Speaker 1: This podcast discusses sexual assault. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2: He wanted us to think he was cool. He wanted
Speaker 2: to be one of the kids. He wanted to fit in.
Speaker 3: And it worked.
Speaker 2: We were like, Oh, this guy is letting us get
Speaker 2: away with pretending we're in this club and getting credit
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. Let's all do it. We're all president, let's go.
Speaker 2: And we all thought it was super funny and it
Speaker 2: was just kind of like.
Speaker 3: A running joke.
Speaker 2: So the idea of that carrying on for other reasons
Speaker 2: is terrifying.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, Episode four Damages.
Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty twenty one, Jennifer texted our
Speaker 1: show's production team there was news about Spencer's parole. Jennifer
Speaker 1: was a car on location at work.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, when I emailed Spence the other day,
Speaker 4: he said that he was having his parole hearing today.
Speaker 4: So I don't know. It's just really affected my whole
Speaker 4: nervous system. Knowing that I may find out today that
Speaker 4: he's getting out soon.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: And I'm not really prepared.
Speaker 6: For that yet.
Speaker 7: What went through your mind?
Speaker 4: I feel like he was just put in prison, and
Speaker 4: now he's already getting out. It's hard because with him
Speaker 4: in there, I felt safer. With him coming out, not
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Jack.
Speaker 4: He got some time off of his sentence for good behavior.
Speaker 4: He's been a teacher's aid and I'm sure he's been
Speaker 4: leading Bible studies, and so he's already gotten several months
Speaker 4: knocked off of his sentence and he was in front
Speaker 4: of the parole board today. I don't know how it works,
Speaker 4: but I mean, what if he gets out tomorrow?
Speaker 8: You know, do you know if anybody gets to write
Speaker 8: a letter to submit against the parole because I imagine
Speaker 8: the victim of the sexual assault must be made.
Speaker 4: Aware that he's up for a parole, right well, I
Speaker 4: mean I think the victim has to be told when
Speaker 4: he gets released.
Speaker 3: How were you.
Speaker 1: Approaching parole or was it just something that you get
Speaker 1: to kind of kept at arm's length.
Speaker 4: I kind of have been keeping it at arm's length.
Speaker 4: I just don't want to think about it. I just
Speaker 4: hate being this person on set. You know a couple
Speaker 4: of people are like, you're kind of quiet today, Jennifer,
Speaker 4: And you know, I don't want to be that mopey person.
Speaker 5: I just I can't help it right now.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: It's like when you get past heartache, you usually get
Speaker 9: to move on, and I just feel like I'm going
Speaker 9: to be starting.
Speaker 6: Back over again for a little bit with him out
Speaker 6: and knowing that he's out, getting.
Speaker 1: Past the heartache and starting over. It's something that Jennifer
Speaker 1: and the sexual assault victim had to do. Both described
Speaker 1: shame as a big hurdle, even when you know you
Speaker 1: aren't the guilty party. Jennifer would feel it when she
Speaker 1: was out in public.
Speaker 4: People are looking at me and kind of, oh, that's her.
Speaker 3: I've gotten a lot of those looks before.
Speaker 4: Oh your husband was the one, Oh you're her.
Speaker 1: The sexual assault victim had her anonymity that didn't protect
Speaker 1: her from shame. Just turning on the television after Spencer's
Speaker 1: arrat revealed how some community members viewed her.
Speaker 5: You don't always know what the truth is.
Speaker 7: I mean, someone can say something about somebody just to
Speaker 7: hurt their reputation, You don't know.
Speaker 10: I would always want to know the history of this person,
Speaker 10: make him complain as well.
Speaker 5: You know, what kind of history do they have? Could
Speaker 5: they provoke something like that?
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's the reason the victim was fearful to come
Speaker 1: forward sooner. After Spencer Heron was arrested, the victim never
Speaker 1: heard from any school official. Not one person reached out
Speaker 1: to ask how she was doing. Even with Spencer behind bars,
Speaker 1: The victim had an uphill battle. Eventually, Jennifer would learn
Speaker 1: how he abused his role as a teacher and mentor
Speaker 1: and became a predator in the halls of Kill High School.
Speaker 10: My name is Mike Rathie. I'm a lawyer in Atlanta
Speaker 10: and I help people.
Speaker 1: Mike's a civil attorney. The sexual assaul victim's parents reached
Speaker 1: out to him because they wanted to pursue a case
Speaker 1: against Kill High School.
Speaker 10: Most of our cases are people who are critically or
Speaker 10: seriously injured, and a small percentage of our cases areeople who,
Speaker 10: like this client, are victims of sexual assault in places
Speaker 10: like hospitals, apartment complexes, hotels, and schools.
Speaker 1: Mike and one of his colleagues went to meet the
Speaker 1: victim and her parents at their home.
Speaker 10: When we left my client's house, we started reading a
Speaker 10: text message log that had been given to the police,
Speaker 10: and there was a lot it was straight out of
Speaker 10: to catch a predator reading this chat history as a
Speaker 10: thirty something year old. I felt like I was Chris Hansen.
Speaker 10: I can see the manipulation. I can see the terms
Speaker 10: that are being used, the words that are being twisted,
Speaker 10: and so on. This is one of those cases that
Speaker 10: we left that house and said this is really fucked
Speaker 10: up and we have to do something. I'm actually my
Speaker 10: bloods boiling right now as I'm telling the story, because
Speaker 10: I remember we left the house so angry, and I'm
Speaker 10: still angry, maybe even angrier to this day.
Speaker 1: As the sexual saw victim from Kel High School sought
Speaker 1: therapy and support for what happened to her, she began
Speaker 1: to fully grasp how she had been manipulated abused. She
Speaker 1: was angry, angry that Kell High School had never addressed
Speaker 1: it in a meaningful way. Mike Graevey spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time piecing together how it happened. It took him
Speaker 1: down a path of investigating Kell High School's after school clubs.
Speaker 1: The clubs were key to Spenser getting the victim alone
Speaker 1: without raising suspicion.
Speaker 10: The way it's supposed to work is that students are
Speaker 10: supposed to get together and say we'd like to have
Speaker 10: a club. We're really interested in this. They would then
Speaker 10: go to a faculty member who probably has an interest
Speaker 10: in the club or at least helped spur that interest,
Speaker 10: and say, we really like you to be our leader
Speaker 10: for this club. Would you please do that. There has
Speaker 10: to be a certain number of signatures showing student involvement.
Speaker 10: Parents have to agree that if this club was created,
Speaker 10: then my.
Speaker 5: Child would be allowed to participate in the club.
Speaker 10: There's a budgeting component to it, and then there's administrator
Speaker 10: approval and the faculty advisor has to submit a plan
Speaker 10: of what is the goal the purpose of this plan,
Speaker 10: how will we execute it? Then the administration is supposed
Speaker 10: to formally approve or disapprove it.
Speaker 1: Spencer had a history of sponsoring clubs, but some of
Speaker 1: them were fake.
Speaker 2: My name is Julia and co Charin was my high
Speaker 2: school video productions teacher. I graduated from cal High School
Speaker 2: in twenty ten. I had him for my junior year
Speaker 2: and my senior year.
Speaker 3: A lot of my.
Speaker 2: Best friends had him freshman and sophomore too, so I
Speaker 2: always knew of him and I wanted to be in
Speaker 2: his class because it was a sought after program. It
Speaker 2: was a cool class to be a part of. Even
Speaker 2: when I didn't have him We would hang on his
Speaker 2: classroom and in the edit rooms.
Speaker 3: Everyone who had him loved him.
Speaker 2: He was the fun class, the fun teacher, the fund program.
Speaker 2: You got to be on the announcements, You got to
Speaker 2: work on these cool projects and like kind of roam
Speaker 2: the hallways and get some b roll while other kids are,
Speaker 2: you know, sitting in their classes learning about history or math.
Speaker 3: It didn't feel like a class.
Speaker 2: When I was a junior coach, heron started a fake
Speaker 2: club and we all put it on our It wasn't
Speaker 2: your resume, but we put you know, president of movie club.
Speaker 2: It was called movie club, you know, on the chair
Speaker 2: of movie club, which it was all a fake club.
Speaker 2: I think we took like a picture together for it,
Speaker 2: maybe in the yearbook.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have to like it, but it wasn't really we
Speaker 3: never met. It was like it was really fake, Like
Speaker 3: it was pretend.
Speaker 1: Why would a teacher make up a school club because
Speaker 1: he wanted us to think he was cool.
Speaker 3: He wanted to be one of the kids. He wanted
Speaker 3: to fit in.
Speaker 7: And it worked.
Speaker 2: We were like, oh, this guy is letting us get
Speaker 2: away with pretending we're in this club and getting credit
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, let's all do it.
Speaker 2: We're all president, let's go, and we all thought it
Speaker 2: was super.
Speaker 3: Funny and it was just kind of like a running joke.
Speaker 2: So the idea of that carrying on for other reasons
Speaker 2: is terrifying.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, Spencer's sponsor a drone club. It began
Speaker 1: as a real club with real members and real meetings.
Speaker 1: Students even had fundraisers, but they would sell T shirts
Speaker 1: and videos so they could purchase a real drone. The
Speaker 1: problem was the club never went through official channels. I
Speaker 1: was never authorized.
Speaker 10: If you have a club that doesn't go through this process,
Speaker 10: then you don't have that oversight and you don't have
Speaker 10: any of that guidance. You don't have the faculty member
Speaker 10: answering or reporting to their administration. Instead, you have the
Speaker 10: faculty member being able to do whatever it is that
Speaker 10: he wants whenever he wants to, and that's what happened here.
Speaker 1: Eventually, the drone club died out and stopped having meetings,
Speaker 1: but Spencer continued to see one member of the club.
Speaker 10: It continued to be a time and a place in
Speaker 10: a school where a teacher had full access to some
Speaker 10: place to take a student without the student having to
Speaker 10: leave school grounds because typically when you leave school grounds,
Speaker 10: you got to tell your parents where you're going. So
Speaker 10: this teacher has a perfect opportunity to lure a student
Speaker 10: into a place where they won't be caught and where
Speaker 10: they can do whatever he wants to do. It wasn't
Speaker 10: what she wanted to do, it was what he wanted to.
Speaker 1: Do, and what he wanted to do was take advantage
Speaker 1: of Mike's client.
Speaker 10: If you remember when you were a kid, every once
Speaker 10: in a while, an administrat would come in your classroom
Speaker 10: and watch your teacher. That's the administration taking active role
Speaker 10: to make sure that the teachers are doing their jobs,
Speaker 10: that they're effectively conveying their message to students, that they're
Speaker 10: disciplining students properly, that everything that's going on in the
Speaker 10: classroom is the way it should. If you have a
Speaker 10: club that doesn't go through this process, then you don't
Speaker 10: have that oversight and you don't have any of that guidance.
Speaker 10: You don't have the faculty member answering or reporting to
Speaker 10: their administration.
Speaker 1: Hell High School's administrators deny all knowledge of the drone club.
Speaker 1: There was nothing to oversee because it didn't officially exist
Speaker 1: as a school club.
Speaker 10: He's flying a drone over the school at football games
Speaker 10: to get drone shots for the drone club, which isn't
Speaker 10: supposed to exist. So the skeptic in me says, the
Speaker 10: school did know there was a club, they just didn't
Speaker 10: give a crap. They knew there was a club, they
Speaker 10: actively participated in the club, they benefited from the club,
Speaker 10: they allowed the club, but they just didn't feel or
Speaker 10: didn't care enough to go through the process of properly
Speaker 10: authenticating it and then properly monitoring.
Speaker 5: It and making sure that students weren't in danger.
Speaker 1: Was it because Spencer Heron was a department head or
Speaker 1: trusted faculty member. No one knows. Mike points out that
Speaker 1: there's an administrator whose job it is to supervise after
Speaker 1: school clubs, the.
Speaker 5: Vice principal, Student Stoddard.
Speaker 10: It's her job to authenticate clubs and to monitor them.
Speaker 10: And when she's sitting in her office listening to the
Speaker 10: PA system and it says there's a drone club meeting today,
Speaker 10: or the drone club meeting is canceled, or if you'd
Speaker 10: like to join the drone club, isn't she saying, what
Speaker 10: the fuck is this drone club.
Speaker 5: What is going on? We don't have a drone club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike gets heated.
Speaker 10: Think about all those students that had text message conversations
Speaker 10: through the years with him. Think about all the parents
Speaker 10: who probably knew, Oh, Spencer Heron's so nice. He texts
Speaker 10: my daughter. He's talking to my daughter when they go
Speaker 10: to college. You think those text messages stayed completely appropriate.
Speaker 1: When Mike mentioned this to me, I felt a pit
Speaker 1: in my stomach. Felt too similar to my conversation with Julia.
Speaker 2: Him and I used to play Words with Friends together,
Speaker 2: which seemed super innocent.
Speaker 3: But you would message on the sidebar things like you
Speaker 3: should come check out my new house.
Speaker 2: There wasn't anything that I evertook as him hitting on
Speaker 2: me until further down the road when the allegations came out.
Speaker 2: As an eighteen year old somebody in their forties saying,
Speaker 2: come check out my new house. You're like, no, lame,
Speaker 2: but I don't care about your house like I want
Speaker 2: to go out. He was kind of just old and
Speaker 2: I had no interest in that.
Speaker 3: But looking back, if I had.
Speaker 2: Said, sure, I would love to see your house, there's
Speaker 2: no doubt in my mind that there was potentially an
Speaker 2: ulterior motive. There ry else would he want somebody eighteen
Speaker 2: years old to come check out his new house.
Speaker 1: Her whole friend group from his class, well, all of
Speaker 1: them were contacted by Spencer after they graduated.
Speaker 3: All of those girls, every single one of them.
Speaker 2: He would message them, you know, let's get coffee, let's
Speaker 2: get drinks.
Speaker 1: Her one friend, Nicole, had a boyfriend and he didn't
Speaker 1: like it at all.
Speaker 2: Nicole's boyfriend actually told her to stop texting him because
Speaker 2: he was like, this is your high school teacher. Why
Speaker 2: is he asking you to go get drinks? You're eighteen.
Speaker 2: We were all like, oh, it's just Coach Aaron.
Speaker 1: All that being said, Julia was completely blindsided. The day
Speaker 1: he was arrested, I was on.
Speaker 2: The treadmill at the gym and his mugshot popped up
Speaker 2: on the TV in front of me, and I almost
Speaker 2: fell off of the treadmill, stopped breathing.
Speaker 3: I had to stop the treadmill, and I was just
Speaker 3: like in shock. It was terrible.
Speaker 2: And then my phone was like ding ding ding ding ding.
Speaker 2: You know, everyone from the class of twenty ten, all
Speaker 2: these group messages, Oh my god, did you see this
Speaker 2: about Coach Aron?
Speaker 3: And everyone was in just such disbelief, you know, he
Speaker 3: would send these texts.
Speaker 2: It just two people potentially trying to meet at None
Speaker 2: of my friends ever acted on it, so no one
Speaker 2: really knew. So we knew it got a little bit weird,
Speaker 2: but we weren't sure what to believe. Maybe some girl
Speaker 2: had just potentially taken it too far, you know, no one
Speaker 2: wanted to believe that he really did that.
Speaker 10: I'm really pessimistic about what would have happened if my
Speaker 10: client reported this without the proof that she had, would people.
Speaker 5: Have believed her?
Speaker 10: Would they have said, she's just a slut, She's just
Speaker 10: somebody that went out and sought out her teacher and
Speaker 10: slept with him, which is what people said anyway on
Speaker 10: Facebook boards and messaging.
Speaker 5: I mean, she had to deal with.
Speaker 1: That victim blaming. There was plenty of it. The defendants
Speaker 1: the administrators in this case, argue that the victim's claims
Speaker 1: were barred by the doctrine of comparative negligence. It's a
Speaker 1: legal term that means assigned blame to two or more
Speaker 1: parties based on the degree of negligence each contributed to
Speaker 1: the incident. According to that logic, the student shared in
Speaker 1: the blame when the teacher sexually assaulted her.
Speaker 10: When you have a teacher that treats you like an adult,
Speaker 10: makes you feel special, breaks a rule for you, and
Speaker 10: expects you to keep that in confidence, you're trusting each
Speaker 10: other with secrets. He has to take a risk, and
Speaker 10: to me, that was a small risk that he was
Speaker 10: taking by saying, I'll do something bad. If you're willing
Speaker 10: to let me do something bad, that's step one. Now
Speaker 10: I'm going to do something worse. Are you still okay
Speaker 10: with that? Now I'm going to do something really bad?
Speaker 10: Are you okay with that? At that point, it's a
Speaker 10: recipe for an inappropriate relationship, especially when you add an
Speaker 10: authority figure with practice, it's an unfair fight. And if
Speaker 10: an authority figure, especially a teacher, keeps doing bad things,
Speaker 10: why are they bad? Maybe the student doesn't think they're
Speaker 10: bad because now they've been normalized, because now that's just
Speaker 10: what teachers and students do.
Speaker 1: After Spencer was charged criminally, I left a lot of
Speaker 1: students and parents of kel High School wondering she was.
Speaker 2: A developmental stage in her life where you are still
Speaker 2: growing and learning, and she was supposed to be able
Speaker 2: to trust him, and it's unfair for any of this
Speaker 2: to fall back on her.
Speaker 3: She was only a girl.
Speaker 2: She was manipulated, and he took advantage of a young
Speaker 2: girl who was vulnerable and believed in somebody that she
Speaker 2: was supposed to believe in. My parents were so thankful that,
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't me, but they almost felt a
Speaker 2: little scared for themselves. It's like, you know, we trusted
Speaker 2: this man around our daughter. You know, that's scary.
Speaker 1: And one is also scary is how little information was
Speaker 1: given to the community itself.
Speaker 10: As far as I know, there hasn't been any investigative
Speaker 10: report accessible to the public. There hasn't been any disclosures made,
Speaker 10: there hasn't been anything.
Speaker 5: It's almost like this just didn't happen.
Speaker 10: And that's really really scary, because this certainly isn't the
Speaker 10: only time.
Speaker 1: I was curious about why the victims sued three school
Speaker 1: administrators instead of the school itself.
Speaker 10: So in Georgia, you can't sue the school. A weird
Speaker 10: rule we have. You can't sue the school board. I
Speaker 10: have to sue on behalf of my client administrator. So
Speaker 10: I have to sue people. I have to sue the
Speaker 10: supervisors or the authority in those positions. And I have
Speaker 10: to prove that those individual people did things wrong. We
Speaker 10: don't want to sue them, We want to sue the
Speaker 10: entity because it's the entity that's protecting them. On the
Speaker 10: legal side, this isn't a dispute about what happened in
Speaker 10: any sense. Everyone knows what happened, when it happened, and
Speaker 10: why it happened. The issue is does the law allow
Speaker 10: my client to recover to get justice in the civil
Speaker 10: justice system, And so far the.
Speaker 5: Answer has been no.
Speaker 1: Basically, the lost in court, but they are appealing.
Speaker 10: Lawyers say this all the time about their cases. I'm
Speaker 10: proud to have represented so and so when lose draw
Speaker 10: I don't care. I'm just glad that she knows that
Speaker 10: someone will stick up for her, because that's part of
Speaker 10: the problem here.
Speaker 5: In Georgia. To hold a.
Speaker 10: Public servant, which includes teachers, responsible for something in their
Speaker 10: job capacity, you have to show that there was a rule,
Speaker 10: a capital R rule, and a capital R rule is
Speaker 10: a rule that requires no discretion, thought or judgment. The
Speaker 10: public servant must follow it, and if they don't follow
Speaker 10: the rule, then they can be held accountable. And we
Speaker 10: were able to show that. We were able to show
Speaker 10: that there was a rule in terms of how these
Speaker 10: clubs must be authorized and how they must be monitored.
Speaker 10: We're able to show that that rule existed and that
Speaker 10: that rule was violated.
Speaker 5: Here's the problem.
Speaker 10: What the judge said was, even though the rule was violated,
Speaker 10: it's not a negligent violation of the rule. I am
Speaker 10: still trying to figure out exactly what that means. The
Speaker 10: way I interpret that is that the rule was violated,
Speaker 10: but it's not a big deal. So the administrators poorly performed,
Speaker 10: they didn't do what they were supposed to do, but
Speaker 10: it doesn't rise to a breach of their duties. I
Speaker 10: interpret that to mean they're the worst employees in the school,
Speaker 10: but they.
Speaker 5: Still aren't going to get fired.
Speaker 10: I guess you know you have that really poor performer
Speaker 10: in your office who barely gets by.
Speaker 1: The court seem to agree with the school district's argument
Speaker 1: that because some of the sexual conduct occurred outside the school,
Speaker 1: they couldn't be held accountable.
Speaker 10: We acknowledge the fact that there were physical acts done
Speaker 10: outside of school grounds, but every single instance where there
Speaker 10: was physical sexual conduct at school I believe is a
Speaker 10: separate instance of harm.
Speaker 1: One thing I couldn't wrap my head around was how
Speaker 1: to calculate the damage.
Speaker 10: The law in Georgia is that it's up to the
Speaker 10: impartial conscience of the jury. Basically, twelve people are going
Speaker 10: to sit around and.
Speaker 5: Figure it out.
Speaker 10: What do I think that the pain and suffering, the
Speaker 10: physical violation, the embarrassment for my client who still lives
Speaker 10: in the community. You know, those damages don't just stop.
Speaker 10: That's got to be devastating. Her feelings weren't manipulated, and
Speaker 10: her sense of reality and worth has drastically, drastically deteriorated.
Speaker 10: And I don't know how anyone could possibly blame her.
Speaker 10: And I'll ask a jury to think about the ways
Speaker 10: that relationship affects a person and that self worth affects
Speaker 10: someone and put a value on that.
Speaker 1: But Mike will only be able to ask the jury
Speaker 1: if the court grants their appeal. And, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: in an interesting twist, the defendants also appealed on the
Speaker 1: one point Mike's client prevailed.
Speaker 10: They are fighting that violating a rule written in their own.
Speaker 5: Policy and procedures and manuals. They're saying, we don't always
Speaker 5: have to follow those rules.
Speaker 10: Imagine if you're a parent in cop County and you
Speaker 10: have the administration saying we have these rules, but we're
Speaker 10: going to go to the Supreme Court of Georgia and
Speaker 10: say we don't really have to follow them.
Speaker 1: It can't be easy for parents. Just a few weeks before,
Speaker 1: we spoke with Mike Gravy, a teacher at another Cobb
Speaker 1: County high school, Osborne High School, was arrested for having
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse with a student in his office. That teacher
Speaker 1: is in jail. I wanted us to get together because
Speaker 1: I was just really curious, what were your thoughts after
Speaker 1: hearing all of that.
Speaker 4: My biggest thing is if we don't educate people, students, teachers, administrators,
Speaker 4: if we don't educate them on what signs to look for,
Speaker 4: then it's going to keep happening over and over and over.
Speaker 4: There is so much trust put into teachers. Instead of
Speaker 4: sweeping it under the rug and acting like it didn't
Speaker 4: happen and just moving on, we need to somehow bring
Speaker 4: in that education into the schools and make people more
Speaker 4: aware of what happens and how it happens.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people have preconceived notions
Speaker 1: about relationships between high school students and their teachers, and
Speaker 1: they make assumptions. People really don't think about what it's
Speaker 1: actually like. Your ex husband, Spencer, he's obviously well versed
Speaker 1: in sex and relationships, and this girl, she had no
Speaker 1: idea what she was doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think back to when I was in high school.
Speaker 4: You're at school, you're with someone that everybody is looking
Speaker 4: up to and admiring, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: that person starts making you feel really good.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, she is in the halls of high school wanting
Speaker 1: to scream at the top of her alongs what she's experiencing.
Speaker 7: She is so.
Speaker 1: Alone in this because she can tell nobody.
Speaker 4: It's so sad that this happens.
Speaker 1: We all did research leading up to this interview, and
Speaker 1: there was one study published by the Department of Education
Speaker 1: that I think all of us were impacted by and
Speaker 1: I kind of want to read it here. It says
Speaker 1: that ten percent of school students will be victims of
Speaker 1: some form of teacher sexual misconduct that can range from
Speaker 1: sexual assault to inappropriate comments, exposure to pornography. Ten percent.
Speaker 1: J that's millions of kids. It's insane.
Speaker 4: I don't think you can just hold one person responsible.
Speaker 4: I think it's got to be a big effort.
Speaker 1: What did you think of the lawyer, Mike Rafie.
Speaker 4: I understand that when it comes to lawsuits and all
Speaker 4: of that, it's very tough. I appreciate what he's doing
Speaker 4: because what happened here is so much bigger than people realize.
Speaker 1: I was pretty taken it back that one of the
Speaker 1: school administrator's offenses was comparative negligence, meaning that this student
Speaker 1: was partially responsible.
Speaker 4: For the administration. To use that term. Think about the
Speaker 4: victim hearing that and how that feels that she's supposed
Speaker 4: to take some of that responsibility on. That's not fair
Speaker 4: and I think that sends an awful message out to
Speaker 4: the community, to the victim, to everybody else. How dare
Speaker 4: they try to victim blame and victim blame a child.
Speaker 1: Earlier in this episode of Betrayal, we heard about the
Speaker 1: possibility of Spencer being released on parole. Jennifer wrote to
Speaker 1: Spencer and asked him to let her know what happened
Speaker 1: at the parole hearing. A few weeks later, he emailed, I.
Speaker 11: Have some disappointing news that I wanted to share with you.
Speaker 11: I recently received a letter from the parole board stating
Speaker 11: that my tentative parole month date has been rescinded. The
Speaker 11: decision was made quote due to the welfare of society.
Speaker 11: This was very disturbing and upsetting.
Speaker 5: To say the least.
Speaker 11: The kids are doing okay with the news. Thank god
Speaker 11: they are so strong. The parole Board does not have
Speaker 11: to tell anyone anything, and they certainly don't have to
Speaker 11: tell anyone why an inmate was denied.
Speaker 5: Or delayed parole.
Speaker 1: In the letter, he expressed frustration he had served sixty
Speaker 1: five percent of his time and that's what his lawyer,
Speaker 1: the judge and prosecutor agreed on, but he wasn't getting
Speaker 1: out and know the reason. Maybe the truth was too
Speaker 1: hard for him to consider. Turns out, the sexual assaul
Speaker 1: victim wrote a letter to the prole board and hand
Speaker 1: delivered it for self. She urged the board not to
Speaker 1: release Spencer, saying that it wouldn't be good for the
Speaker 1: welfare of society. On the next episode of Betrayal, a
Speaker 1: woman explains to Jennifer how one text from Spencer heron
Speaker 1: led to a torrid multi year affair.
Speaker 7: I don't even remember what the initial start of the
Speaker 7: conversation was, but then a comment was made about well
Speaker 7: you're beautiful something to that extent, and that's kind of
Speaker 7: where it started. Here's an attractive guy telling me I'm
Speaker 7: gritty or feeling like, oh my god, what's happening. But
Speaker 7: then at the same time, I didn't do anything to stop.
Speaker 1: It, and the shocking behavior that she shares with Jennifer.
Speaker 7: There was a very dominating side to him. I remember
Speaker 7: a couple of times where you know, he would kind
Speaker 7: of put his hands around my throat and push down.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
Speaker 1: email us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's
Speaker 1: Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. Betrayal is a production
Speaker 1: of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in
Speaker 1: partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show was executive produced by
Speaker 1: Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me
Speaker 1: Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kerry Hartman, also produced
Speaker 1: by Ben Fetterman. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Speaker 1: Jessica Crinchick. Special thanks to voice actor Todd Gans. Sound
Speaker 1: editing and mixing done by Mount Taveccio. Betrayal's theme was
Speaker 1: composed by Oliver Baines Music library provided by my Music.
Speaker 1: And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.