Adults in the Room, Episode 6: The boy in the photograph

This episode includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.

A boy had a crush on a girl from his high school.

He told his mentor, a science teacher, who thought of ways for the boy to spend time with her.

They drove to the woods, an hour east of Seattle, under the pretense that the teacher would show them how to drive stick shift on his Isuzu all-wheel drive truck.

After the driving lesson, the teacher insisted they go skinny dipping at a nearby lake.

As the three of them stood naked, he placed his camera against the truck and set a timer.

3 … 2 … 1 … click.

Months later, that photo would launch an investigation.

Just not the one I was involved in.

I found a mention of that naked photo when I was researching this podcast. It was included in records from an investigation into then Garfield High School science teacher Tom Hudson.

But that investigation… started in 1994.

Which meant the district had already investigated Mr. Hudson for misconduct … five years before I was a senior at Garfield.

That’s when the district launched another inquiry into Mr. Hudson’s behavior with students…

Which led to Mr. Hudson’s suspension…

And ultimately, his death by suicide.

Originally, the boy told the district the photo wasn’t a big deal.

But then… I received a new stack of records from the school district. Included in these documents was an email written in 2019…

by someone who sounded desperate.

The sender’s name was redacted, but administrators had forwarded the email internally, referring to the writer as “he.”

And “he” wanted to review the investigation that wrapped up in 1995.

“My reason is to achieve closure on that chapter in my life which has recently caused a lot of depression and anxiety,” the note said.

I read it again. And again.

Could the author be the boy in the photo?

He’d be almost 50 now.

If I could identify him and track him down, I wondered what he could tell me.

Did the district miss a chance to stop Tom Hudson years before he abused my classmates.

For KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, this is Adults in the Room.

Episode 6… The Boy in the Photograph. I’m Isolde Raftery.

ACT 1

A former Garfield classmate texted me recently.

Her name is Maria Coryell-Martin. Back in high school, she was a member of Post 84, the outdoors club Mr. Hudson led.

For years, I assumed she was upset with me for pushing the school district to investigate allegations of abuse against Mr. Hudson.

But when we connected a few years ago, Maria was nothing but warm.

She wanted to share an experience she had with our former teacher when she was a junior… MARIA CORYELL-MARTIN: He'd invited some students to come on a cruise, kind of like an overnight thing. And I was like, well, that sounds like fun.

Maria said she and three boys from Post 84 joined Mr. Hudson on his boat for the excursion.

Maria and her family trusted him. Maria’s mom was close with Mr. Hudson’s wife. Her brother was friends with his son.

But that day on the boat, the trust evaporated.

Maria told me Mr. Hudson was drinking… heavily. He was also taking pills. Tylenol with codeine.

He talked to the kids about sexual things … she doesn’t remember specifics.

But she vividly remembers what happened next. Mr. Hudson got drunk…he started crying, and getting sick.

The waters were choppy.

Maria felt nauseous … and like a caged animal.

MARIA CORYELL-MARTIN: “ I remember sitting in a small cabin and having a door where we could look out and see the deck. I remember, you know, the sound of it, vomiting overboard and looking out and seeing him // pacing around.”

They docked a few hours from Seattle, on the opposite side of Puget Sound, in a town called Port Ludlow.

But after a few more hours of drinking, Mr. Hudson was in no state to ferry them back home.

The kids conferred in hushed voices… and agreed to call 911.

MARIA CORYELL-MARTIN: “I remember just tension and high emotions and just feeling a deep sense of unease… and talking with the other students on board of just how we needed help or he needed help. And we made the decision to call 911 for EMS.

“I remember us trying to talk to him and him being like, you know, no, no, I'm fine. Don't do that. And we're just like, he is not fine.”

When emergency responders arrived, Mr. Hudson was angry and defiant… but Maria said he eventually gave in to their pleas.

They took him to a nearby hospital.

And one of the kids’ dads drove from Seattle to bring them home.

After that, Maria kept her distance from Mr. Hudson.

But the fear she felt that night stayed with her for a long time.

MARIA: “Driving through Port Ludlow until, as recently as about five years ago, I'd feel nauseous…. It was a deeply uncomfortable experience and I just had no sense of safety. You know, when you're just squirming in a space where you, there's someone really unpredictable and that someone is, you know, the responsible adult who you wanna feel that you can trust… and they feel dangerous.”

Mr. Hudson didn’t abuse Maria physically or sexually. But his actions on the boat did cause her lasting harm.

I asked Maria if anyone had ever told her that Mr. Hudson based them… and she brought up a recent conversation she’d had with her brother.

MARIA: “ So, my brother is six and a half years older than me, and he had a tremendous experience with Tom Hudson and outdoor education and I had never like, had a solid conversation around, Hey, what happened? Did you ever experience anything? And he had, um, experiences that looking in hindsight were pushing boundaries.”

Maria’s brother’s name is Carl. He graduated from Garfield in 1993, seven years before Maria and me.

I wondered if he was the mystery boy in the skinny-dipping photo from 1994.

Maria said he wasn’t… but… maybe Carl and that boy overlapped at Garfield.

Would Carl talk to me, I asked?

The next morning, I got a text.

Carl was happy to chat.

CARL CORYELL-MARTIN: ”This is Carl Coryell-Martin. I consent to be recorded.”

Carl lives in Canada now.

It wasn’t long before he launched into a story about Mr. Hudson.

CARL CORYELL-MARTIN: ”I was over at his house and he was showing me a new gym he installed in his basement. And I felt like there was a coded invitation for he and I to masturbate together.”

I pressed Carl on why he felt Mr. Hudson was inviting him to do this.

Carl said the teacher wasn’t direct about it. He remembered there was a box of tissues on a nearby table… and to Carl, that insinuated something sexual.

But…

CARL C-M: “It was all subtext and deniable… and it was not something I wanted to do.”

Carl said things didn’t go further.

And while this sounded like an uncomfortable situation, it wasn’t a lot for me to go on.

So I asked if Carl could recall anyone who’d been especially close with Mr. Hudson.

I was thinking about the mystery boy in the photograph.

I offered more details from the school records I’d gotten. Any chance he could remember a name?

ISOLDE: “There was a boy, well, he's now a 49-year-old man I think, but he wrote to the school district and I'm like trying to figure out who he is.”

CARL C-M: “Yeah, I think I know who you're talking about. Let me go get my yearbook.”

As Carl flipped through his yearbook, searching for that kid, we made small talk…… and then …

CARL C-M: “Jason Fox”

ISOLDE: “What's his name?”

CARL C-M: “Jason Fox.”

ISOLDE: “Jason Fox, okay.”

CARL C-M: “Probably your guy.”

Jason. Fox.

Now I had a real lead.

Pretty common name… but I was ready to reach out to every Jason Fox there was until I found him.

Act II

I found more than a dozen phone numbers for men named Jason Fox.

I called and texted them all…

including a number for a woman married to a Jason Fox.

Another Jason Fox had a website…. I sent an email to that one.

I know this sounds scattershot. Some days, reporting is like that.

But luckily, within a few hours, I heard back from the Jason Fox with the website.

“I got your email, your text, and my website message… you found me,” he said.

Today, Jason is a sea captain who lives in Maryland with his wife.

He met Mr. Hudson as a freshman at Garfield in 1990.

Jason had just moved to Seattle with his mom and her partner – two women looking for an affordable, gay-friendly city.

New to the area, Jason felt the freedom to be himself.

JASON: “I was always more inclined to talk to teachers about something more, I dunno, sophisticated or philosophical or what, what have you. I was a kid that would wear a tie to school sometimes just was, uh, you know, just sort of presenting myself as a little bit older, more mature.”

Jason joined the outdoors program and said Mr. Hudson singled him out as a leader early on.

He asked Jason to be his teaching assistant… to help him plan trips.

Aaaaand to feed the python that lived in an aquarium in Mr. Hudson’s class.

Which, oh my god…. sounded horrific to me.

JASON: “If for whatever reason the snake decided it wasn't going to eat the live rodent or students would have to, who are interested in kind of circle of life would be, all right, well I get the ride out and we don't have to give it the mercy killing so the snake will eat the–”

ISOLDE: “You guys had to kill the rat.”

JASON: “Yeah, it would've to kill a rat.”

ISOLDE: “How would you kill the rat?”

JASON: “Usually smash its head at some Right. Yielding, hold it by the tail and spin it so its head would, you know, it was pretty quick. It’s a painless death … essentially breaks its neck.”

Jason shared this story matter-of-factly.

And I shuddered as he recounted it.

Not because I’m squeamish. It sounded to me like Mr. Hudson was testing Jason. Seeing just how far he could push this boy.

Jason didn’t disagree with my take… but he insisted the so-called mercy killing was in the service of learning. JASON: “I can almost hear him, uh, his thoughts thinking this about like, well, you know, someone's gotta kind of mentor you along to, you know, get, you know, how are you gonna get to an adulthood if someone's not gonna, you know, push your boundaries a bit.”

As high school went on, Jason grew closer to Mr. Hudson.

He ate dinner at his house and was friends with his family.

Sometimes Jason would stay the night, and bike to school with his teacher in the morning.

Jason describes Mr. Hudson as many of his former students do – larger than life.

He became a father figure… and they talked all the time.

JASON: “Eventually those conversations, would get now in retrospect, you know, inappropriate, where you start going, uh, you're talking about sex and talking about girls in an inappropriate way and, and, and sexuality and, you know, crude jokes.

“Initially I just remember being very much like, you know, you talk to a friend, like you, you had your teenage friend, except that your teenage friend was a teacher.”

Mr. Hudson even bought Jason a subscription to Playboy magazine…

… which Jason rationalized as part of a typical father-son relationship. You know, talking about the birds and the bees.

But then, on an outing to the woods… Mr. Hudson crossed a line with him.

JASON: “The, uh, the so-called bet…”

Ocean Mason told us about the bet in the last episode.

On group trips, Mr. Hudson would often make a wager with a boy.

The loser had to perform a sexually humiliating act.

JASON: “The loser would have to stand on a, uh, a tree stump, uh, naked and sing the national anthem, at full attention.”

ISOLDE: “And so you'd be standing at attention, like is the idea, would you be masturbating or would he?”

JASON: “The attention being, the euphemism fully erect. And, and not necessarily masturbating, but, uh, inevitably having to, to maintain the position of attention while one is singing. and he would just watch, I mean, he wasn't pleasuring himself or anything like that.”

Jason said he lost these bets two or three times.

JASON: “I liked the attention. I thought it was funny. Um, I, I remember feeling like mildly uncomfortable from the sense of, all right, it's time to pay up. It's time. All right, here we go.

“I shook on the bet. So here we are.”

But there was another camping trip… where Mr. Hudson went further.

This was a solo trip, just the two of them.

Jason was 16 or 17, he can’t remember exactly. He and Mr. Hudson shared a tent.

JASON: “It was just the two of us. Uh, and, and we just in a dark tent, we each masturbated. We didn't touch each other.

“There was no assault, no, no physical touching. It was just a thing that happened with two people in a dark tent like, you know, like two teenage boys might do.”

ISOLDE: “Did he, did he like invite you to, or was it just happening? Like how did, how did that come about?”

JASON: “It was a discussion. It was not spontaneous. It was kinda like, Hey, here's a thing we could do.”

ISOLDE: “He said that?”

JASON: “But he initiated it was something… yeah. Generic palette of, Hey, here's a thing we could do tonight, while we're lying awake, trying to fall asleep.”

When he returned home to Seattle, Jason didn’t tell anyone what happened in the tent.

And aside from his wife and a therapist, I am the only person he’s shared this story with.

Jason said that at the time, he didn't think much about those naked evenings in the woods.

He didn’t see himself as a victim… or Mr. Hudson as an abuser.

Jason graduated from Garfield in 1994.

The summer before he left for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, he told Mr. Hudson about a girl he had a crush on.

He wanted to spend more time with her, so Mr. Hudson suggested the three of them drive to a mountain lake outside Seattle.

After that, a naked dip in the lake.

And then the photo… which Mr. Hudson took while they were still naked.

Mr. Hudson gave Jason a copy of the photo.

A few months later, a friend spotted the photo in Jason’s bedroom. She brought it to her mom, who took it to the district.

The district launched an inquiry into Mr. Hudson’s behavior. By then, Jason was well into his first year at the Naval Academy.

JASON: The investigator calls me and I, back in the days of payphones, I remember sitting on a payphone at an appointment we made.

Jason was ready for the skinny dipping question. He and the girl were 18 years old and recent graduates when the photo was taken. Mr. Hudson was no longer their teacher. Nothing illegal there.

But he knew the question that would follow.

“Is there anything else I should know?”

Would Jason tell this investigator, this stranger, about the bets and the masturbation in the tent? He wasn’t sure if that was illegal, but he knew it wasn’t normal.

Disclosing all that seemed like what he ought to do. What a senior officer would tell him to do. Jason, one semester into military school, was immersed in the ethics of right and wrong.

But Jason realized, in that moment, that speaking up could destroy Mr. Hudson’s career.

And it could also derail his own future.

JASON: “This was the Don't Ask Don't Tell era, when, anything that was perceived as, gay or, anything other than a heteronormal behavior was just treated. you were just basically, you were an outcast immediately.”

The Naval Academy was a fresh start for Jason, and he felt the investigation could threaten his status there.

He made the decision while on the phone.

He would stay quiet.

JASON: “I was like, I just need to, to focus and take care of myself. So I protected myself and just to said, no, I'm not gonna bring this upon myself.”

Jason calmly told the investigator that the photo was a stupid mistake. And he had nothing else to report. End of story.

JASON: “The unfortunate consequence is that that protected him too.”

The district sent Mr. Hudson a written warning after their investigation into the photo… ordering him to avoid one-on-one outings with students.

But it’s clear that warning was never enforced.

For years, Jason locked away those memories of Mr. Hudson.

And then, in 2017, the MeToo movement happened. Jason read story after story of people sharing their experiences of abuse.

And something clicked.

JASON: “I had always known like this thing had happened and it was there in the back of my memory. but I didn't have a name for it. It was, you know, the Tom Hudson thing. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, wait a minute. I was abused.

“Like Jonathan and Ocean, it took Jason a long time and a lot of work to unspool the psychological damage Mr. Hudson inflicted.”

He was caught in a tangle of guilt, complicity, and shame.

JASON: “I definitely had the illusion of giving consent because it was so, so gradual and so slow. A little bit at a time, a little bit at a time. You know, know, if one day he just said, Hey, you want to go masturbate in a tent tonight?

“I'm like, no, How dare you ask such a thing?”

Jason began to see how Mr. Hudson operated – by slowly violating a thousand small boundaries until he breached the bigger ones.

Mr. Hudson made Jason feel special. He provided incredible experiences in the outdoors and stepped in as a male role model when Jason needed one.

Which is how grooming works. Predators first build trust so they can steadily erode the standards of what’s acceptable to their victims over time.

It’s those moments of friendship-building that are the hardest for Jason to reconcile. Did Mr. Hudson ever really care about him?

He’s not the only survivor grappling with that question.

Mr. Hudson inspired Jason and the other kids he hurt to make the outdoors central to their lives. He taught them leadership and survival skills that they’ve relied on to this day.

That makes it hard for Mr. Hudson’s survivors to move on from their pasts.

How can they be free of that trauma when Mr. Hudson continues to cast his shadow over them?

Act III

The reporting we’ve done for this podcast has confirmed for me beyond a doubt what I’d suspected for years…

…that Tom Hudson was a predator.

Full stop.

But Jason Fox is far more ambivalent about Mr. Hudson… than I am.

JASON: “There was a lot of good. Things that, that, you know, a lot of good qualities that, that Tom imbued in me and others about, you know, self-reliance and dependency and resilience and, um, you know, how to survive in the world, especially when I go into the military and, and just, how to be compassionate, caring.

“Now all of a sudden, because I now have associated this bad thing with that, um, does that negate all the good? How do I figure out, how to not throw away the, the baby with the bath water?”

Jason understands that Mr. Hudson was abusive and manipulative.

But he believes Mr. Hudson cared about him, too.

Which makes it easier to hold on to the good parts of his time in the outdoor program.

Adventures that made Jason a leader… set him up with lifelong friendships, and brought him to some of the most remote and beautiful places on the planet.

And did Mr. Hudson’s disturbing conduct impact Jason’s sexuality?

Jason has other questions about Mr. Hudson’s impact on him.

Today, Jason is an exhibitionist, meaning he likes when people watch him have sex. He’s gone to sex clubs to play out this fantasy.

JASON: “Am I that way because of him? Did he imbue that to me or was I way that way before I met him? Was it intrinsic? I can't necessarily unpack the brain of a 14, 15, 16-year-old. and I certainly don't, didn't have the self-awareness before any of that. So maybe he did create that. Maybe he didn't. But does it really matter?”

Jason said it’s been healing for him to explore his kink.

As he sees it, you can express non-traditional sexual interests.

With other consenting adults…

… without abusing anyone.

But Jason has also thought about times he’s manipulated people …

Or pushed their boundaries.

Was that him?

Or was that Mr. Hudson’s influence?

JASON: “Now that I've kind of owned this happened, that this was an experience that influenced me… what behaviors, what thoughts do I have now that are a direct consequence of that were malformed? What do I do now that maybe emulates his behavior without even thinking about it?”

ISOLDE: “Wow.”

JASON: “How do I behave around other people? How do I think about people? And then just sort of this deep thought process of trying to extract Tom from my psyche, not purge him, but isolate him.”

Jason isn’t the only Garfield alum working to untangle Mr. Hudson’s impact.

Ocean Mason no longer idealizes the Post 84 days.

…They now think of those experiences as manifestations of Mr. Hudson’s methodical grooming process.

But they are still trying to reconcile Mr. Hudson’s mentorship…and the harm he caused.

OCEAN MASON: “I am, who I am today and I am in the world in the way I am in part due to the things that he gave me and I did in such an incredible way, like, and that's the part of what I can't pull apart is that like they are, they are inextricably linked and it's still hard for me to see cleanly what was mine and what was not mine.

“Was the good in service of the harm, you know, from him? I don't know if there is an answer to that. But I do think that there are ways to get the good without the harm.

“ Like I think there are ways that we can have amazing teachers who trust kids to be themselves, who give them adult responsibilities without harming them in the process, right. Who give them space to grow and make mistakes and I think there are ways to do that without violating children.”

Jonathan Hill, the former president of Post 84, tells me he still carries the weight Mr. Hudson put on him.

JONATHAN: “That doesn't just go away. I still think it's, it's inside of me a bit. You know that deep pain he felt.”

And then there are the girls you’ve heard from.

Rosie Bancroft and Maria. They STILL protect and care for men Mr. Hudson abused as boys… while trying to heal themselves.

… and my best friend Ella Hushagen and me … who reported the abuse allegations against Mr. Hudson and caught hell for it.

We have scars, some deeper than others, that may never fully heal.

I called Seattle Public Schools to interview the superintendent for this podcast. For months, the district didn’t respond.

At first they said they didn't want to talk because it was an old case.

But for a lot of us, it’s not old. The aftershocks of Tom Hudson’s abuses. reverberate today … in every part of the survivors’ lives … in how they love, how they parent, in how they think of themselves…

And they wonder what might have been different if not for the man who preyed on them.

But in this darkness, there is light.

Jonathan, Ocean, and Jason all shared their stories because they want other survivors of abuse to know things can get better.

They took a leap of faith –

took on the risk of personal exposure –

hoping that this awareness will prevent abuse from happening to others, or help those suffering from trauma realize they’re not alone.

Here’s what Ocean told me about going public:

OCEAN: “That's the piece that feels important about this, right? Like that we were each sitting in our own little worlds, maybe with like one or two other people sometimes without having the picture, right? Without having community to heal in, right? If we sit in our silos and we try to heal individually without healing the communal harm too, like, I don't think we can heal all the way.”

It’s not fair that victims have to come forward and bear their pain again for change to happen.

But that’s what most institutions demand before they act against predators.

Too often, we wait for a victim to come forward before intervening.

But what if we could stop predators before they do their damage?

That’s next on the season finale of Adults In The Room.

CREDITS

Adults in the Room is part of FOCUS, a dedicated documentary channel from KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. KUOW podcasts are made possible because of listener support. If you enjoyed this podcast, please make a donation or become a monthly member at KUOW.org.

Original reporting for this project was done by me, Isolde Raftery, Ella Hushagen, Jeannie Yandel, and Will James.

Our producers are Will James and Alec Cowan. Our editor is Jeannie Yandel. Music by BC Campbell. Additional music by Alec Cowan.

Logo design by Alicia Villa. Amelia Peacock manages our marketing and promotions. KUOW’s Director of New Content is Brendan Sweeney. Our Director of Marketing is Michaela Gianotti Boyle. Our Director of Community Engagement is Zaki Hamid. KUOW’s Chief Content Officer is Marshall Eisen.