Original subtitles

[soft dramatic music]

- I have something to get over that wasn't totally...

[sniffles]

My fault.

Remembering that I was just this person for years,

that was just constantly focusing all of their energy

on this,

you know, one person,

and trying to give all of their love

and all of their support to this one person.

I don't really know what the difference is

between having that with a guy who...

[sniffling]

Was your teacher in high school

and who is much older than you,

and having that with, you know, boyfriends your own age,

because I didn't really have that.

♪ ♪

For so many years, I did not even have

the language to speak about this.

I didn't have the words.

I started to recognize that I wasn't responsible for this,

that I was a child.

I didn't think that being a 16-year-old person

was a child.

I didn't have any other way to look at it,

because I didn't have anybody to reframe this for me.

I've had to be okay with it.

And then I've had to make excuses for it.

Nobody wants to look at the truth,

because the truth is that this is so prevalent

in half of the population.

Like, it affects everything, and it's a big deal.

♪ ♪

If I could tell that girl, like, what's about to happen--

it's not just that your entire life is going to change.

There's a lot of things that are gonna be taken away

from you that you want,

or you're gonna be diverted

from becoming the person that you want to become,

because you are going to be obsessed with this person.

Like, I fell in love with my teacher when I was 16.

And then I went to college, and I was still with this guy.

These were my formative years, and they're gone.

I'll never get them back.

♪ ♪

I'm in Los Angeles now.

My desire to get out of Little Elm,

it's the reason that I had the strength

to pull myself out of that relationship.

But it's also the thing that he hooked onto

and said, "You can be so much more."

I was groomed, and I was abused.

♪ ♪

For years, I had convinced myself

that I was making this choice to be with him,

that I was the one that needed to accept the consequences.

But now, there's no doubt in my mind

that he was in control of this.

And it took a few years, took a couple of years,

but I started really seeing

that this thing might not have been okay.

♪ ♪

When I decided that I wanted to make this documentary,

I didn't know what form it was gonna take.

I just knew that I wanted to ask questions

about how I found myself in this position

where I was out of control of my own life.

It's hard to tell a story by yourself.

- Back in 2017, Cheryl came to me

and shared this story with me.

She told me that she needed a partner.

She wanted to explore what had happened to her,

and she needed an objective counterpart.

So along this journey,

I have been the person to ask the questions

that she's maybe not asking herself.

As soon as we started digging into Cheryl's story,

we started to wonder how far this spread.

We had a friend post this thing on her Instagram for us.

"Has anybody had this experience

of being abused by their teacher?"

For weeks, we just got emails.

"One of my teachers at my school asked me

to come into his classroom."

- Who was that? - She doesn't give her name.

- We have another one here.

"It took just a couple days for him to convince me

"to send naked pictures.

A month later, I found myself in his bed more than once."

- "Feels good to say something to whoever you are."

- Nobody feels like anybody will listen to them,

and they just want to say it.

The only good thing that they can feel from this

is that they've just let it out of them.

♪ ♪

I wanna find some answers for myself,

and I didn't hear from him again

until I reached out to him in 2017.

God, I mean, are we cray just to, like, send this?

Do I need to send it from another email?

No, it's fine just coming from my email, right?

- Yeah. I mean, you're gonna be--

- Can he, like, find me?

"Hi. I know we haven't talked in a long time

"and this email may be strange to receive.

"It's strange to write.

"The reason I'm contacting you is to let you know

"that I am currently working on a documentary

"and will be sharing some of the details

"of our relationship,

"specifically the high school years.

"If you are open to it, I am interested

"in starting a conversation with you about what happened

so that your perspective is given value and weight."

Oh, I did it. Ugh.

- "Dear Cheryl,

"people have good relationships that go bad.

"Do you really think that understanding how

"inexperienced I was with relationships would somehow

make you feel better about the lies that I told?"

- Now, he's trying to say he was the inexperienced one.

I was 16.

"What I wanna know, and I'm sure you were aware of this,

"is why you made the decision to initiate

"an intimate relationship with me back in 1999

while you were still married and teaching at Little Elm."

- "I haven't felt like I've had control or power

"in our relationship, maybe ever.

"I'm just a pathetic guy that got involved with you,

because I was naive."

- He is so good at manipulating the situation.

I didn't expect it to be that manipulative.

[birds chirping]

There was so much about

his kind of tactic that was,

"This is good to be. This is not good to be."

And the good kind of girl to be

was the girl that he approved of,

that he saw that was cool.

Over time, it was exhausting.

Like, I had no idea where I was underneath all of that.

Later in my life, like, everything came into question,

my whole personality.

I had to think about little things like,

"Do I listen to this music because he told me to?

Do I write this way because he wrote this way?"

The important thing here is to start the bigger conversation

of how this happens, why this happens,

what culturally is happening in order to make it easy for

these men to take advantage of these young women.

It's so much about shame,

and they kind of start that shame cycle with you

as a teenager.

We live in a culture that romanticizes

this, like, hypersexualization of teenage girls.

Film. Television.

Music.

- If you look through a magazine or, you know,

movie awards, photos, or anything from celebrities,

it was a tough time to be a teenager.

- When I was in middle school,

it was about Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple,

and, like, girl power.

When I got into this high school thing

and suddenly it was, like,

Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera.

- We sort of went straight then into the pop princess stuff.

In the 2000s, clothing for women wasn't just so much

about the clothing, but it was about the body.

Because there's just so much skin exposed.

There was definitely a male gaze

attached in how we perceived them.

- [laughs] That's hot.

- There is an amount of this romanticization

when it comes to relationships between

older men and girls.

- The movies that I remember seeing at that time

told me everything I needed to know about

how someone would be treated.

- Culturally, you know, there is that glamorization

of the student-teacher relationship.

We are kind of glamorizing or making people think like,

this is an honor to have a teacher

want to be in a relationship with you when you're a student.

- I mean, like, "Election," right?

That's, like, a farce making a joke

out of a teacher-student relationship.

- As a culture, I think we've kind of

just mentally adopted that.

I think that that is a very damaging culture

that we unfortunately have used

for media and entertainment

that has also led to some of the victim blaming

and approaches to how to handle these real-life cases.

- Our culture has created a climate

where girls do not want to speak up.

They see that nobody's gonna believe them,

or if they do believe them, they're gonna be blamed.

- We are still fighting for the most basic answers

and accountability over six years later.

- Something really big would have to change

in order for us to face what's happening

and actually protect victims.

- When I decided that I wanted to make this documentary,

I felt blocked. I felt frustrated.

I needed to know if the people around me

knew what was happening, and if they did,

why they didn't do anything to stop it.

There's this sense of scandal that kind of surrounded me.

And I didn't really process it or deal with it

after I left Texas.

And in a way, that's why

I am going back to Little Elm,

because I'm attempting to gain perspective

on a moment in time that I was so myopic.

And I was so controlled by the version of events

that was just from one singular point of view,

which was his point of view.

In going back and talking to the people

that I was close to,

I can get a sense of what they saw and understand

this story in a more holistic way.

- Don't you think there's gotta be a little bit of relief

about being able to have a open conversation about this?

- I'm just worried about digging back into the past

and talking about something that's pretty painful

and, like, inspiring feelings of guilt.

- The hope is that this maybe prevents a couple of people

from having to go through the experience

that you went through.

- I know. - Yeah.

Mm.

I got you, girl.

♪ ♪

- Okay. Yep.

- Little Elm, Texas.

Just a cool 19 hours and 40 minutes.

♪ ♪

- I'm kind of making this big deal

out of something that...

maybe I could just handle internally or something.

I don't know.

I mean, even when I talk about it,

I'm thinking about the way my mouth is kind of tight

and the way my voice is, and...

I just want this...

Self-consciousness to go away.

I just want to not have to feel like I'm,

you know, constantly, like, looking over my shoulder

or trying to guess what people are thinking about me.

Or I just wanna confront this,

and I just want other people

to see it, I guess.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

- Ooh. Six miles to Little Elm, baby.

- Only 6.66 miles.

- [laughing] 6.66 miles?

I feel really nervous.

I mean, I haven't seen my friends

since 2002.

In the abstract,

it doesn't even seem like that big of a deal.

And I know because I've convinced myself

my entire life that it's not that big of a deal.

All of the abuse did was just push me further and further

and further into a place that I felt that I had

to contain myself in order for other people to accept me.

♪ ♪

- I grew up in a small town in Texas called Little Elm.

Little Elm in the '90s was this small strip of a town.

If you blinked, you missed it.

- I think we had all of 60 people in our class.

- We liked to play and say that

there was more livestock than there were people.

It's the epitome of Texas.

It's God, football, and family.

- I have a lot of fond memories there,

but the men ruled the world.

- Growing up in Texas, men are the gatekeepers

of your reputation, in a way.

My value was given to me

by the men who paid attention to me.

The way that men talked to me as a young girl

was as if everybody was my daddy.

Every man around me got to tell me how to behave.

My whole life,

I've always felt the pressure to be a good girl.

I started cheerleading.

This was kind of, like, a way that I could be entertaining,

but it didn't really reflect too much of my personality.

- Growing up, she was very active in everything.

Whatever she did, she put everything into it.

That's just the way it was.

- As a kid, I spent a lot of time kind of by myself.

I was imaginative, constantly thinking, and dreaming.

In English class, we were doing "The Diaries of Anne Frank."

So I asked if I could direct production of Anne Frank.

And we did this play.

And, like, a lot of people from the town came out.

I remember taking my mom into the hallway and saying,

"I think I wanna be an actress."

My mom was just, like, always encouraging me.

Like, I thought I was Meryl Streep as a child.

♪ ♪

- Honeys, I'm home. - [laughs]

- Yay.

- Oh, I got it.

Dad, look at the way Ed's holding me.

- Yeah. - [laughs]

Ari, come look at this. Look at this photo.

[gentle music]

Most of my classmates didn't wanna talk,

but I still needed to know

who else might have known what was happening.

Why was nothing done to protect me?

Hey, I'm working on a piece that has to do

with some shit that went down in high school.

Maybe Cath's told you about it.

I've spent some time now talking to her,

but I would love to pick your brain about that time

and see if you remember anything

or maybe just chat with me.

Hey, Nat, I just talked to your sister yesterday.

Still filming this documentary. I don't know.

Maybe it's not your thing, but I'm trying to tell

the theater department story how we were all close, etc.

Hey there. Okay.

This is a weird thing to DM about, but here it goes.

I'm making a documentary about student-teacher relationships.

I don't know for certain that you had any run-ins

with some questionable figures

with bad intentions at our high school.

But reaching out to see if you know anything

or would be willing to chat with me about it.

Feel free to call or text or tell me to [...] off.

- That sounds good. - Yeah, I think so.

- Great.

♪ ♪

- Okay. Hold on.

All right. How is that?

So I didn't know that we were gonna have

a high school reunion, but I got this invitation.

And this is the time where it's like it's crunch time.

Like, I wanna hear from some of these people.

How's it going there?

- Good. - Yeah?

Are you gonna--so are you gonna go to the reunion?

- Yeah, I will go.

I said, I would. I will go. Can't back out now.

I'm not gonna leave you down there by yourself.

- I'm still on the fence just because

I'm, you know.

Katie was like my anchor in a way.

Katie made me feel like a human being.

I was just watching our senior slideshow,

and I was like--you know,

I kind of remembered it sort of fondly.

But then I thought there's actually, like,

a lot of stuff that was happening in between here

that I was pretty miserable about

and was really painful for me.

- The overall goal of the project

is to shine a light on something that has happened,

not just in Little Elm or your experience,

but something that's happened to, you know,

girls and people everywhere in small rural towns

and pass the trash and things like that.

- If people were open to it,

I just feel like there would be--

there's probably gonna be more girls at our school

that had kind of more similar experiences.

I guess it could kind of go two ways.

I'm worried that everybody's gonna start shutting down.

- You know, once they see that you are just talking

to everybody and you want to remember experiences...

- Yeah.

- I think they'll warm up to it.

[applause]

- When I went into high school,

I wanted somebody to understand

that I was smarter and more interesting

than this small town, cheerleader girl.

I wanted to be seen as somebody

who was more complicated.

My sophomore year, we got a new theater teacher.

She was super cool,

and she immediately liked me.

- She was the fun, free-loving hippie teacher,

always smiling and always trying to teach us

to think outside of the box.

Also, she was in love.

- The theater teacher, she had a husband

who would come to the school,

and he would help direct the plays.

And when he started teaching at Little Elm,

he was, like, the most popular teacher.

Everybody loved him.

- We would write sketches together.

And we actually ended up performing

a sketch comedy thing together.

We started a thespian club.

We would go hang out at their house.

Definitely had, like, a bohemian vibe.

Musical instruments were all over the place.

- They brought in this tapestry of color.

I was so lost.

What I saw was a smiling, goofy,

sweetheart, intelligent man.

- He would share, like, his passions and things with you.

Like, he would come in with his bass guitar

and play that thing and show us how he played it.

And he was always really welcoming too, right?

He would be like, "Come on in.

Let's just hang out in here all together."

And it'd be like five or six of us.

Cheryl was always there.

- His classroom was right next door

to my other favorite teacher's classroom, Tom Warrick.

So that corner of the school started to become the corner

that I spent a lot of time in.

Sometimes he would show up a little bit

before play rehearsal,

and he and I would start breaking down poetry.

And we started to become kind of--we had a friendship.

I'd never felt, like, friendly with an adult that way.

I considered myself, like, mature,

but I didn't ever connect with an adult like that.

And he and the theater teacher were two adults

that I could suddenly connect to.

I would just make comments about the poetry or the books,

and he would kind of clock them

as being very smart or astute.

I never had anybody care

that I was intelligent before.

He was really great at finding

the special thing about a person

and constantly reminding them

that that made them special.

When he turned his light on me,

I felt like I was suddenly--

not just seen,

but I was validated by this person

who everybody believed was great.

I just didn't know that it was gonna be a trap.

♪ ♪

- Teenagers are constantly,

like, thinking that the world is against them.

It's part of your healthy rebellion

of breaking out of this mundane life

and, like, trying to figure out your own thing.

That was so easy to tap into because I was already there.

I was already an imaginative,

you know, wanderlusty kind of person.

I would get excited about going into his class after school,

but I knew nothing would ever happen,

and that it wasn't a possibility.

And so in a way, it kind of felt like safe.

In high school,

I had finished the high school English classes,

and I'd moved on to doing college courses

for my junior and senior year.

So he would kind of help me with my English papers.

I spent a lot of time in his classroom

going through poetry.

And we started getting really close.

Like, there would be these flirtatious moments

where he would accidentally touch my hand.

And then it was becoming Christmas time.

And they were gonna go see some of his family,

and so he was gonna be gone for a month.

And so I wasn't gonna get to see him.

And so he said, "Why don't we just email?"

And I didn't have an email.

So he kind of helped me figure out how to set one up,

and we started emailing back and forth.

both: Dearest, Pony.

Okay. First things first.

- You have to change your account information

from Cheryl Nichols to something else.

Never send email with your real name on it.

It's just a general rule of computer geeks everywhere.

You understand.

Notice how my mail comes from something Quilty or whatever.

You can do that too.

- So I didn't have one,

and so he helped me figure out how to set it up.

And I came up with my own email name,

which was a blue pony.

That was his nickname for me, Pony.

And Quilty is the last name of Clare Quilty,

who was the--

The monster pedophile and antagonist in "Lolita."

All of these things that were happening

were happening in total secret.

He would start implanting things in my head

that would tell me

who I should be friends with and who I shouldn't.

He was positioning himself as somebody who I could trust

and who I should listen to,

because he would say things like,

"You're so beautiful when you dance, Cheryl.

You're so full of energy, and you're so alive."

He would pick out the things that he knew I cared about,

and he would hone in on them.

And he would make sure that I heard from his mouth

that he thought that those things were special.

Now, I know that this is the part

where all of the things before were grooming,

and this is where the sexual nature

of the abuse begins.

- For the record, you have been

and continue to be my number one priority.

- "The others are all nice people,

"but no one else is my little pony.

"Tell me how you've been.

"Has your weekend and such been good?

Any new developments in your life regarding a certain boy?"

He started to introduce this idea of

wanting to be with me even though he couldn't.

He would say, "Oh, you know, if I could--

"I just wish that I could kiss you.

"I wish that I could kiss you, but I can't.

I can't. I can't."

And then he just starts getting

more and more sexual, he says...

both: "Now I have more questions.

You said..."

- So monkey--and you know what monkey means.

And I'm forced to admit. I don't know what that means.

I thought it meant penis, but that can't be right.

Because you would never talk sexually around me.

- "You sure write well enough to make me all steamy and shit.

"If the world ends, when we get to heaven,

"I'll let you borrow some of my memories.

"Hell, I've got plenty.

"You can have all the masturbation memories you want.

I'm overflowing with those. Take care, dear."

The real turning point was

I remember I was walking through the hall,

and I walked past his classroom.

And he called me over,

and he said, "Hey, I have something for you."

And he had this folded up piece of paper,

and he just put it in my hand.

And he looked directly in my eyes,

and said, "This is for you."

"Frustration.

"The desk is a wide wooden bunker unknown.

"The room which contains 30 desks contains one desk

like a rock shrine inhabited by an unusual serpent."

It was this poem about the feeling of frustration

that comes from wanting something you can't have.

And I knew it was about me.

"Innocent and still when we connect yet smiling

"at the dance as I straighten and sequence

and lean forward to whisper and want."

It was over for me after that poem.

Like, I was done.

It doesn't matter what this cost me.

Like, I will be part of this relationship.

My, like, instinct was then

to just push everything else to the side

and make this my priority.

♪ ♪

I remember it was February 11th,

and this was, like, maybe a month

before my 17th birthday.

And I went over to his house with some friends.

We were all, like, sitting on the couch watching a movie.

And then one by one, all of the other kids left.

And then it was just me and him and the theater teacher.

As soon as she left the room,

like, my heart was just pounding.

He took my hand, and he walked me to the door.

And then he pulled me

as close to the wall as he possibly could.

And he kissed me.

It was as if, like, the entire bubble

that I was in just kind of

broke into a thousand pieces.

I was so afraid.

I just remember this out-of-control feeling.

The language was now, "What do we do?"

But the answer was,

"Well, now we're in a sexual relationship."

[birds chirping]

I started sort of drafting this last night.

So now I'm not totally sure if this is the right thing.

So I need you to help me with this.

Okay.

Once again, I know it's probably a shock

to see me in your inbox.

When I contacted you years ago,

I was hoping to get you to talk to me

about what happened between us.

You shared a lot with me in that exchange,

but I felt that it devolved pretty quickly

into an old pattern of accusatory back and forth

that sort of missed the point.

If you're open to it,

I would like to try again to understand

how everything happened the way it did.

About to send this.

- Five. Four.

Three. Two. One.

- You know, if my parents found out,

if he was, you know, arrest--

holy shit, he just wrote me back.

- What?

- He just wrote, "Hi, Cheryl.

I'm not interested. Take care."

I think I want him to admit it,

because I think I want to believe that he's good somehow.

But he's continually making a decision

that is keeping the secret,

putting me in the shame place,

and not caring about--

or admitting to everything that happened to me

and everything I experienced

and not acknowledging how it affected, like,

my romantic relationships, my sexual relationships,

my relationships with my other teachers,

how I trust people who want something from me.

The right thing for him to do

is to come forward and be like,

"Look, I did this. I did this to another person.

Please don't do this to other people."

But he's not gonna do that.

♪ ♪

[knocking on door]

[laughs] - [laughs]

Man, you're as ugly as I remember.

- Ah! [laughs]

Hi, buddy. - Hey.

- Ah!

I missed you. - I missed you.

- Yeah, I'm just thinking about like how captivating he was.

And, like, it was for all of us.

I mean, there was a reason that we all went over.

Like, groups of us would go over to their house

and, like, hang out and, like, all be part of each--

like, a group together. We were generally the misfits.

We would all just go hang out there.

And it just felt, like, comfortable.

And it just sucks that it wasn't.

- How does it make you feel?

- It makes me feel, like,

disappointed that we didn't-- I didn't see it

or none of us really saw it for what it was.

Yeah, I always sort of--

maybe just not on purpose

turned a blind eye to it.

Did it happen when you were 16? Did it start?

- Wait, you don't know about that?

- I know that you guys were, like,

hanging out and in a relationship.

- Wait, I--you didn't--

- No, I mean, I've always assumed, right?

Like, but I've never heard the words come outta your mouth

that that was the situation.

- It was true. Like, very true.

And, you know, like, when we would go over and like--

- That sucks.

- Yeah. - I'm sorry.

- It was everything but intercourse.

[somber music]

- That really makes me now wish that I would've leaned

the other way, seeing as myself as, like,

a full grown man and known, like...

♪ ♪

I'm sorry. - [stammers]

[sniffles]

♪ ♪

[birds chirping]

♪ ♪

I think it was, like, pretty soon after we kissed.

We had decided that we were going to,

like, see each other without our clothes on.

It's all about, like, making him feel a certain way.

Like, making sure he's satisfied and taken care of.

He just, like, told me what to do.

I thought I had agency in this whole thing, you know?

I thought I had agency.

- You guys were not equals. - My first sexual experiences

were with somebody that was not--

it was not--it was not a consensual relationship.

It was like I was being completely taken advantage of.

- The most I knew of it was

that the relationship was inappropriate--

inappropriate in the sense that they were too close,

that it made everybody uncomfortable.

- I was always worried that somebody was gonna find out,

but he kind of convinced me

that he was very good at hiding things.

- I know that...

There were definitely more girls.

- At Little Elm High School, there were several incidents

just with myself that kind of set a precedent that,

"This was kind of okay and abuse was going to happen

and teachers were going to cross lines."

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- That was fun. - Wow.

- Oh. What year is this?

- This is senior year. - Wow.

- It was about writing.

Feeling like I could pour my heart into something

on a piece of paper and then have it read.

And I felt like he was giving me, you know,

really good feedback on how to better my writing,

how to make it better.

Like, I'd write poems about my boyfriend--

a lot of forlorn, teenage girl stuff...

- Mm-hmm. - In poetry.

Or short stories

that he would give me feedback on.

- Did you ever feel like it got too intimate?

- I didn't feel like it got too intimate as a child,

but I definitely know it got too intimate as an adult.

- Do you feel comfortable saying how?

♪ ♪

- Yes.

- Okay.

Did he ever talk to you about sex in the classroom?

- Yes.

Um... [stammers]

I feel like we probably talked about it more than once,

but the one incident that I hold onto

and that actually I told my husband about.

My boyfriend at the time

had told me he wanted to experiment

having anal sex.

And I had--

I can only guess that I had written about it.

- Sure. - You know what I mean?

- Of course. - Or I could have gone in there

and just said something, I'm not sure.

But, um,

he did describe to me how to do it.

♪ ♪

But it was a pretty intense conversation about lube...

bending over, bringing a towel,

it potentially being messy.

- Christal, I'm so sorry.

- Oh, don't cry.

- There's just so few girls

at the time at our school

that weren't touched by this thing.

- Yeah. - There was a lot of stuff

going on with the teachers and the students there...

- Yeah.

- That seemed kind of, to me, like a cesspool.

[indistinct chatter]

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- My grandmother was a kindergarten teacher,

so I always knew that I wanted to teach.

Since I've begun teaching, I've become more angry

about what happened to me than I ever was before.

[tense sting]

I don't think I can fully capture what it's like to be

in a classroom full of your creative writing students.

And there's always at least one girl.

It's always a girl.

There's always at least one girl

who's having a hard time,

either dealing with depression, or maybe it's,

you know, an eating disorder or family stuff.

And she's usually really talented,

and she wants help.

They're asking for support,

and they're asking for kindness

and confidence and attention,

but they're not asking to be screwed.

And...neither was I.

- When I heard about Allison's story,

I was like, "I need to know more."

Then I heard her talking about "Lolita" on a podcast,

and I thought, "Her story is identical to mine.

You can't write this."

She was even given "Lolita" by her abuser, just like me.

- I was introduced to "Lolita" when I was 17 years old,

and an English teacher in my high school

gave me a copy of "Lolita."

He told me it was a beautiful story about our love,

that it was just the height of romance.

And I was 17 and didn't know any better.

So I believed him.

[chime]

- [laughs]

Your picture is your cat.

It's amazing.

It's so weird when you read someone's memoir,

and then you know things about them

they might not know about you, and it's like,

you know--it's like I feel like I'm spying on you,

but I just know that from your book.

I had an experience.

Like, I had a relationship with my teacher

that was, like, literally almost exactly like yours.

Like, I--somebody recommended your book to me.

And I was like, "All right." And I picked it up,

and I could not-- I was just glued.

It was crazy. I felt like I was reading my journals.

It was crazy.

- I mean, we always think about rape as stranger in the bushes.

And it's like, no, most of the people--

most of the time when a woman is raped,

it's by someone that she knows.

It's by someone who's close to her.

He made me feel like I was smart,

like I was mature, and I was insightful.

And I think that's also part of the awfulness

of these patterns of abuse.

Every child goes to school. All of them.

And yet, we just allow these kinds of predators

to sit in our classrooms

and continue teaching.

- So many girls told the school

about the assistant football coach.

- It was our English teacher, and he married the student.

- I had a teacher who got a girl pregnant.

Did not get fired.

- Eventually, he picked the wrong girl,

and it all came crashing down.

♪ ♪

[chime]

- Okay. So I just got an email. - Okay.

Let me see.

♪ ♪

"I decided a long time ago..."

both: Not to work in any way with Cheryl Nichols.

- She is a toxic person who has lied, cheated,

and stolen from me.

- From me.

I'm the toxic person? [laughs]

"I decided not to work in any way with Cheryl Nichols,"

as if we worked at Bank of America together?

Stolen?

He's talking about my student loan that he cosigned.

- You cosigned on a loan and then you couldn't pay it.

And then he...

- Yes. - Had to pay it?

- Yes. That's called signing a bad deal.

- That's called dating a teenager.

Teenagers can't pay their student loans, you idiot.

He's rewriting the story, and it makes me furious.

- And that's what exactly what he was telling me

I was doing earlier.

You're changing this story so that you were victimized

rather than, you know,

some beautiful thing that happened to him.

It's just not that. Unfortunately, I grew up.

- And he's exactly the same person.

Everybody's just covering their own ass.

- Everybody's also betting that I'm the same afraid person

that I was back then.

- Ooh, they're gonna be sorry! - [laughs]

- They're gonna be sorry.