When the Teacher is a Predator

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The school district I grew up was known for having some rather weird teachers, at least in each of the schools I attended. During my 8th grade year I was assigned to one of the oddest I ever had - a male English teacher whose name I will skip repeating. He was a skinny guy, pasty white with a receding hairline of Irish red hair. He immediately told us the story of how upon getting married he changed HIS last name to take his wife's maiden name and before long was sharing songs he'd written with us - focusing mostly on love and fears of his wife leaving him. At the time, we all thought he was 'the cool teacher'. Every school has at least one - the teacher who comes up with fun activities for their class and is more friendly than most towards the students. He fit this bill exactly. We spent a good month or more of class designing a webpage for the school. There was more focus on teaching us digital photography and HTML code than any English skills during that time. He also had us write and present a paper to the class on some deep secret that we'd never shared with anyone. I thought this was a bit odd at the time but didn't realize what his real goal was behind that assignment. What no one in the school knew then was that this teacher was a predator and a pedophile. He used that assignment on telling a secret we'd never spoken about as a way to pick out vulnerable female students. He found out who came from a broken family, who had already witnessed or experienced some type of abuse, and which girls were likely to be under the least amount of parental supervision. I've not been able to figure out if he was actively preying on anyone at the junior high school, but the following year he got a huge opportunity to begin. He accepted a position as the drama teacher at the high school and immediately recruited a handful of female students from my former 8th grade class to be in his classes and involved in putting on plays. For those of you who don't know, high school drama productions often mean students and teachers working after school late - sometimes even until 8 or 9 PM as the deadline to opening night comes close. All of this unsupervised time, plus the fact that he'd already hand selected girls in whom he saw some sort of vulnerability created a pedophile's dream. During the next four years he had emotional and sexual relationships with two students that I'm sure of - those girls being my cousin and her best friend. Both began when they were in their freshman year and lasted until their first or second year of college. His manipulation and control over these girls was terrifying. I'm sure there were another three or four he was having similar relationships with as well, but for sure between my cousin and her friend - each girl knew about the other's relationship with him. He had them convinced it was perfectly okay, and since he was 'dating' more than one of them at once - it was fine for them to have boyfriends their own age as well. During all of this, he was married and father to a young boy. Eventually his wife at least got an inkling that something wrong was going on. She divorced him and tipped off the high school administration that something was happening. Since none of the girls would say anything, he wasn't officially punished or reported to the authorities. He was quietly let go with a good reference - off to become another school district's problem. He went on to teach drama and theater at a high school in a neighboring county for about five years. There I'm sure he had multiple relationships with more girls, and eventually one came forward. After a female student graduated and left for college, he apparently told her their relationship was over since she'd moved out of town for college. Eventually, she broke down and told her family about their three year relationship. Her family contacted the school and the pedophile's twisted little world finally fell out from underneath him. He was forced to resign and his teaching license was revoked by the state. Not long after, he changed his name back to what it was before his now failed marriage and fled the state. The last time I was able to track him down, the creep was working in Florida as a sales representative and was possibly engaged to be married. I wonder if his wife to be knows about his past and basically the harem of underage girls kept. I would imagine she's gotten a much different story - something along the lines of how a vengeful student who wasn't happy with her grades made a false accusation and got him fired.