Adults in the Room: The Bet

Everything you hear on KW, this and every podcast, every article, every newsletter, every community event, relies on the support of our community.

“This week, it's KUW spring fundraising drive. It's a time every year where we go on air and yes, on podcast, to celebrate the generosity that keeps KUW running.”

Public support has always been the backbone of public media. Here's our ask. Today, we are inviting you to join KUW as a donor to power this podcast and local news by making a gift.

Giving now is a way to pay it forward in your community, ensuring everyone, not just those who can afford it, has access to high quality news. Whether it's $5, $10, $20 a month, whatever fits your budget, your support makes a difference. If giving monthly doesn't work for you, give what you can today, whatever the amount it helps truly. We have some spring fundraising drive executive thank you gifts as well, a zippered tote with original artwork by Hillary Lee. KUW socks and a coffee bundle of a KUW mug with an 8-ounce package of whole-been medium roast coffee from cafe-laudrow,

as well as subscriptions to babble and the New York Times. Your support sends a powerful message, public media matters. Make your gift now at KUW.org or on the KUW app and thank you.

“Music festivals and fan conventions, art walks, author events and reading parties.”

The next few months are amazing for arts and culture in the Seattle area.

And every week KUW's arts and culture podcast meet me here will give you the inside scoop. From inspired recommendations to surprising chats with artists, you'll discover what's truly special about Seattle's creative communities. Wasn't to meet me here on the KUW app or wherever you get your podcasts. Focus from KUW in Seattle. This episode includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.

If you or someone you know needs support, text the word "hope" H-O-P-E to 646-7-3. Please take care while listening.

“I mean, this is actually very, this is practically very teenage.”

Oh no, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. A few years ago, when my best friend, Ella, who's hogging an eye, started investigating our teachers' death during our senior year at Garfield High School in Seattle. We had a simple goal. It was admittedly self-centered to prove our accusers were. Are we doing this to go to our classmates to be like, "We were right, right?"

"We were right, right?" "I just want to hear you say it well." And then I will be happy, that's fine. Back in 1999, Ella told me she'd heard a rumor that our science teacher Tom Hudson had abused a boy from post-84. The outdoors club he led, I repeated the allegations to my mom who alerted authorities.

Mr Hudson was placed on leave and an investigation into his conduct soon followed. Not long after, he died by suicide, and many students, teachers, and parents blamed us.

Garfield's investigation was abruptly closed, and the claims against Mr Hudson were never proven.

For years, Ella and I wondered if we went too far, spread unfounded rumors, and drove Mr Hudson to take his own life. Then Ella suggested we find out the truth and finally set the record straight. Today Ella is an attorney who takes on big institutions and companies. I'm a journalist. We know how to conduct complex investigations, but this was an old case, and we had a little to go on. We pulled out our diaries from that time, and printouts.

We kept up the emails we wrote to each other on Yahoo accounts. And from the back of a filing cabinet in my basement, I dusted off a brown menilla envelope. Inside were records I've held on to since I graduated from college, when I asked Seattle Public Schools for its Hudson Biles. The first installment arrived when I was 23 years old, a cub reporter in rural Washington state. The envelope was bursting with random photocopies.

Mr Hudson's substitute teacher list, phone messages, jotted down and indescribable scribbles, faxes asking so and so to call such and such.

They didn't support us while we took the rap from Mr Hudson's suicide, and I wanted them to know I hadn't forgotten. When we started reporting this story, I went back through the files again, slowly taking careful notes. It felt like I was begging the files to tell me what to do next. This time I hadn't epiphany.

It was what I couldn't see that I needed to pursue. What I couldn't see were the identities of the boys who spoke up. In each document their names had been crossed out with a thick black Sharpie for privacy. Ella and I had been going about our research all wrong. We'd set out to redeem ourselves, but our vindication wasn't the point.

The boys were.

Ella and I had always suspected Mr Hudson prayed on post-84 students.

Could we finally uncover how far his abuse went and explain why parents

“and school officials seemed so eager to dismiss the obvious warning signs?”

To find the answers, we would have to treat this like a cold case and retrace the steps of the original investigation that went dormant. It's so long ago. From came to W Public Radio in Seattle, this is adults in the room, episode five. The bat.

I'm his older aftery. When we started our reporting for this podcast, Jonathan Hill was the first of Mr Hudson's former students to share his story with us. Jonathan, the former president of post-84, told me that when he was 15,

Mr Hudson was aroused in a shower with him. Despite Jonathan's best efforts to avoid one-on-one situations with his teacher after that,

“Mr Hudson drunkenly called Jonathan multiple times in the weeks before his death.”

Threatening to kill himself.

At first, I thought Mr Hudson's conduct towards Jonathan was heartless,

wildly unprofessional, and grounds for getting fired. But because there was no physical touch in, I didn't think of it as criminal. King County prosecutors have since told me that inviting a 15-year-old to shower naked alone, and then layering at him, could have resulted in a gross misdemeanor charge.

Yes, even back in 1999. But naively, when I heard Jonathan's story, I chocked up Mr Hudson's behavior as merely inappropriate. During my reporting for this podcast, I've noticed how much baggage that word carries with it,

especially when it comes to sexual abuse.

“Inappropriate, can mean a lot, or nothing at all.”

It's an easy euphemism for when you don't want to get into specifics, and it can give cover to predators, and those who defend them. Inappropriate is what the Garfield administration used to label the relationship between our principle, Dr. Al Jones, and a cheerleader, Christina Mitchell. How my journalism teacher, Dave Eric, described the great areas

in student teacher dynamics when the Seattle Times interviewed him. And the word Eddie Hill Sr., the X-Cop, the school district hired to investigate Mr Hudson, wrote in his notes. In each of these examples, inappropriate both describes and obscures vastly different behavior.

Al Jones, in a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old Christina, Dave Eric, asking 17-year-old me to tell him the size of my underwear, and an aroused Mr Hudson, showering naked with teen boys. I've come to see that the behavior we dismisses in appropriate is often a stepping stone to even more serious abuse.

I learned this from Ellis X. Like Jonathan, Ellis X was coerced by Mr Hudson to take a shower with him after a game of racket ball. We wrote about it in the messenger. As Ellis X sees it today, that shower was an example

of how Mr Hudson would groom the boys in his club. He was very flirtatious. And he was looking for soft spots. If you were willing to hang out with him, he would want to hang out.

If you were willing to talk to him about alcohol and drugs, he would talk to you about alcohol and drugs.

He never forced him to do anything.

Or never made me feel super, super uncomfortable. And he would go as far as you let him.

with him at his gym as a cover story for getting naked with them afterward.

“Fortunately, Ellis X was able to distance himself”

from Mr Hudson and stay out of further vulnerable situations. Based on the allegations I'd heard in high school, which included rumors about physical violence, porn and alcohol on Mr Hudson's boat. It was highly likely to me that these showers

were the first stages of Mr Hudson's grooming process.

I was sure there were boys who didn't or couldn't draw a line where Ellis X and Jonathan did. I knew that to do this investigation justice, we had to fair it out the full scope of Mr Hudson's abuse. Otherwise, the school district and Mr Hudson's fiercest offenders

could characterize what happened as nothing more than in appropriate. Ella and I debated where to look next. Maybe people who were quiet back then would now be willing to talk. The documents from my public records request included some, but not all of Eddie Hill's senior's reports from our senior year.

“We really don't know what he learned or what he didn't learn, right?”

What was there? What did the investigation find?

The Seattle school district may not have concluded it's Hudson investigation, but that doesn't mean it came up empty. What if Eddie was still around? It was time to find out. Sound side brings you beyond the headlines with news and conversation rooted in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm Libby Dankman, every week I sit down with local journalists for sound sides front page, where we give you a shortcut to understanding the latest news and cultural moments and how they affect us here in the future sound region. It's all here on sound side, on the radio or streaming Monday through Thursday

at noon and 8 p.m. on KUOW on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. My search for Eddie Hill's senior brought me to a quiet, hilly neighborhood in Seattle's south end. I pulled up to a big house with sweeping views of Lake Washington. When I knocked on the door a woman answered, I thought I had the wrong place, but when I asked about Eddie her eyes lit up,

she was his daughter. I had caught her in the middle of cleaning. Eddie and his wife had recently moved out. She got him on the phone and we set up a meeting at Eddie's new apartment a few minutes away.

“How did Mr. Hill go on to? Eddie, okay. Why come to Mr. Hill back in the day?”

Eddie told me that when the Hudson scandal broke, he was already investigating someone at Garfield. Our former principal, Dr. Al Jones. I wonder if you were doing the Al Jones case. Okay. So he was involved with a student.

While Eddie looked into Dr. Jones' relationship with cheerleader Christina Mitchell, he said a male student approached him with concerns about Mr. Hudson. He told me he was in a situation that was very uncomfortable, and there were other children who were uncomfortable, and he thought that I should know.

And did he tell you what the situation was? He only told me that Mr. Hudson was taking showers of a boys. He wouldn't go any further. I need to pause for a moment and say, "Oh, my God." For the last 26 years, Ella and I thought we were the reasons

the school district investigated Mr. Hudson. So did others at Garfield? It's why so many people turned on us after Mr. Hudson died. So to hear that a boy told Eddie about Mr. Hudson's potentially abusive behavior, a full month before my mom made her call. Well, I have to admit it made me a bit giddy.

It wasn't us, everybody. Someone else tattled first.

But that feeling faded fast, because really it didn't matter who triggered the district investigation. If anything, what Eddie told me revealed that a young boy was desperate for Mr. Hudson to stop. When Eddie started interviewing students at Garfield,

he learned that Mr. Hudson's moods could swing wildly from goofy to volatile. One boy told Eddie that everyone knew to stay away from Mr. Hudson when he was angry. Another said Mr. Hudson told students on his boat to hide the pornographic magazines if other adults showed up.

A third said Mr. Hudson playfully whipped him on the butt with a towel after a shower.

interactions with Mr. Hudson, but most refused to talk. Soon after the students imposed Eddie four stop talking to. So Eddie filed reports with the school district, summarizing the interviews he did conduct.

Including his first conversation with Mr. Hudson.

I told him that they had been allegations, and that I was here not to condemn him for anything, but to try to find out what was happening. If the kids were wrong, if what they were seen or feeling wasn't true,

“his answers as I remember did not say that.”

Eddie asked about the after-hours racket ball and the showers at the gym. He and Mrs. showers, but they were just in the normal course. We went places, there was sports, there was something like that and we took showers. It was like, it was no big thing. And did he admit to touching anybody?

No. No. A couple of boys told me about touching, but it wasn't like sexual touching. It was like horse play. You know, and sometimes horse play, you can camouflage your horse play.

You know, actually it's sexual intent, but you were just across the line. You don't know.

Eddie met with Mr. Hudson a second time, but they cut that conversation short.

He wanted to lower Europe. Mr. Hudson's lawyers scheduled a third meeting with Eddie, but Mr. Hudson didn't show, which Eddie thought was strange. A few days later, Eddie heard from someone in the Seattle Police Department that Mr. Hudson had died at a motel in Everett, Washington.

“I asked Eddie, what did he make of all he learned back then?”

Was he guilty of what the kid saw? I don't know. I can't tell you. There was a lot of in-you-endos and love smoke, but I can't say that guy was guilty.

You know, did he do it? I don't know. To be clear, Eddie wasn't dismissing Mr. Hudson's actions as horse play or any window. He said he didn't have enough evidence to turn the case over to police.

Students, parents, and Mr. Hudson all stopped communicating with him. So, Eddie said he was left with hearsay. I question everybody. I put down on paper what I was told, but I couldn't tell you one way that other if it actually happened

“because the teacher terminated the interviews in the worst possible way.”

Eddie helped me better understand the investigation. But unfortunately, I wasn't any closer to finding out the extent of Mr. Hudson's abuse. But there was someone else closely involved with the Hudson case. Cheryl Chow became interim principle of Garfield

after the district suspended Dr. Jones. I can't interview Ms. Chow. She died of cancer in 2013. But 16 days before she passed, she married her longtime partner, Sarah Morningstar.

So I called Sarah. I wanted to know if she remembered what Ms. Chow had told her about the 1999 2000 school year at Garfield. Turns out quite a lot. I met Sarah at her house near Lake Washington.

She said that in October 1999 Ms. Chow was brought to Garfield as part of the Dr. Jones cleanup crew. She was supposed to be at Garfield for only two weeks. The two weeks turned into two years? Shortly after Ms. Chow arrived,

she started hearing stories about Mr. Hudson that concerned her. And then, all help real clues.

Ms. Chow first heard about Mr. Hudson's suspect behavior

from a student teacher at Garfield. He and his partner had visited Mr. Hudson on his boat. Mr. Hudson appeared drunk, but that's not what alarmed the young teacher most. Six male students were on board as well

and two of them were spending the night. Ms. Chow ran the student teacher's allegation up the chain to the school district office from there the district took over. Sarah was a teacher and school administrator herself

and confirmed that was the policy. And how it plays out is how it plays out. Our jobs as school administrators is to report it. We are not the judge and jury. For a long time, I was convinced the so-called

So it was a revelation to learn some

we're trying to do the right thing. Ms. Chow responded as a mandatory reporter should by elevating with the student teacher told her. After that, Ms. Chow had to wait for the investigation to take its course.

Same as L. N. Me. Sarah said Ms. Chow got a lot of heat from parents and teachers in the wake of Mr. Hudson's death. I mean, it's to have it. It's mayhem in terms of the climate and the culture of the school.

And staff either were allies of Tom Hudson's or not.

“And then they were seen as like allies of the administration, right?”

It just was terrible.

People like stood up and staff meetings and literally called her a murderer.

She did not kill him. She didn't bully him. She reported what she was told. I understand it's really hard to believe that some of our favorite people let us down.

And that's like beyond minimizing it. But it happens. And the reason why children and women don't come forward is because they aren't believed. Ms. Chow was tough.

She ran for political office and had dealt with public criticism. But Sarah told me this blowback from the Garfield community weight on her. After I talked with Sarah,

“I felt a kinship with Ms. Chow, a woman I knew for just a year.”

Ella and I faced similar retaliation from students, teachers, and parents after Mr. Hudson was put on leave. It's weight on us for more than two decades. All that time, we thought we were the only ones. As for my present day investigation, I did a roadblock.

I had learned that multiple people at the district were getting word of a wide range of allegations about Mr. Hudson all around the same time and that it wasn't just LME sounding the alarm. But neither Sarah nor Eddie could tell me anything new about the scope of Mr. Hudson's abuse. Fortunately, I hadn't exhausted every lead.

The first people Ella and I contacted.

The ones you've already heard from throughout this series, Ella's ex, Jonathan, Toby, Rosie. They're all people we've stayed friendly with since high school, and they were more than willing to talk to us about Mr. Hudson. As for the other kids and Mr. Hudson's orbit,

I didn't know how forthcoming they might be. So many of them had been angry with us back then. But if I wanted to solve this mystery, I had no choice. It was time to start reaching out. Sound side brings you beyond the headlines

with news and conversation rooted in the Pacific Northwest. I'm Libby Dankman, every week I sit down with local journalists for sound sides front page, where we give you a shortcut to understanding the latest news and cultural moments and how they affect us here in the Puget Sound region.

It's all here on sound side on the radio or streaming Monday through Thursday at noon and 8 p.m on KUOW on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. I wasn't looking forward to reaching out to former members of Post 84 for this podcast.

I didn't know what stories awaited me and that scared me. When I report on sexual assault, the survivor's stories stay with me. But this was different. I knew these people. I had known Mr. Hudson.

It felt deeply uncomfortably personal. After a few weeks of texting with former classmates, I was able to locate one post-84 along, willing to sit down with me.

“That's how I found myself driving to the Olympic peninsula,”

a winding two-hour car and very ride from Seattle to meet with Ocean Mason. Ocean was one of the kids who helped save Mr. Hudson's life when he plunged into a crevice on Mount Olympus during that post-84 expedition. And when Mr. Hudson tried to intimidate me from riding critically

about the Mount Olympus incident, Ocean was there, standing by like Mr. Hudson's bodyguard. I plan to ask Ocean about that rescue. But I also knew they were close with former post-84 members. Maybe they would vouch for me after seeing how serious I was about this project.

Ocean's story was typical of many post-84 kids. At first, a little socially awkward looking for belonging, and ultimately finding it through Mr. Hudson's mentorship in the great outdoors. Somebody said, "You are capable of this.

Here, I'm going to show you how to do this. Run this chainsaw. Who hands a 16-year-old at chainsaw?

Like, wow, that was amazing."

You know this story by now. Like, so many of the people we've talked to. Ocean experienced the magic of Mr. Hudson up close. His brilliance at making kids feel like they were part of something powerful. Tom, as an adult in my life, was like, huge.

“He was the person who was guiding all of these things, right?”

We'd spend time together playing Racket Ball. I'd go to his house, and we would work on scuba equipment, or whatever. I was in this classroom, just like very present in my life. As we talked, Ocean started questioning their relationship with Mr. Hudson.

In a way that confused me at first. I wonder what was real, and what wasn't. I wonder when he and I went to play Racket Ball, and we took showers. I wonder if that was him wanting to see me naked.

I wonder if... I'd come here hoping Ocean would connect me to former post members. But it was clear, Ocean was about to reveal something else. At some point during our relationship, we made a bet. And the winner of the bet was that the other person had to sing the star-spangled banner naked in front of the other.

And there was a point, it was the summer before I went to college,

“where I was hanging out with him on his boat,”

and he was drinking.

And he basically bullied me into singing the star-spangled banner in front of him naked.

And I'm pretty sure he was masturbating at the time. And that's not a story, I feel like told to a lot of people. The lights were off or like very dim, so I couldn't see him well. But I... My memory is that he was masturbating, so he wasn't like right in front of me,

but I was one side naked seeing the star-spangled banner with the lights on, and he was at the other end in the dark. And he saw some sort of movement. Yeah, that would make me think that he was masturbating. I wanted to be gone.

It was awful. I didn't want to be there. When you finished singing, like was it just back to normal?

“I think I put my clothes on and just left.”

I don't remember anything more than that. But again, he was like... He was drunk. I would have been 18 and the boat. I think it provided him space that was away.

Right? That was isolating that. Let him do what he wanted to do without oversight without connection. It was a separate space for him. And I don't know how conscious or intentional that was,

but whatever the intent behind it was, that's what it provided isolation. And did you, in that moment, know what had happened was wrong? No. No.

I didn't, was something I never really talked about.

A part of me felt violated. A part of me knew that it was wrong. But I didn't have any words or language for it. I was like, "Oh, that wasn't okay, but he never touched me."

Right? I couldn't say, "I've been assaulted." Right? There was no words for it. And it took me over a decade to recognize that that wasn't okay.

That was like violating. If I wanted to tell that story, I have to tell the whole story. Because otherwise, I said, "I had a teacher who was inappropriate." And what does that mean?

There's that word again, inappropriate. If Mr. Hudson left Ocean feeling this violated, this confused for all these years, the word inappropriate falls very short. Ocean was 18, legally and adult,

when Mr. Hudson bullied them into this humiliating performance. Mr. Hudson didn't make physical contact,

I have to tell you, like, my heart just hurt for you

“because of how humiliating and how exploitative to do that to you.”

It is that pad. You know, I'm so sorry. That happened to you. Thank you. I can't even tell you how meaningful and how hard it is to hear that. This is why I wanted to talk to you,

because nobody needs to do this alone. And I have felt so alone in this for so long. And I don't want anybody else to have to do it alone. Ocean has been hesitant to share this story with others for fear of it being minimized, partly because Ocean minimized it for so long.

This loneliness Ocean talked about. It's heartbreakingly common among survivors. And over time, there's a growing disbelief that the abuser was able to get away with horrible acts in plain sight.

“You know, on reflection there were so many little things, right?”

Like going to play rackable and showering naked with a student. Like he took us to a nude beach when we were in Hawaii, you know, one year. Right? That's not actually really okay. Having conversations about sex with students.

I have memories of being like in a shower at a camp with like several boys and him. And I think he was like, pretending he was going to drop a quarter down somebody's butt crack. Like it was a coin slot. How is that not a giant red flag for any of us? In reviewing Ocean helped me confirm a few things.

First, Mr. Hudson's abuse extended way past

what I heard in high school.

“And second, Mr. Hudson's misconduct with boys imposed 84”

had likely gone on for most of my time at Garfield at least two to three years. I started to wonder if this immensely popular teacher who was clearly grooming boys to satisfy his dangerous impulses had also been grooming parents, teachers, and administrators to look past his deeply problematic conduct.

Which meant to discover the full extent of Mr. Hudson's abuse and those who enabled it, I needed to go back to that brown, vanilla envelope and my pile of documents. Because it turned out the school district actually investigated Mr. Hudson years before I got to Garfield.

And I needed to find out why. That's next on adults in the room. On Episode 6 of adults in the room,

in 1995 Seattle Public Schools launched its first investigation

into Tom Hudson's behavioral students. But at the time, a boy involved said what happened was no big deal. It was just the thing that happened with two people in a dark tender like, you know, like two teenage boys might do. Years later, he breached out to the school district for closure,

creating a paper trail that landed in my inbox. So what happened back then? That's coming up next. Adults in the room is part of Focus, a dedicated documentary channel from KW Public Radio in Seattle,

a proud member of the NPR network. KW podcasts are made possible because of listener support. If you enjoyed this podcast, please make a donation or become a monthly member at KWW.org. Original reporting for this project was done by me,

is older aftery. Ella Hussagan, Genie Andal, and Will James. Our producers are Will James and Alec Cowan. Our editor is Genie Andal. A special big thank you to Maria Coriel Martin.

Logo designed by Alicia Bia, Amelia Peacock,

manages our marketing and promotions.

“KUW's director of new content is Brendan Sweeney.”

Our director of marketing is Michaela Gianotti Boyle.

KUW's chief content officer is Marshall Eisenn. I'm his older aftery.

Thank you so much for listening.

We all remember the song.

“It made it all seem so simple and turns out it's not.”

Who writes influences and kills bills, it gets messy. I'm Scott Greenstone. And I'm Libby Denkman. On sound politics, we tell that story.

“The inside track on how policy gets made in this Washington and the other one.”

And how it impacts you. Listen now on the KUW app or wherever you get your podcasts.