The Cool Teacher | Episode 1

Fifteen year-old Stacie Love was just a sophomore when she met the young, charismatic English teacher, Brett Fischer. He was the "cool" teacher, and she wanted to be his favorite student. Twenty years later, Stacie sees the dynamic differently—and wonders if what felt like happenstance was something far more calculated. Reach out to our team at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. For more exclusive content head to terriblestory.substack.com https://terriblestory.substack.com/. Get free access to archival photos, resources, and bonus stories that didn't make the cut. Plus — get early, ad-free episodes as a paid subscriber. If you or anyone you know is experiencing sexual violence and needs help, please visit rainn.org http://rainn.org or call the national hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or text HOPE to 64673. You can anonymously report school employee boundary crossing and grooming and educator sexual misconduct to Safe Oregon. You can call or text 844-472-3367 or email [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. If you’d like to learn more about educator sexual misconduct and get involved, there are many great organizations doing research, education and advocacy work, including: S. E. S. A. M. E. https://www.ncsesame.org/– Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & ExplotationEnough Abuse https://enoughabuse.org/The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children https://www.missingkids.org/homeAmerican Association Of University Women https://www.aauw.org/Stop Sexual Assault in Schools https://stopsexualassaultinschools.org/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Sydney Gladu?

  Before we get started, a quick heads up. This show contains mature content about educator sexual misconduct.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I remember roll call specifically. When he called my name out, he referenced my sister and knowing my sister. And right away, it was like this, like, oh, hey, we're gonna be buds. Planting that seed right from the get-go of you're different than everybody else in this classroom.

• 1:43Sydney Gladu?

  You're hearing from Stacy Love. She's talking about her first day in sophomore-year English class at Centennial High School. That same year, she was learning to drive in empty parking lots, goofing around at Taco Bell with her best friend, and cheering on the football team in her faded jeans and a white t-shirt. It's 1995. It's Anytown, USA. It's high school.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  I met my ex-husband, weird to say, as a teacher of mine.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  You know, my school was very much a culture of like, it was almost a compliment to be picked by one of the teachers. There were many teachers that were flirting with students, having inappropriate relationships with students. And so it almost was like a little bit exciting because it kind of validated some self-worth that I think we all struggled with at that time and that age when you're still trying to figure out who you are and how you are gonna be in the world.

• 2:44Sydney Gladu?

  So now Stacy's in her 40s, and she's been wrestling with what happened to her over the last two decades, poring over research and rehashing the past, trying to understand her role in it all. How does she tell her kids about something she can't even make sense of herself? As she traces her own path backward, she's left wondering, was this the life she chose? Or the life that happened to her?

• 3:07Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy's dreams for high school didn't include marrying her English teacher. And it took her years to see that what she thought was a love story was actually something much darker. This teacher had a pattern of questionable behavior. And our investigation uncovered extensive records that raised questions about who this school's culture was protecting. Stacy's story might sound familiar. This probably isn't the first time you're hearing about a student-teacher relationship. Maybe it happened when you were in high school. Maybe you think this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. But it does. It happened at my high school. And there's even a term for it, educator sexual misconduct. It's a wordy phrase, but it captures a lot of things you're probably already thinking about,

• 3:52Sydney Gladu?

  like inappropriate texts or comments, unwanted touching, and even assault. A landmark study uncovered that 1 in 10 students will experience educator sexual misconduct by the time they graduate. The rot runs deep, sustained by a culture of complicity, one that Stacy still feels tangled in, even when she puts pen to paper.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  I kept quiet for years because I didn't want to hurt anyone, not my parents, not my kids, not him, not my school. Because I thought silence was the loving thing to do. Because I was scared of being dramatic or bitter or sensitive or just another woman with a very sad story. But silence didn't protect me, and it doesn't protect anyone else either.

• 4:43Sydney Gladu?

  I'm Sydney Gladu, and this is not just a terrible story.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Hi, Stacy.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Hi, how's it going?

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Good, how are you?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Good.

• 5:10Sydney Gladu?

  I've been reporting on this story for a year and a half.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  So nice to meet you.

• 5:14Sydney Gladu?

  The first time I met Stacy in person, she showed me her senior photo. She's leaning into her right arm, smiling. It's soft and nostalgic. You can definitely tell it was taken in the late 90s.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  There's me in my polo.

• 5:28Sydney Gladu?

  She's wearing a blue vest over a white t-shirt. She has a baby face and a deep side part in her light brown, shoulder-length hair. Stacy and I are both from Oregon, and she's like everybody else I know from home. She grows tomatoes and flowers in her garden during the summer.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  You're groovy.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  You're pretty. So stunning. It might be.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  I'm very pretty.

• 5:47Sydney Gladu?

  She loves to camp and be outside.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  I really liked outdoorsy stuff. That's kind of always been who I am, like riding my bike and mountain biking.

• 5:56Sydney Gladu?

  She collects these rocks that have an unbroken line of quartz that run through them.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Especially if it goes all the way around the rock, it's like extra good luck.

• 6:04Sydney Gladu?

  They're called wishing rocks.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  I'm a Taurus, which I don't really care about signs except for like, I am truly so earthy and, you know, literally collect rocks. And I made a rock garden this... I'll show you guys a picture.

• 6:17Sydney Gladu?

  She's a mom and an interior designer.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And I didn't know interior design was a thing. I only knew about interior decorating. But my friend had gone to the Art Institute, and I remember her complaining about having to design a toaster. And I remember thinking, that sounds really cool.

• 6:30Sydney Gladu?

  It's actually how I met her. My first job out of college was at a textile library for the same company she worked for. But it wasn't until six years later that I would hear her story for the first time.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  When did you guys get in?

• 6:42Speaker 03

  This morning.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Oh, wow, a long morning.

• 6:45Sydney Gladu?

  It started when my co-producer Katie Kleiner and I drove down to Portland very early one morning in September 2024.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  You too. We don't mind, I'm literally wearing pajamas.

• 6:54Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy arrived at the door of our Airbnb wearing a soft white pajama set and glittery eyeshadow, holding a tote bag and a rose from her garden.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Water, coffee? I have water. Okay. Coffee would be great. Yeah.

• 7:08Sydney Gladu?

  We're here to help Stacy answer a question. And on its face, it seems simple. But it's the type of question that when you look at it closely, when you hold it to the light, it changes. Because it's not a question Stacy can answer on her own. At first, we thought we were asking, how did she end up marrying her teacher? But what we realized is we're really asking, how did her life unfold this way?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  So it was in the 90s. When I picture it, I picture like, I had this Nautica jacket that I really loved and like polo and, you know, just kind of like that preppy, vanilla, white people stuff. And the school was...

• 7:52Sydney Gladu?

  The story starts in 1995, when Stacy was a sophomore in high school. She spent many afternoons skipping seminary class at the Mormon church. She was always with her best friend, eating 99-cent tacos and filming silly home movies with the family camcorder. She was extremely social, but not a partier.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I was such a goofball. I was the class clown.

• 8:15Sydney Gladu?

  She was and is sensitive and thoughtful, the kind of girl who spent time watercoloring birthday cards for her friends. And then, one day, at the start of sophomore year, she was walking down the hallway.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  My best friend and I were walking to one of our classes, and he was pushing a cart. And I just remember him, right from the get-go, being flirtatious with, you know, making eyes. I just remember that interaction being different than with any other teacher in the school. He was a teacher that just stood out. He was younger. He was very engaging. He wasn't just a teacher who's walking down the hallway grumpy. He was like whistling or making comments at people. Or, you know, he was the cool guy.

• 9:00Sydney Gladu?

  That teacher was Brett Fischer. Fifteen-year-old Stacy remembers that Mr. Fisher preferred to be called Fish. He was a young teacher, only 24. He'd graduated from Centennial High School five years before. It wasn't until Stacy's sophomore year that she was assigned to his English class.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  It was the old school, in rows, in your desk with your individual seat facing the front. I was somewhere towards the middle and front. And when he called roll, it was almost like he was doing a performance. So each name got like a little joke or a rhyme or something. And when he got to my name, he was like, "Clough?" C-L-O-U-G-H? Like Raquel, Clough? And that's my older sister. And it was instantly like I was the only person in the room. It was a little bit embarrassing because it was so much like there was so much focus and attention on me. And at the same time, it was like, oh, my gosh, you know, my sister, my sister is like my favorite person on earth. I instantly felt pulled in.

• 10:01Sydney Gladu?

  She felt like Mr. Fisher's class was the epicenter of cool. It was 1995, and he was into alternative music and artistic films. Not the romantic comedies or the made-for-TV stuff she usually watched at home with her family.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  If you would bring in a burned CD, you would get extra credit points.

• 10:17Sydney Gladu?

  This was all before cell phones. It was the time of passing notes, landlines, and listening to the radio. Without any internet to drift off into, his class became her escape from the suburbs.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  He taught English, which is so cliche, because I feel like every story I hear about this is like either a drama teacher or an English teacher. One of his big assignments was for all of us to take a piece of music and break that piece of music down, like what it meant, what are the lyrics? What are they trying to say? Everyone would play their song, and then they would tell the classroom what their breakdown of the song is.

• 10:56Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy was a good kid and a good student, but not a great student. English was different, though. She tried hard to bring the right CDs and pick the cool songs.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  I loved the Cranberries. Loved, listened to the Cranberries nonstop. And I picked a song that starts out with organ, so it's like really moody and then goes into the lyrics. And I remember him not liking the song. And I got a bad grade on the assignment because it was like he didn't like the song. If you played a cool song, that's a song he likes, and you do a good job breaking it down, you're going to get a good grade. But if you do something where it's like not cool, not what I would do, you know, then you don't. I just remember that standing out as like, I didn't like that. I still love that song.

• 11:44Sydney Gladu?

  She remembers trying to stay in his good graces. It felt like the classroom had this unspoken competition.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  He definitely was one of those teachers who had favorites in the classroom. I was definitely a favorite of his. And then later, his favorite students, he would usually ask to become his teacher's assistant.

• 12:01Sydney Gladu?

  By the end of sophomore year, Stacy was set to be Brett's teacher's assistant.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Which I felt, again, very excited to be chosen, to be his TA, because he is someone that I did like to spend time with. And I thought he was really interesting and funny. And a lot of the cool girls were his TAs. They were all really pretty, usually popular. When you were his teacher's assistant, you would sit at his desk, in his chair. You would insert grades into their computer gradebook type thing. You might grade assignments. I would go get copies for him, staple things together. You know, you're building this like intimate relationship, really helping him do his job.

• 12:44Sydney Gladu?

  That classroom is still burned in her brain. The walls lined with movie posters. And then there was the podium he lectured from, covered from corner to corner, top to bottom.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  With photos of students.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  And it was almost like giving him your photo was some weird thing that girls were doing. And if you got picked, you kind of got put on the podium. I could be wrong, but I would think that if you talked to almost every girl, and maybe guy, too, I think we were all giving him our photos, especially senior photos, because you'd get the special photos taken. And I remember being proud of those photos because it's like the first time you're getting more professional photos. Once I knew about the pictures and everything, I definitely remember giving him every photo of the school year. And hoping that I got up on the podium and that he liked the photo.

• 13:42Sydney Gladu?

  By junior year, he noticed things. His eyes lingered, something fluttered in her stomach, different from butterflies.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  I used to always wear this little gray top with like one of those little tiny pockets on the left side, like by your breast. And I remember him complimenting that shirt a lot. And later in life, saying, "I loved it when you walked up to my desk and you were wearing that gray shirt with a little pocket."

• 14:05Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy didn't tell anyone about these moments. They lingered in that gray area between his podium and her desk. She got excited when Brett called on her in class and when Brett asked her to bring him ice cream from her after-school job.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And at that point, Brett and I had established a friendship. I definitely got extra attention, which I didn't mind.

• 14:25Sydney Gladu?

  But then it felt like it started to cross a line.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  The amount of attention that he was giving me and I was giving it back, you know, we were flirting in class. We were flirting in front of other students.

• 14:38Sydney Gladu?

  This flirtatious dynamic in his classroom became normal for junior year. Then, just before Stacy started senior year, in late summer of 1997, Fish asked a favor.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  He had asked me to help decorate his room, organize and get ready for the school year. Put up new fresh posters, you know, clean the classroom, organize the desks. And I remember bringing my friend Rochelle along with me because I felt like a little uncomfortable. I didn't really want to be in the room, like doing all of this work with him alone. And I was wearing just some like tight corduroy pants. I think they were brown or something. We were more towards the front of his classroom. I had walked over there to help hang something, and Rochelle was over doing something else. And he's looking right at me, kind of almost with like a little mischievous face. And he's like, "Wow, you look really good in those pants."

• 15:38Speaker 02

  I just kind of remember everything going like a little silent and

• 15:45Speaker 02

  just thinking like, well, that's not really how a teacher talks to a student.

• 15:52Sydney Gladu?

  In hindsight, Stacy sees her experience with Mr. Fisher in high school as grooming. Experts we spoke to told us that grooming plays out in eerily similar ways in every story. Isolate, flatter, secrecy gifts, special errands, test the boundaries, push further each time. And by the time you notice, reality is so distorted that it makes the unthinkable seem normal. It can take many forms: inappropriate comments, digital harassment, sexual assault. Stacy's story centered on ethical violations of the organ teacher's code of conduct. They stacked up fast and normalized what was happening.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  There was something in me that was like, I don't know, being alone in a room with a teacher that's extra friendly with girls, just something didn't feel quite right, but it didn't feel like I was stepping into something super dangerous either. And I also, like I said, I really did think of Brett as a friend. I liked him. I liked his personality. I liked, you know, the artistic movies that he would put up. They were interesting. We were playing music. I felt special that he had asked me to come help do it.

• 16:58Sydney Gladu?

  It sounds confusing because it was confusing. She liked the positive attention, but it also gave her a bad feeling. Stacy's 45 now and very aware of how this story might sound.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Like, I wish I had more like jaw-dropping things to share, but I think that's also part of the story. I wish I had worse things to tell you. You know, that would make me feel better. The fact that it's a lot of subtleties. I'm like, oh, my God, I hope people just don't think like she should have just known better and she has a crappy family.

• 17:30Sydney Gladu?

  If it hadn't been for what happened next, she may have never realized her experience in high school wasn't okay. That these seemingly little boundaries he was crossing appeared to be part of a bigger pattern.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  High school years are so formative. And then 18 is like when you're moving out and you're deciding what your degree is going to be. And you're potentially starting what your career is going to be. And you're starting to make really big steps. You know, you feel like you're, you know what's right and wrong and you're, you know, you're an adult now.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  But the reality is you don't, you know? And especially if you're coming from a culture like I came from and you've been slowly kind of pulled into like this side of the water. It's like you can't even see clearly what's actually happening.

• 18:23Sydney Gladu?

  In May of 1998, one month before graduation, Stacy turned 18. And as she was leaving high school, the world had never been more wide open.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  I probably could have left graduated high school, gone on with my life, and never seen him again. And I would not be having this story. I would not be having this discussion.

• 18:47Sydney Gladu?

  But here we are, having this discussion. Because a year after graduation, she moved back into her parents' house. The plan was to save up for an apartment while commuting to school in the city. She was a legal adult now, a year out of high school and making her own decisions. One Friday night in the fall, she found herself back at Centennial High School.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  My brother had gotten really into football. And my parents actually were like super into him being into football. It was kind of like a big deal for my family to go watch my brother play.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  So I went by myself, but I was going to meet my parents and I'm sure run into friends. And it's kind of a social scene. I remember walking in, there's like a path to the left after you buy your tickets. And you'd go walking into the side of the field. And I remember running into Brett on that pathway.

• 19:40Sydney Gladu?

  This is the moment when 19-year-old Stacy ran into then 28-year-old Brett Fischer outside of the football game.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  And he was like, "Oh, hey, how's it going?" And we just kind of caught up for, you know, a little bit about how college was going, about what I was doing.

• 19:59Sydney Gladu?

  Now Stacy sees this as a turning point in her life, one that she says set her course. In another version of the story, maybe she would have missed Brett completely. But in this version, the one that became reality, a chance encounter changed the whole trajectory of her life.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Going to his house was probably the single worst mistake I've ever made in my life.

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• 21:33Sydney Gladu?

  It had been a few months since Stacy bumped into her former teacher, Brett Fischer, at the high school football game. And in those months, not much had changed. She was still in college, still living at home, until one day when Stacy and her younger brother were in the car driving to pick up balloons for her mom's birthday.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  I had like a Honda Civic at the time. He was in the passenger seat. And he was like, oh, hey, by the way, Fish called. I'm like, what? I remember slamming on the brakes, like, what? What are you talking about? Why would he call me? And he was like, because he wants to take you on a date. I was like, no, I'm not going on a date with him. And my brother was like, you should just go on a date with him. He's the cool teacher. It's, it's fine.

• 22:17Sydney Gladu?

  This was Stacy's younger brother, who was a junior at Centennial High School.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  And so that was just a moment where I thought, well, maybe I'm making a big deal about this. Maybe I should just have a phone conversation with him. So it started with a phone conversation. I remember specifically him saying, I really want you to come to my house. He had bought a new house, and he hadn't had any students over yet. And I would be the first one to go to this new house.

• 22:44Sydney Gladu?

  It was actually an old house, built around 1920.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  The basement had like old newspapers. You really wanted to take me down there and show me these old newspapers where you could see like the dates and the different words. And we had a great time. I, I thought, wow, this really cool cultured guy is kind of showing me the ropes in life, you know? And he's got this cool house that he wants me to come to. And he wants to take me to dinner. And he wants to teach me about wine. And he wants to play music together. And it's someone that I've known. So him inviting me into his house and wanting to show me these cool things felt exciting. And it felt like, again, I was being picked.

• 23:30Sydney Gladu?

  And without thinking about it, 19-year-old Stacy went from spending all her time in the city and going to college to spending all her time with Brett at his house.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  He was really into wine, which now I'm really into wine. He's teaching me, you know? So it feels really exciting because you're being taught all these things. It's not like I'm at a party drinking Coors Light with my buddy friends, you know? It's like, he's got a nice house, and we're watching really cool movies and making great food and, you know, trying to get me into restaurants that maybe I could order wine and not get caught. But a lot of it was happening at his house.

• 24:06Sydney Gladu?

  That spring, she turned 20 and got a job at the local bank because of the good pay and flexible hours.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  I was a teller there. The way that the bank was is like any bank you've been to, the teller's face out, right? And I was just going about my day. And I look up and I see Brett in the line. And it was just kind of that sinking feeling of like, that's someone who's not supposed to be here. This is a branch where people are coming in. They're, you know, cashing their checks or they're depositing their money. And it's a constant flow of people. And so he made sure he came up to my window. And he had taken the deposit slip, like you fill out with your account number and stuff like that. And he had written in there basically like this clever invitation to Edgefield, for him to take me for the weekend for an overnight stay.

• 24:54Sydney Gladu?

  Edgefield is a boutique hotel outside of Portland. Think beautiful gardens and nice restaurants.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  But I did take the slip. And I was excited to go there because I hadn't been to a place like that. And it sounded really cool and exciting and different.

• 25:10Sydney Gladu?

  Was there any pressure around that trip?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  It was kind of a big thing. I mean, he was something he was very adamant about. He really wanted to take me there. And I remember downstairs, they have like a little wine bar. It's like super dark, candlelit, kind of romantic. And I remember later saying like, that's where I fell in love with Brett Fischer. Knowing me now, I love candlelit rooms and I love wine. And I love the setting and spending quality time with people. So there's a big recipe there that would have worked no matter what. So it all felt very like exciting and intoxicating to me.

• 25:49Sydney Gladu?

  After this weekend, they got serious. She started bringing Brett around her family and introduced him as her boyfriend. He was at every barbecue and family event. And she never missed a Monday taco night at his parents' house.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I literally worked and I went to college and I hung out with him. I was really into it. He wanted to be around me all the time. He was obsessed with me. He was showing me all these really cool parts of the world. And I just fell for it, like hook, line, and sinker. I fell for it. And I overlooked so many things and so many red flags and behaviors because of that. There is a part of me that, and I've really struggled with this in life, of like, how hard I fell for it.

• 26:29Sydney Gladu?

  That story she tells about falling in love with Brett Fischer feels far away, like something she shoved in the same dusty boxes she put her old yearbooks in. In reality, the drive back to Gresham is only 20 minutes from her house in Portland. You don't even have to get on the highway. But these are two very different worlds. Gresham is a mid-sized suburb. But when Stacy was growing up, it had the feeling of a small town. Portland was her big city, the one she knew she'd always move to. In the blocks between these two worlds is where her life unfolded. And Katie and I wanted to see it. So we piled into a car, dodging the potholes and blasting the air conditioning.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  How was it back there? Um, all right.

• 27:10Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy filled us in on the small-town lore.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  One of my classmates that lived over there became Miss America in the early 2000s. That back road is like where all the baseball games and stuff like that would be. But that's a middle school there. And that's an elementary school I went to. Um, this is my house here to the left. And not that much has changed, really. Up on a hill, there was like all the bigger houses and the families that had more money.

• 27:41Sydney Gladu?

  We've also heard it called Snob Hill from other students we've talked to.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And then down lower by the school was more working-class families. I think most of it was built out in the 80s and 90s. And it's really beautiful. There's, you know, these hills all around.

• 27:56Sydney Gladu?

  I know Stacy still thinks this place is beautiful, even after everything she's been through here. But I mostly see dead grass and strip malls.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  And it's really interesting when our high school reunion came up, you know, it was like, there is no way in hell I'm going to the high school reunion, even before that stuff happened.

• 28:16Sydney Gladu?

  Gresham is a town where people stay. They stay close, they stay in touch. They even have a saying at the high school, once an eagle, always an eagle. But Stacy's been avoiding Centennial High School for almost 20 years.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  I had definitely been there after I graduated. Um, I don't think I've been there since.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Lost his teaching license, I want to say.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  We graduated in 98 and then that thing happened in 2004 or '05. But I just remember a feeling of being mortified of like, oh my God, that would be the most embarrassing thing to go and be like, oh hey, remember? I'm the one that married the teacher and then he turned out to be a tall creep.

• 29:06Sydney Gladu?

  We'll get to the teaching license and how Brett Fischer lost it. What I can tell you is we've reached out to Brett Fischer for an interview several times throughout our reporting. As of the time I'm recording this, he has not responded to any of our emails or phone calls. So for now, we're on this tour of Gresham with Stacy. We drove through the neighborhoods. All the blocks started to blend together. Endless streets lined with nondescript beige houses. And then there it was, Centennial High School.

• 29:38Sydney Gladu?

  A low-slung brick building on a sprawling campus. We found a place to park near the back of the school on an unpaved gravel shoulder.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Something I haven't thought about much.

• 29:47Sydney Gladu?

  We walked up to the side of the football stadium. Everything's painted red, white, and blue. Is there a specific thing that's coming up?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  I guess to put it into words, it's, you know, you spend four years here with all your peers and you're growing up and you're changing and you're developing like who you are. And I think it's because of all the fallout of everything that happened. It's just something that I have put in a category that I don't think about. So I think just being here kind of opens that up. Not that there's bad memories. It's more like a lot of building up to getting into a relationship with him happened here, you know?

• 30:28Sydney Gladu?

  Walking with Stacy, I'm aware of the memories that must be flooding back. Memories that feel different now.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  So it's just interesting.

• 30:38Sydney Gladu?

  Was there any rumors about him during high school that you heard?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, there were rumors about him and a couple of girls that were in the same grade as me.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  But there were also rumors about the basketball coach and one of the girls. And there was also rumors about the photography teacher and one of the girls. So it was like, almost like, it was a very weird culture where it was almost like popular to be the one picked by them, which I know sounds really gross, but that's reality.

• 31:16Sydney Gladu?

  We talked for a while until I feel it's the right moment to ask something I've been wondering about. The first time Stacy heard the rumors about Brett.

• 31:26Sydney Gladu?

  Do you remember at what point you found out that he had had sex with?

• 31:35Sydney Gladu?

  That's next time.

• 31:53Sydney Gladu?

  This season on Not Just a Terrible Story.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  He did everything he could to worm his way into our family.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  I mean, he was a good-looking guy, but jeez, there was a lot of rumors around Brett Fischer at the time. There were lots of rumors, lots of teachers.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  And I remember saying at the time, get out. There's red flags here. You need to listen to your intuition. Something is not right. You don't need to do this.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Deep down, I knew something was wrong. I knew something was going on. And then there was a knock at the door.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  I asked if Brett was there. I opened the door like, yes, he's here. Had I known the truth, I think I would have made very different decisions.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  There certainly are some very concerning facts in the two-page document that you shared with me.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And now I can say I was a victim and so were my friends. And so were many other people in that classroom and in that school district and in that school.

• 32:56Sydney Gladu?

  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 are 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 ad-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 Gladu. Story editing by Lacey Roberts. Show art by Casey Burnell. Original music and mixing by Sean Simmons. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

• 33:39Sydney Gladu?

  Maria Palaiologos is our strategic growth advisor. Support provided by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. And a very special thank you to Stacy 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 rainn.org. That's R-A-I-N-N dot 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.

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