The Wedding | Episode 2

Stacie and Brett's relationship wasn't a secret—their community watched it unfold. Some saw it as a fairy tale. Others felt a quiet unease. In this episode you hear what happens when a community looks the other way, and how close Stacie came to walking away before it was too late. 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 & ExploitationEnough 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?

  In the last episode, Stacy Love told us about her time in high school and how she and Brett Fisher began a romantic relationship. But this isn't just a story of one 19-year-old who got swept up in a whirlwind romance with her former teacher. It's a story about the place where it happened and the community that watched it unfold. I wanted to know what the reaction had been when Stacy and Brett first got together, so we started reaching out to every teacher she could remember. A few still worked at Centennial. Some had left years ago, and others were no longer alive. In the end, only one agreed to speak with us on the record.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  We all just loved Brett. We've all thought very highly of him, very student-centered, very positive, very supportive.

• 1:46Sydney Gladu?

  This is retired Centennial choir teacher, Tim Russell. He had Stacy as a student and was a teacher alongside Brett. He also remembered having Brett's older sister in class.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I had his sister my first year at Centennial, just an incredible voice. Now, she I knew as a soprano.

• 2:02Sydney Gladu?

  Tim also remembers the rest of Brett's family.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  I just never heard anything negative about him. And part of that, part of that was from the family he was from. Very supportive. His dad was, I think, a Baptist pastor.

• 2:17Sydney Gladu?

  The Fishers were known throughout Gresham. Brett's dad was a pastor at a local church. His mom ran a daycare center. One of his sisters was even a teacher at Centennial Middle School and coached Stacy in volleyball.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  They were always at concerts. And yeah, just, you would have thought it was just a really blue-chip family.

• 2:40Sydney Gladu?

  Tim described his 23 years teaching at Centennial as heaven on earth. He had a singular focus on building an outstanding choir program. He didn't involve himself in the happenings outside the music department.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  You know, I'd hear comments every once in a while, but it was never anything that, not necessarily that I didn't take seriously. It didn't involve me, and I'd just beat feet back to my choir room.

• 3:04Sydney Gladu?

  Admittedly, he was in his own world.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I was just so engulfed in my little heart of the island.

• 3:10Sydney Gladu?

  So much so that the first time he learned about Stacy and Brett's relationship was when they got engaged.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  It was just a really big surprise. It would never feel like a teacher dating a student was ever a good thing to do. I lost contact with a lot of the kids after they graduated, and Stacy was one. I didn't realize what she was doing and where she was going with her relationship with Brett. I think if I'd had a good private sit-down with her, I would have probably said, "What in the world are you doing?" Our relationship was close enough at that time that I think I could have had that conversation with Stacy, but it never happened. But I know what I would have told her.

• 4:00Sydney Gladu?

  What would you have told her?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  That it's very difficult for this to end well.

• 4:06Sydney Gladu?

  Tim's not wrong. A power dynamic was already starting to emerge between Brett and Stacy. But like I said, this isn't just a story about Stacy. It's about Gresham, her family, and the community that watched it unfold.

• 4:25Sydney Gladu?

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

• 4:47Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy's told us from the beginning that there's one person who knows the story almost as well as she does, her older sister, Raquel. Raquel is nine years older than Stacy. She's a protective and adoring big sister by every definition. And even now, they still talk on the phone almost daily.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  You know, obviously Stacy and I are very close. And Stacy was always very strong, kind of the black sheep. I mean, she's the one that would say things that none of the, I don't think the rest of us, it wasn't that we weren't saying it. We just didn't even pick up on what was going on.

• 5:21Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy and Raquel are from a big family with four kids. Stacy is the second youngest, and Raquel's the oldest.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  I always kind of felt like I was a little mom. And I loved that, actually. That was part of my identity.

• 5:36Sydney Gladu?

  Raquel also knew Brett's family. She was in the same grade as Brett at Centennial. She remembers him and his older siblings.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  His older sister was like the queen of the school. She was an actress, and so she was in the plays and very popular. And his older brother, I remember, being really good-looking. He had this big family, and they were successful. And his dad was a preacher and all that kind of stuff. I thought about why my parents didn't freak out when Stacy started dating Brett. And I think it's because they saw his family as being almost higher status than us. I feel like they almost looked up to them.

• 6:20Sydney Gladu?

  When we started to ask people about Brett, we heard a lot about his family. It was almost the first thing people went to.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  And they sort of had a higher standing in the community. And so I think my parents really, they wanted that, right?

• 6:33Sydney Gladu?

  Raquel and Brett are around the same age, both about nine years older than Stacy. They had that dynamic of two people who grew up in the same small town and went to school together. They were even middle-school boyfriend-girlfriend, if you could call it that. So Brett was a known entity to Stacy's family.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  When he was interested in Stacy at first, I thought it was weird, but then I felt like I knew him. So I thought, oh, you know, it'll be okay. And who wouldn't be interested in Stacy? She's fun and dynamic and a cool person.

• 7:06Sydney Gladu?

  Raquel's boyfriend at the time, Sean, was older than she was.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Sean and I were dating, and Sean was six years older than me. And so it didn't seem like that big of a difference.

• 7:16Sydney Gladu?

  So that made it easier for her to justify the nine-year age gap between Brett and Stacy. But she remembers not everyone felt that way, especially her friends from high school.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  It was like, oh, yeah, Brett's dating my little sister. And everyone was like, what? Brett is dating your little sister, Stacy? They always remember her as being, you know, the kid's sister or whatever. So it was kind of a, just like a weird thing. But it was also, like, just don't talk about it. It was a little bit of a salacious thing. So then people didn't want to say anything.

• 7:50Sydney Gladu?

  All of this struck Raquel's boyfriend, now-husband, Sean, as weird. And he's the type to speak his mind.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  I knew a story, right? She had been his student. He'd been her teacher. That obviously put a red flag for me and made me suspicious. He never made me feel any better about who I suspected he was.

• 8:14Sydney Gladu?

  Sean had concerns about Brett from day one, and he did not hold back in sharing those with Raquel.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  He did not like Sean. He did not like Sean from the beginning. And I think it's because he was afraid Sean could see through him.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  He was not very friendly. I think in retrospect, he was concerned of getting on to him, what his being was.

• 8:35Sydney Gladu?

  It wasn't long after Stacy and Brett started dating that Raquel moved to Texas to be closer to work and Sean. After that, they only had FaceTime with Stacy and Brett on family holidays. One Christmas, when Raquel and Sean were back in Oregon to visit.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  They had this game they were playing, bop it or whatever. The way he played it was like an over-the-top child, like he was not a child, but he was pretending to be one. He was trying to be more her age, right? It was obvious that he was not really being himself. That's all I'd ever tell Raquel, is that he's hiding something. But the rest of the family seemed okay with it, right? I seemed to be the odd one out.

• 9:17Sydney Gladu?

  Sean's unease about Brett never faded, but without anything solid to point to, he felt like his concerns didn't carry any weight, even with Raquel. She appreciated his directness, but ever the big sister wanted to keep the peace in the family.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  It's actually something I regret. I wish I could go back and handle it differently, but I really pulled him back on a lot of things, got myself in the middle. So I would try to share some of the things, but soften it, which of course then completely negates the points that he would have been trying to make. So I think he really wanted to have more of those conversations, even with my parents, and I did not let that happen, unfortunately.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  My experience is not just on this situation, but when anything's been brought up in the family, it doesn't seem like they're actually surprised. It's just something that they've not discussed.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  Our family really kind of holds it and pushes it down and doesn't really get it out. So when it comes out, it's either a huge explosion or doesn't really address the...

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Very passive-aggressive kind of a...

• 10:24Speaker 04

  It doesn't really address the issue.

• 10:25Sydney Gladu?

  That's almost exactly how Stacy described her family the very first time we sat down with her. My parents are like very...

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Traditional type people. And I could tell that they weren't totally comfortable with me dating him. But I could tell that they also didn't know how to tell me that. I could just kind of feel it.

• 10:45Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy's told me a fair bit about her upbringing. Mormon family, nice suburban neighborhood. Her parents grew up without a lot, so they worked long hours to compensate and provide for their kids. Stacy and her siblings were latchkey kids, left to their own devices after school. And when the parents were home, there wasn't a lot of communication about feelings or the hard parts of life. Very little curiosity about Stacy's inner world. Stacy's quick to make it clear that she's not blaming her parents for any of this. Even so, she spent a lot of time in therapy, teasing out the nuances of her family dynamic.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  We really ran a lot of the house and raised each other. And just kids raising each other sometimes isn't the best thing. I just feel like that dynamic, you know, made me a little vulnerable. I really wanted that connection. I wasn't necessarily getting it fully fulfilled at home, which I think made me a bit vulnerable to like overlooking red flags. And it felt good to get that attention and to get that validation.

• 11:45Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy put it simply. Today, she has a friendly relationship with her parents. Meaning they see each other at holidays and catch up over the phone, but they aren't close. And even after all these years, they haven't really unpacked what went down with Brett. When we first reached out to Stacy's parents for an interview, her dad quickly declined. Her mom wasn't sure and needed some time to think about it. But ultimately, she did agree to talk to us.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  I'm Kathy Cluff. I am Stacy Love's mother.

• 12:17Sydney Gladu?

  Kathy was nervous, so we started off with a few easy questions. Where are you from?

• 12:23Speaker 06

  Blackfoot, Idaho. That's between Pocatello and Idaho Falls in southeast. So it's quite a ways from Boise.

• 12:30Sydney Gladu?

  When did you move to Gresham?

• 12:32Speaker 06

  We moved to Gresham in 1979, April of 1979.

• 12:37Sydney Gladu?

  And then we got into it.

• 12:39Speaker 06

  My first memory of Brett was him as a student alongside of Raquel. He was just an all around good kid, played sports. They weren't best friends, but they were friendly. And we just thought he was a good kid. We knew that he came back there to teach. Everybody thought that was a really good thing, you know? It was, he was this all American kid that went out and got his education and came back to the school to teach. Everybody thought he was a great teacher.

• 13:13Sydney Gladu?

  They weren't close, but the Cluff family had known Brett for about 15 years at this point. Kathy started to see Brett with some frequency when Stacy's little brother started high school. He played football all four years, and Brett had been Centennial's JV coach. Kathy and her husband were at most of the games. And Kathy remembers Brett would often come sit with them to watch.

• 13:33Speaker 06

  He didn't come to sit down by Stacy. I think Stacy was even dating somebody at that time. And he was with the family when we were watching football. And so like Brett was just joining like he was a good old boy. At that point, he was very, very personable, always had good manners. He really was likable, which is probably part of the persona that he wanted to, I mean, you know.

• 14:01Sydney Gladu?

  Kathy also remembers running into Brett at the ice cream shop where Stacy worked during high school.

• 14:06Speaker 06

  He worked at a Baskin Robbins ice cream place. Twice when we were there, he came in. And I thought that seemed really weird. And so I asked her about that and she said, oh yeah, he loves ice cream. So he always comes in and first time I didn't think it was anything big. The second time I thought it was starting to seem weird to me. I said, you know, there are lots of places to get ice cream. Why would you always? I mean, you know, that started sounding weird to me.

• 14:37Sydney Gladu?

  But she didn't tell the school or talk to anyone about it.

• 14:41Speaker 06

  I think I would have felt really stupid going in and saying, gosh, she's working at Baskin Robbins and he's going there all the time. I mean, I just think that that would be passing judgment when I really didn't have any reason to be. It just wasn't that blatant. I wish it had been more blatant.

• 15:00Sydney Gladu?

  We asked Stacy about Brett coming to see her at the ice cream shop. And she doesn't remember her mom ever being there at the same time as him or having a conversation with her mom about it. But we talked to Stacy's classmate, who also worked there. And she said she remembers Brett coming in more than a few times.

• 15:19Sydney Gladu?

  As Stacy graduated high school and went off to college, Kathy's concerns about Brett were sidelined. But they all came flooding back after Stacy's freshman year in college. That was when she learned that Stacy and Brett were spending time together.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  We talked about the fact that he was same age as Raquel. I mean, that was like 10 years difference and that was a big difference. I said, are you sure you want to date somebody like that? And she said, no, no, I'm not really, we're just friends. And they were just friends until they weren't. And then red flags went all over the place with me. Once I voiced my opinion about what she was doing, she basically shut us out and let me know that it really wasn't any of my business. She'd listened to me, but she didn't want to talk about it.

• 16:09Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy had told me this story about the time her mom really voiced her opinion about their relationship. And you've heard some of it too. Remember when Brett came into the bank Stacy was working at and asked her to go away for the weekend? He wrote up the cute invitation on the back of a bank deposit slip. Here's Stacy's recollection of that moment.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  I remember my mom finding that slip because it was that little window of time I was living back with my parents. And my mom being like, what is this? And I was like, no, mom, it's gonna be okay. Just dismissed it. And I was just like, it's not a big deal. Everything's fine. There's nothing like that's inappropriate. Because in my mind, I had already started to justify it. My family knew about it. It was never something I hid. But I think she knew, seeing an overnight stay, we were either sleeping together or we were going to sleep together on that trip, which is I think where she was starting to get a little worried. I think she kind of knew I was gonna do what I was gonna do at that point.

• 17:07Sydney Gladu?

  During our interview, I asked Kathy if she remembered more about Brett and Stacy's weekend getaway.

• 17:12Speaker 06

  I do remember that. And I thought that was weird, awfully, awfully icky. We brought it up and we, we said, you know, Stacy, you were raised like this. What's, what's happening? What's going on here? And she basically said, I don't care what you think. At that point, it was like she'd taken the bait. And had we stopped it before that, we could have had some influence. But at that point, we didn't have any more influence. It felt like I was the one that was out of line, that I was making too big of a deal of something that wasn't a big deal.

• 17:52Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy has a lot of thoughts about how she wished this conversation had gone. Wish her mom had centered her concerns on more than just premarital sex. That her mom had said more, pushed harder. And most painfully, that she herself had been more receptive. But this is where it ended. And maybe without either of them knowing, they'd crossed a threshold and closed the door on any meaningful conversation about Brett. Kathy said Brett and Stacy's relationship snowballed after that weekend away together. The speed of everything caught Kathy off guard, especially compared to Stacy's dating experiences before Brett.

• 18:27Speaker 06

  This was the first time that she was getting serious. Her prior dating had been so simple. And so she went from that to Brett. I mean, it's just like she walked into a fire.

• 18:43Sydney Gladu?

  This relationship didn't just feel fast to Kathy. It was moving quickly. During this time, Stacy and Kathy were friendly, but they weren't close. Stacy found closeness elsewhere in Brett's world. She began seeing a lot of his family who also lived nearby. We reached out to Brett, his family, and some of his friends. And no one responded to our request for comment. So you'll have to get a sense of their family dynamic through Stacy's eyes.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  I remember the first day that I met his mom. It was at his brother's house. I think it was like for a Trail Blazers game or something like that. I don't know that she knew I was a student going into that. And it somehow came out in our conversation. She kind of grilled me. I remember the family kind of like watching and being like, oh, she's doing her thing. Cause she, you know, she's not someone who's scared to ask questions or call things out as they need to be called out. I somehow got like a check of approval. I'm not really sure how. I know she asked me a lot of questions, but somehow she felt okay with it.

• 19:42Sydney Gladu?

  Brett's mom's blessings extended to his big family. He and Stacy became regulars at the Fisher's Weekly Taco Night and went to his brother's house to watch Trail Blazer games. Stacy really liked Brett's family and fit in easily. She especially hit it off with Brett's sister, who lived in LA.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  She came up with her boyfriend and we went down to my parents' beach house. I specifically remember like running and jumping off the dock altogether. And I remember her saying like, if you don't marry her, I will.

• 20:15Sydney Gladu?

  Back at home, Brett and Stacy were spending a lot of time together. They hung out at his house and went to social things as a couple. A big part of their social circle was Brett's colleagues, who also happened to be some of Stacy's former teachers at Centennial. Stacy said she had a lot of memories of socializing with other teachers, but she doesn't remember a big introduction or reveal of their relationship. Brett was really close with one teacher in particular, and they frequently went to a pub down the street from Centennial. Stacy pointed it out when she was showing Katie and me around Gresham. Do you remember the first time meeting teachers when you guys had started dating?

• 20:55Speaker 05

  I think it was that teacher friend that they used to go there all the time. And that's probably where we met. I definitely spent time, a lot of time drinking beer with them at pubs, for sure. They would smoke cigars and drink beer. That was their thing.

• 21:11Sydney Gladu?

  Did it ever come up that you were a student?

• 21:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I had that teacher too. And they had a very close friendship and he thought I was cool and it was fine. And it was those things that kind of normalized it. It was like, okay, maybe this isn't so weird. Maybe it's not crazy.

• 21:30Sydney Gladu?

  We reached out to this teacher and he did not respond to a request for comment. But Stacy told Katie and me, he wasn't the only teacher she spent time with.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  His friends really liked me. I got along with them really well. And other teachers really liked me too and would say like, you're almost not like a student. Like you're really mature.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Do you have any memories of specific instance of Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so saying this to you?

• 21:59Speaker 05

  Well, I remember saying that to me.

• 22:02Sydney Gladu?

  He was Stacy's social studies teacher.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  And he kind of said it like, oh God, you were never even like a student anyways. So it's no big deal. It's not awkward for us. Maybe it would have been a different situation had I not been who I was. But I think that I kind of got like the seal of approval from a lot of the teachers that they had liked me. And they thought, you know, I was a solid person. And I think that that made it a lot less weird for people.

• 22:34Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy told us that at this point, she and Brett were spending most nights together.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  He would leave early to go teach and I would get ready to go to college. So we basically traded off between his house and my apartment. A lot more at his house, just because it was a nicer place and more room. And when he was closer to a school.

• 22:56Sydney Gladu?

  Brett's house wasn't very big. It was that typical craftsman home you see all over Portland with small rooms and charming woodwork. Brett's sister had helped him decorate, so it was cozier than your average bachelor pad. His bedroom was a renovated attic space with sloped ceilings.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  I was staying there a lot, so I was like putting clothes away. And it wasn't like I was snooping. It wasn't like I was going through things. I remember opening that drawer.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  I was kind of starting to move in-ish and it wasn't like I was snooping. It wasn't like I was going through things. He left for school and I remember like these white nightstands with a little drawer. I remember opening that drawer and there was one of the pictures like he had on the podium of a student.

• 23:50Sydney Gladu?

  A young female student.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  And I don't know, it's in his nightstand. So I can put those pieces of the puzzle together.

• 24:02Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy stopped dead in her tracks. There were a million thoughts running through her head. She had given Brett her photo, just like this one. And she was flooded with memories of how he pursued her when she was a student.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  I'm kind of a freeze person. I think I just like put it back and shut the drawer really quick. And was like, oh, wow. I just started instantly to justify it in my head. You know, like you're jumping to conclusions. Maybe he just had it and he had it in his pocket and then he just put it there.

• 24:37Sydney Gladu?

  But then another day, not long after, Stacy was tidying up Brett's house.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  As I was kind of like organizing clothes, I ran across like a small little paper bag that had just tons of handwritten notes in them from students back and forth.

• 24:54Sydney Gladu?

  To be clear, these weren't teacher appreciation cards, not thank you notes on stationery in envelopes. They were notes written in pencil in what Stacy described as a loopy bubbly teenage girl handwriting on lined paper ripped from somebody's spiral notebook and folded into tiny squares.

• 25:15Sydney Gladu?

  The kind Stacy remembers seeing flying around the hallways of Centennial. Just the sight of these stirred something in her.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  I didn't read them. I didn't go through them, but it was enough to be like, whoa, okay. And in my mind, I thought, yeah, well, I know he used to be flirtatious and what have you, but we're spending all this time together and we're doing all of these things together. So yeah, he was kind of testing the boundaries, but here we are and we have a real relationship and we're building something. And we were spending so much time together, it was hard to imagine him doing anything inappropriate.

• 25:54Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy doesn't remember confronting Brett about the photo or the notes.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  I think it just was so overwhelming and terrifying. And then when I contrasted that to us spending time together, the two didn't really make sense. And so I think I just kind of justified it in my mind.

• 26:09Sydney Gladu?

  Justify it, box it up and compartmentalize Brett's conflicting behavior. Try to push it away and forget. Not an easy task because these instances weren't just isolated red flags. There were rumors about other students during high school. Early on in their relationship, Stacy had confronted Brett about a particularly painful rumor. Stacy heard this rumor from her best friend when she and Brett started dating. Remember that was a year after she graduated high school. She told us the story when we were walking outside of Centennial.

• 26:49Sydney Gladu?

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

• 26:56Speaker 05

  Yes, my friend told me.

• 26:59Sydney Gladu?

  Her best friend, who she trusted to tell her the truth and not to sugarcoat it.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  She said, hey, you should know, like he, he and were sleeping together in high school. They weren't just sleeping together, like they were having nonstop sex, like all over the place. And I remember confronting him about it that night. I was really upset about it and I just remember being convinced that it was okay and that it really wasn't that big of a deal. I think that there was some ownership of how it happened and why it happened. And then I think I said, like, you can't sleep with underage girls. And he was like, well, she wasn't underage. And I was like, well, how do you know? Are you sure? He's like, I went into her records and I saw that she had turned 18.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  The manipulation of that, like it's a premeditated idea that you're doing research on to do something you know is not okay, but you technically maybe wouldn't get arrested for.

• 27:56Sydney Gladu?

  It's weird how a fact can change in meaning over time. Something that came out of his own mouth that at the time felt like due diligence now feels like predatory.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:12Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy doesn't remember exactly what Brett said to smooth things over or how her anger cooled over the course of their long, tense conversation. But looking back at these red flags is painful for her. We asked her if there was anything she ever felt like could have made her pause and reevaluate.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  It's not something I ever had words for or a roadmap or even could see. My gut tells me that had I been more educated on this type of behavior and what usually comes from those relationships. Cause that's what I think the young brain doesn't have. It doesn't have the emotional capacity to process it. Or at least the way I was raised or the tools I was given. I kind of needed that from probably an outside source is what I would say.

• 28:58Sydney Gladu?

  But she didn't have those tools. This was her first adult relationship. There was a clear power dynamic at play. At the time, Stacy was 20 and Brett was 29. It seemed to Stacy that Brett was all in.

• 29:13Speaker 05

  I do remember a pressure from him of making it legit or making it real or kind of like locking it down to where it didn't seem as scandalous as it was. And other people might not like to hear this, but I think other people who were kind of in the inner circle of that probably kind of wanted that to happen a little bit too. It was so fast. The whole thing was so fast, kind of like the shortest amount I've ever heard of. I think of someone truly dating to getting married. I don't even know how fast you can plan a wedding, but I did it.

• 29:46Sydney Gladu?

  And that's how, not even a month after her 21st birthday, Stacy found herself about to marry her former teacher.

• 29:57Sydney Gladu?

  The morning of Stacy and Brett's wedding, Stacy woke up at her friend's house. The night before was slumber party vibes with a big dose of anticipation. Stacy had worn her new red pajama set and they both used Biori pore strips the night before. They ate pancakes for breakfast. A bit later at the wedding venue, her nerves elevated. She took some comfort in seeing her family members milling about, helping set up everything. She had planned the day out in 15 minute increments. She channeled all that nervous energy into trying to make sure everything was just right, trying to stay calm by tinkering. And when that didn't work, her tried and true habit of pushing her feelings down and putting on a happy face kicked in.

• 30:39Sydney Gladu?

  By this time in her life, Stacy had a lot of practice in putting her worries to bed. She called it being optimistic. But much later in life, she would learn to call this abandonment of herself.

• 30:53Sydney Gladu?

  That day shortly before the pictures, Stacy and her bridesmaids, including her sister Raquel, got dressed in the bridal suite. As the bridesmaids trickled out, Raquel lingered, something on the tip of her tongue that she knew she had to say to Stacy before it was too late.

• 31:12Sydney Gladu?

  And it wasn't out of nowhere because a few days earlier, Stacy had confided something in Raquel.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  I was in my parents' living room. I can remember being on the sofa and having this conversation with her where she got a little bit emotional. She was talking in a very low voice, almost like she, she didn't want to be telling me what she was telling me. And she just said, I found these letters. It just makes me feel really uncomfortable.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  On our wedding day, she and I were getting ready and it was just the two of us. I know she intentionally planned this. We were in the room and she goes, you do not need to do this.

• 31:55Speaker 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.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  She goes, I will go get the car right now and I will pull it around and we can just leave.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  I just had this moment. ...of wanting to save her.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  And I just remember thinking, it's too far down the line for that. She saw a lot more that I couldn't see.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  She was just too far in at that point. And, you know, listen, she wanted that fairy tale with him. Who wouldn't, right? Like, I don't blame her for that. Got us hooks into her when she was really young. He called the shots and laid out what would be a really, you know, great life for them, and thus she wanted that.

• 32:43Sydney Gladu?

  So Stacy walked down the aisle and married Brett Fisher.

• 32:58Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy said her and Brett's wedding reception was a big fun party. Theatrical, almost a bit fake. She and Brett did the dance from Pulp Fiction. Everyone was letting loose on the dance floor. Lots of toast from friends and family. Sean was there, sitting with his mixed feelings and taking in the spectacle.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  I mean, it was the largest wedding I'd been to, I think, in a long time. So it was very nice. Very nice. Hard to back out of a wedding like that, I would say.

• 33:30Sydney Gladu?

  Stacy still has the photos in a large, oversized wedding album with little corners holding the pictures in place on the page. She brought out the album on one of our trips to Portland. The photos read very early 2000s. Some moody black and white shots, various configurations of the wedding party on an outdoor staircase, lots of candids from the reception. You'll hear from Katie first. Isn't it so funny to have hard copies?

• 33:55Speaker 05

  I know.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  This was our wedding day. There's my sister behind. These are his best high school friends. There's his dad.

• 34:06Sydney Gladu?

  Everyone's dressed up and smiling in every picture, but there's so much tension simmering under the surface. Here's you and all your former teachers.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  Yep, that is hilarious. So this is a photo, kind of if you were looking at the dance floor, looking out into the crowd. And this is a photo of at least one, two, three, four, five, six teachers that were from the school. You know, all adult educators, fully aware that we were getting married and they were participating in it. It's almost like they're watching a spectacle, which is kind of funny to me to look back on.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  It makes me wonder, like, we got married. The school district knew about it. Like, teachers were at the wedding. Like, no one was like, hey, this is a little weird that you are marrying her three years after she graduated.

• 35:01Sydney Gladu?

  I was re-listening to the Sean interview yesterday. One thing that he said was, a lot of people owe Stacy an apology, and she hasn't gotten it yet. And that kind of like started to make me have some feelings.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, me too. There's a lot of people in this room that probably could have stopped a lot of damage from happening.

• 35:29Sydney Gladu?

  After the wedding, Brett and Stacy settled into their new married life.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  For the most part, our day-to-day life, when we were in good spans, it was fun. We'd go our separate ways, do our jobs. We'd come home and make dinner and usually watch shows and go to sleep. I would say it was a lot of pleasurable stuff, like going to the movies or watching The Sopranos or having great dinner and wine, but not a lot of, like, vulnerability or deep connection necessarily.

• 36:02Sydney Gladu?

  But when things were bad, they were bad. The imbalance in their power dynamic played out in everyday life. Rumors of Brett pursuing students haunted her. She often had an uneasy feeling. But at some point, she stopped listening to her gut and muscled through the rough patches. She got herself off from most of her high school friends. This is another time in life where Stacy says she abandoned herself, de-prioritizing her own needs and wants in preservation of Brett's happiness. Not long after we met Stacy, she took us back to the house she and Brett lived in during this time. Brett's house. The one with the old newspapers on the basement ceiling, the location of their first date, and backdrop to their courtship and first year of marriage.

• 36:45Sydney Gladu?

  When we first get out of the car, I'm struck by how cute the house is.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  How cute. It is cute. Oh, they put a dormer thing on the back. Yeah, this is the house.

• 36:55Sydney Gladu?

  I feel like I could see coming home to this house, like newlywed couple.

• 37:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:02Sydney Gladu?

  It's this, like, thing from the outside that everyone's like,

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Totally.

• 37:06Sydney Gladu?

  Look at her go.

• 37:07Speaker 05

  I know, totally. I mean, we just were at this all-American high school and come to this beautiful house. It like normalizes the whole thing. It's like, there's nothing wrong here.

• 37:15Sydney Gladu?

  The house is a classic Pacific Northwest craftsman. It's painted dark green with sizable steps and a big front porch. She said they used to sit on the porch in the evening and play cards. In the beginning, when Brett had a roommate, he'd play too.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  I remember his roommate taking a picture of us on those steps right there. And I was like sitting in his lap, and we looked so happy. And we were happy. This is the duality of it.

• 37:41Sydney Gladu?

  The house has a nice little yard with a literal picket fence. Stacy thinks the fence must be new.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  As you turn around the corner, this is like the dining room here.

• 37:50Sydney Gladu?

  We walk around the side of the house.

• 37:52Speaker 05

  And then goes into like a kitchen, a galley kitchen. And then there's two bedrooms on the back, and then an attic kind of bedroom on the front. Cute little backyard, and then a detached garage back there. It's a nice, nice neighborhood.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  What are you thinking when you like look at it?

• 38:12Speaker 05

  You know, it's like, I was thinking about this the other day. When we first started dating, I started struggling with depression, which I'd never been a depressed person. And I ended up going on depression medicine. I just like feel that here.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  And I think it's probably so much of this dysfunction and so much of the abandonment of myself to make the situation okay and really trying to make the most of it and trying to think positively. And we did have really fun times, too. So it's like that, again, that duality of, I'm not trying to say I was a prisoner here. I wasn't at all. I was lucky to live here. I was lucky to be in such a beautiful house. And there's a lot of inappropriate stuff happening. What can look like a fairy tale on the outside is not a fairy tale at all on the inside. Oftentimes, especially when you're looking at people that turn out to be predatory, they're usually married to someone who's a pretty good cover for them.

• 39:10Speaker 05

  I've seen that story happen over and over and over again. And those people oftentimes are not outwardly unhappy. The front has to be like, looks pretty good.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  What made you guys move, by the way? Got really depressed in this house. And I was like, I don't know if it's because there's no sunlight, because the way these houses are constructed.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Again, I think I was depressed for other reasons, but like moving seemed like a really good, quick fix to solve that. And I was going to school in a really cool part of town, and they were opening all these really cool lofts and stuff like that. And just happened to stumble across one that was like the good price and size.

• 39:50Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah, that makes sense. Like, change of scenery, think everything will feel better.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm, exactly.

• 39:56Sydney Gladu?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've been a Band-Aid person a lot in my life, so.

• 40:00Sydney Gladu?

  We all know Band-Aids don't last forever. Usually, you have to rip a Band-Aid off, and it takes whatever else with it.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  I knew something was wrong. Deep down, I knew something was wrong. I knew something was going on. And I was going to church at that time. And I was not a big prayer person, but I remember saying a prayer, like, please show me what is happening, what is going on.

• 40:25Sydney Gladu?

  And then, one Sunday in January of 2005, she knew.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  And then there was a knock at the door.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  And I just was like, huh, that's weird. So just, you know, opened the door, not knowing what I was gonna see. Ten men standing there in Homeland Security gear.

• 40:49Sydney Gladu?

  They were Department of Homeland Security special agents alongside Gresham Police detectives.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  It's funny, I used to hear that knock so vividly in my head.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  I could hear it like it was yesterday.

• 41:05Sydney Gladu?

  That's next time on Not Just a Terrible Story.

• 41:32Sydney 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.

• 42:15Sydney 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.