Former student alleges sexual misconduct by another Mercer Island teacher

High school English teacher Curtis Johnston, who abruptly retired in August, is the second teacher accused of sexual misconduct in recent months.

In August 2011, Curtis Johnston was called to a meeting at the Mercer Island School District’s administrative office. Rumors had been swirling that the 44-year-old high school English teacher was in a romantic relationship with a teenage student.

The student’s mom had voiced concerns to the principal but feared she lacked evidence. Friends had grown suspicious, as did a church counselor, who reached out directly to the school. The two had been seen leaving in her car after a school charity event. She had become Johnston’s teaching assistant halfway through the semester, after a school trip overseas where they spent days alone together while she was in the hospital. He was seen leaving prom with her. He attended her graduation party.

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Yet the purpose of the meeting, according to school records, was “To protect Curtis and the District.”

“It is important that the cards are put on the table and (we) take any appropriate actions,” the meeting summary said. “It is also important to make sure the issue is dealt with and put in the past.”

The meeting that summer was attended by members of the Human Resources department and a union representative. Johnston repeatedly brushed off the concerns about an inappropriate relationship, assuring the group that he was merely acting as a “father figure” and “family friend” to the teenager in question, who had lost her dad to cancer the year before. They took his word for it.

Johnston, who did not respond to multiple requests from InvestigateWest, went on to teach for another 14 years. He announced his retirement in August, a few days after InvestigateWest and the Mercer Island Reporter published an investigation into a different former English teacher, Gary “Chris” Twombley, who engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an underage student in 2015 — allegations that the current school district kept quiet. The case was referred to the King County prosecutors’ office by the Mercer Island Police Department in 2024, but charges weren’t pursued because the statute of limitations had passed.

When the student saw Johnston’s post about his retirement on LinkedIn, including all the people congratulating him, she was distraught. The rumors had been true, she later told InvestigateWest. Their relationship started her senior year of high school – when he was 44 and she was 18 – and continued through her freshman year of college.

“I want people to know that he’s done this,” said the 33-year-old, who agreed to speak to InvestigateWest on the condition of anonymity.

Public records obtained by InvestigateWest reveal how school leaders disregarded the serious concerns raised about Johnston from the student’s mother, a church counselor and a fellow student. Dozens of former students, teachers, and Mercer Island residents described a school culture that they say helped enable the abuse. Many said that teachers at the affluent public school often treated children as adults or peers, which blurred boundaries and normalized inappropriate student-teacher relationships. And that administrators brushed aside concerns to maintain the public school’s prestigious reputation in one of the 100 richest ZIP codes in the U.S., according to Forbes.

“In most schools, if the school knew that there was a sexual interaction going on, or if there was boundary crossing of a physical nature, somebody might step in and try to stop that, or report it, or intervene in some way,” said Charol Shakeshaft, an emeritus professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied school employee sexual misconduct since the 1980s.

“But if the norm for the school is that everybody acts that way, they might not try to even hide it,” she added.

‘That’s when he kinda swooped in’

When the former student signed up to travel to Cambodia and Vietnam in Spring 2011 for a trip with two dozen other students and teachers from Mercer Island High School, she was excited to see a different part of the world and get out of the “Mercer Island bubble.”

But after just a few days in Cambodia, she got sick and had to be hospitalized.

While the rest of the group continued to Vietnam, the student stayed behind with Johnston for three days. She had never had Johnston as a teacher, but he was well-known among students for his college advising business and for organizing international trips. They talked about photography, which they both enjoyed, and the student’s recent struggles after losing her dad.

“I was in a state of feeling very lost,” the student recalled. “That’s when he sorta swooped in.”

She recalls Johnston paying special attention to her at school when they returned. She became his teaching assistant through a program, still in practice today, that allowed them to spend more time alone without raising alarms. They began texting and emailing regularly.

Not long after, he invited her over to see his apartment. At first, it felt like friendship, she said. But about a month after they returned from Vietnam, they had sex, she said. The two often drove to secluded parking lots or met at his apartment. She recalled him caressing her legs under his desk in a shared school office, a popular student hangout that was often referred to as “The Man Cave.” The office, a converted storage closet that had only one door and window, got its namesake because, for a period of time, only male teachers had desks there.

Her friends had started to grow concerned, but she was quick to deny that anything was going on.

On April 20, 2011, two of her friends decided to wait in the high school parking lot after a wheelchair basketball game fundraiser to see if Johnston and the student would leave together. They watched as Johnston got into her car and drove away. The friends decided to follow them.

When the friends arrived at Johnston’s home in Issaquah, the student’s empty car was parked outside, the friend told InvestigateWest, wishing to remain anonymous to protect her friend’s identity.

Johnston later told the principal, John Harrison, that the student had driven him home that night because he had “three flat tires,” school records show.

The student recalls being interviewed by Harrison, but the interview did not appear in school records obtained by InvestigateWest. She recalls denying the rumors of the relationship because she didn’t want Johnston to get in trouble. But in hindsight, she wishes the school had done more to intervene.

After prom, Johnston was seen leaving with the student. She had undergone surgery the day before and wasn’t feeling well.

The student told InvestigateWest that they had gone back to his apartment, where she fell asleep because of all the meds she was on. Her mom said she stayed up for hours, calling her daughter repeatedly, worried something had happened.

The next morning, the student told her mom that she had been at an after-party.

“I was lying to my mom, telling her I was with my friends all the time, but I wasn’t. I was going to see him,” she said. “I hate that I lied to her, and she’s a victim in this, too.”

Her mom said she had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right, but she also felt indebted to Johnston for caring for her daughter at the hospital in Cambodia.

“There were just so many times I just gave him the benefit of the doubt when I shouldn’t have,” she told InvestigateWest.

Little repercussions

In July 2011, Johnston told Harrison, the principal, that the student’s mom had asked him to drive her daughter home after prom. He claims that he drove her straight home and knew her address because she had dog-sat for him the month prior. During the drive, he gave her “teacher/dad” like advice because she was upset, he told the principal.

School records show that the two came up with a list of “talking points” Johnston should stick to if other students or parents brought up their relationship: that it was just a rumor, that it was disappointing how kids were coming after him after he’d worked so hard, and that he was just a friend of the student’s family.

Harrison, who is now the chief of staff for the nearby Bellevue School District, declined an interview request from InvestigateWest after consulting with a lawyer.

After that meeting, Harrison interviewed the student’s mom, school records show. She told Harrison that it was clear that Johnston had overstepped his professional boundaries and that she was uncomfortable with how close he had become with her daughter. She wanted his unprofessional behavior to be documented in his file. It was during this conversation that she learned that Johnston had left prom with her daughter, she told InvestigateWest.

The following Wednesday, Johnston attended the personnel meeting at the district office.

While the meeting largely centered on his relationship with the student, other issues were also raised, including a potential conflict of interest regarding his private college advising business and the financing of international trips he had organized throughout the years. (School records show that Johnston was later reprimanded for drinking with underage students during the 2012 trip to Southeast Asia, leading to future trips being canceled.)

Regarding the student, Johnston told the group that he “now understands the policies and the areas that I may have been overreaching in being a ‘father figure’ to a struggling student,” according to school records.

Mark Roschy, the school district’s HR director at the time, said the district would likely issue a letter outlining Johnston’s “egregious policy violations that clearly crossed the line,” according to the school records. Roschy, who now holds the same role at the Edmonds School District, did not respond to a request for comment.

But the discipline was nominal.

Johnston was instructed not to handle students’ medication, drive alone with them, communicate using private communication tools, or give gifts that could indicate favoritism, and to review the employee handbook regarding professional boundaries with students. He was also instructed to develop “procedures and protocols” for school-sponsored overnight trips.”

Not long after Johnston was disciplined, the student left for college, and he flew to visit her for the first time.

They kept seeing each other throughout her freshman year of college, she said. He’d given her a credit card to book hotel rooms for his visits and bought her expensive gifts, including two Tiffany necklaces. She had access to his Amazon account and used it to buy things she needed for school.

Looking back, she sees how the relationship took a toll on her mental health. He was controlling, she said, which led her to isolate herself from friends and family. She struggled with depression and weight loss. Her “double life” made it difficult for her to connect with people her own age, she said.

“I was in a really dark place,” she recalled.

The following summer, she started to distance herself from him. Before she left to go back to college, she ended things. He told her he hopes she doesn’t think badly of him, she recalled.

Years later, she told her mom and later a work friend about the inappropriate relationship. After that, she tried to erase him from her life, blocking him on social media, getting rid of text messages, pictures, emails, letters and gifts.

“He f--ked up my life in a lot of ways, and it’s not like he just left and that went away,” she said.

This story was first published by InvestigateWest. Read the full reporting at investigatewest.org, which dives deeper into how district officials have reacted to the controversy, teacher observations, and "the Man Cave."

InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Visit investigatewest.org/newsletters to sign up for weekly updates.