down the student in 2022. The student shared she did not have any class at a Stannick and did not play basketball. But her friend was an assistant basketball coach. We've had parts of our interview read by a voice actor. The friend would tell me Mr. Stannick was always talking about me and mentioning my name and that he thought I was pretty in all these things. And I think that's how we ended up connecting. The student remembers she started spending time alone with Stannick outside of school. He would come to my house and park outside my house. I would sneak out of my house and go to his truck. She told the investigator that she remembers the song feel like making love coming on the radio while they kissed in his white pickup truck. I think when he realized he wasn't going to get me into bed he just told me he couldn't talk to me anymore. I was upset and I was embarrassed. I stopped going to school. He definitely changed the course of my life. The student told her friends what happened. But said nobody knew what to do because they were all 16 years old. In total, investigator and his bit interviewed 12 former students in the 2022 investigation. Three students reported the Stannick pursuit of physical relationship with them while they attended Centennial. One student said Stannick pursued a physical relationship with her the summer after she graduated. One student saw Jessica's car parked in Stannick's driveway at night. Three other students cooperated the alleged abuse of their classmates saying they they're witnessed or had first-hand knowledge that Stannick pursued a physical relationship with a student. One of these students had Stannick told her about his sexual relationship with another student. In Stannick's interview with Susan Nisbit, he denied these allegations. We've had one of his statements read by a voice actor. My answer is not going to change. I can say it 30 more times or we can move on to a different topic. I'm going to tell you that I have not had an appropriate relationship with anybody. During TSPC's investigation of the complaints, Mr. Stannick disclosed that in 1999 he instructed an assistant coach to purchase and place a Ouija board in the locker room of an opposing team for which a former player of his played. Mr. Stannick stated that he intended the Ouija board incident to be a prank. TSPC considers the incident to constitute retaliation and or a violation of appropriate teacher student boundaries. Mr. Stannick retired in June 2021. His license expired on May 2nd, 2024 and he no longer wishes to teach. Accordingly, he is voluntarily relinquishing his license and will not reapply in the future. Remember, this is the only public-facing document about Stannick's teaching license. No mention of the alleged sexual relationship with Jessica or the other students from the investigation vial. No mention of allegations that Stannick pursued recent graduates, provided minors with alcohol, or lied to school administration about his relationship with Jessica when they first investigated. Jessica learned that Stannick relinquished the ability to renew his expired teaching license and a text message from a distant high school friend, Stacey Love. There's been no impact. It's just sort of it is what it is. This hollow consequence doesn't feel like a resolution to Jessica. It feels like it's just been so long coming. It's hard to feel like a resolution when you can done this to so many other people and of course like I have regret of I should have told more people, right? Or kept going to somebody until somebody did something or maybe when I got that call from you know Mr. Heath, not have been wrapped up in college, but have said, you know, yeah, but I didn't. And so the resolution has to be as good as it can get. In search of answers, we had a conversation with TSPC about how these final stipulation orders are created. Eric Durak, who is the interim director of professional practices at the time we spoke, told us educators can challenge TSPC's drafted language and negotiate what's included in the facts of their final stipulation as well as the required disciplinary action. But even so, given all the allegations contained in this investigation into Stanic, how is the language at the end so far from what Jessica and the other students say they experienced? TSPC won't comment on the specifics of this case. Stanic did not answer a detailed list of questions regarding the allegations against him and the documentation we do have does not provide a definitive answer. In the end, Stanic can't apply for another teaching license in the state of Oregon. Like I said earlier, we've corresponded with Stanic and his former legal representation about this settlement. Stanic did not comment on or deny any of the allegations we set forth to him in a detailed list of questions. In emails to us, Stanic alleges there were several failures throughout the investigation and settlement process, namely having to do with Susan Nisbitt's private investigator license. Susan has held a private investigator's license since 2015. Online records show she's applied for renewal four to six weeks ahead of its expiration in 2017 and 2019. Records show that in 2021 she applied for renewal four weeks ahead of expiration. But unlike past years, the license was not renewed until nine months later. Nisbitt conducted her interviews in Stanic's investigation while her renewal was still in process. According to the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, or DPSST, it is illegal for an investigator to continue providing investigative services after a license expires, even if the renewal is still pending. We conduct Susan Nisbitt and requested comment over text message. We've had a response read by a voice actor. License in the agency made a mistake failed to issue the license in a timely fashion. I failed to notice. They issued it as soon as I noticed and asked them state agencies make mistakes. We reached out to DPSST and they only had one complaint against Susan Nisbitt. They determined that complaint to be unfounded. This wasn't Stanic's only complaint about the investigation. He claimed Nisbitt was improperly biased against him and questioned the qualifications of the TSPC investigator assigned to the case, the hearing bylaws, and the final settlement itself. Stanic also pushed back on the fact that the complaint that triggered the 2022 investigation dates back to 1998. A complaint his former attorney told a silver email he had been quote "exonerated from." But that's not how these investigations work. TSPC or the school is well within their right to reopen them if there's new evidence. Jessica was too afraid to come forward in 1998, but now she was ready to tell her story. "What happens now? What happens to them now? You know, people are having conversations, okay, I lost this teacher license, what, you know, what does actually mean?" Stanic's settlement is publicly available and is consistently the first or second search result in Google. But the language in this document is weak. It feels very easy to explain away in a job interview. Because he didn't face any legal consequences, none of this will show up in a background check. Nothing is stopping Stanic from coaching on a wreck leak or being around youth and other capacities. In fact, we heard from multiple students he now drives an ice cream truck. Stanic did not respond to a request for comment on that either. Each of these accounts of alleged educator sexual misconduct that's centennial show a pattern that lets it be a thrive. Poor documentation, fumbled reporting, teachers quietly resigning, adults and students failing to understand what grooming and boundary crossing looks like, not reporting when you see the early red flags of what could be educator sexual misconduct, and even worse, not believing, and instead punishing those who speak up, sweeping it under the rug and moving on. So you might ask yourself, "So what?" centennial Neil is one school in a small town, but it's not just Centennial. Educator sexual misconduct plays out at schools across the country every year, and administrators are failing to stop it. It's a human condition to want to believe that bad things won't happen in my community, and bad things won't happen in my school. This is Cheryl Shakechacht, a pioneer in the study of Educator Sexual misconduct. In fact, she coined the term, and she's also the one behind that landmark study we've mentioned. The one that found one in ten students will experience Educator Sexual misconduct by the time they graduate. It happens in all kinds of schools, in all kinds of places, in every state, in big cities, in small towns. The latest research says 17% of students have been the target of sexual misconduct. That's a huge number. This survey data is our best measurement to begin to understand how prevalent Educator sexual misconduct really is. Only a small number of cases are actually reported. We spoke with Billy Joe Grant, another leading researcher in this field. The Department of Education doesn't track data on how often teachers or school employees are accused or investigated for or terminated for these types of behaviors, which is kind of shocking, given that we track data for the number of fire drills we do, the number of school shootings, or the number of bullying incidents, but we don't track it for the number of sexual misconduct incidences. Billy Joe Grant spent the last ten years trying to collect all the available data she can to understand how many cases are actually reported. She compiles Google News alerts and found that nationally, about 500 educators are arrested each year for alleged Educator sexual misconduct. But that number is still in incomplete picture. There are just the tip of the iceberg, and many of these cases get handled within the school because the school doesn't want it in the paper. The parents don't want it in the paper. The victim doesn't usually want their information in the paper, and so there's a lot of incentive not to report it to law enforcement. Each of these incidents of alleged Educator sexual misconduct set a new standard for normal at Centennial. Each left a mark on the community, namely the student body and survivors like Stacey. When you're in an environment and you see that everyone's accepting it at the school, and that the students see it and the teachers see it, you normalize it, and you're like, maybe it's not that bad. We've talked to dozens of former students from Centennial during this project, each with their own story of how alleged Educator sexual misconduct shaped their high school experience. One of the students was there in 2005. The day Brett Fisher's classroom was searched, and she remembers it vividly. She asked us to keep her identity confidential. It was a huge deal, like there was an energy in the school, I mean it was buzzing, everyone was talking about it, everyone was like, did you hear, did you hear, and everyone was like, what happened, what's going on. I'm pretty sure they like locked the hall down so they could get his computer and everyone was kind of shocked, but also not shocked because we all knew he was with a former student. That former student she was talking about was Stacey. I think parents were notified of something, and so people who had parents that talked to them would come to school, and then it was like playing telephone kind of report back. We thought it wasn't illegal, and that's why there wasn't a conviction was the mentality we had. What did the faculty tell you or the principal about why he was no longer a teacher there? I don't think they actually told us anything, like I think what we were told was he decided to move to Texas. The only board that comes to me is Escape, it was just Escape. Even his attorney did not recommend that we left, because he was under investigation, but we did it anyways. That's next time, I'm not just a terrible story. I wanted to say a quick thank you to all the reporters at the Oregonian and other local news outlets, whose reporting on Educator's Actual Mist Conduct over the past 45 years shaped this investigation. If they hadn't been relentlessly reporting on these stories, so many of these details would be lost at time. And of course, thank you to all the former Centennial students who spoke to us on an off-the-record for this episode. Your personal experiences show the blast so uncreated by Educator's Actual Mist Conduct. 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 five star review wherever you're 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 add free episodes as a paid subscriber. To get in touch, send us an email at [email protected]. This podcast was created and produced by Katie Klein and me, your host, Sydney Gladio. Story Editing by Lacey Roberts. Show are by Casey Brinnell, original music and mixing by Sean Simmons, additional music from Blutaugh Sessions. Maria Paleologus is our strategic growth advisor. Thank you to our voice actors, Oman Thomas Said, Alison Crawlerd, Owen Cummings, Kristen Brooke, and Catherine Russell. Support provided by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and a very special thank you to Stacey 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 rain.org. That's R-A-I-N-N-D-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. [MUSIC]