‘I want people to know he’s done this’: Student alleges sexual misconduct by another Mercer Island teacher

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. 

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.

A beloved Mercer Island teacher was accused twice of sexual misconduct with students. The school district kept it quiet.

Gary “Chris” Twombley was put on administrative leave in December 2023

InvestigateWestMoe K. Clark

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.

‘The Man Cave’

How the district handled accusations against Johnston was indicative of a broader school culture that enabled inappropriate student-teacher relationships, former students and teachers told InvestigateWest.

Julia Seidman found it odd when she started teaching at Mercer Island High School in 2010 that a teacher’s office space was known to many students and teachers as “The Man Cave.” 

“It was just really common for there to be groups of students just kind of hanging out in there with teachers before and after school,” said Seidman, who was 25 when she started teaching English at the school.

It was also common for teachers in the Man Cave to have teaching assistants, and Seidman felt some abused the program and made it a “cool club.” Both students who came forward with allegations against Twombley and Johnston were teaching assistants. 

Seidman said those teachers had students bring them coffee, make them lunch and even help create birthday invitations for a teacher’s daughter.

“It always felt a little uncomfortable. But it was also like, ‘OK, well, everybody here seems to think this is OK. So, you know, I guess it’s OK?” she recalled thinking. “There’s nothing intrinsically harmful about making lunch for your teacher, right? It’s only when you see those things as part of this bigger picture of (the teachers) seeing themselves as exceptional and entitled to different norms than the rest of the world.”

Mercer Island Schools Reviewing Sex Abuse Rules After Outcry

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InvestigateWestMoe K. Clark

Shakeshaft, who often serves as an expert witness in court regarding teacher sexual misconduct, said the “man cave” should have been a red flag to administrators. It desensitized students and teachers to believe “that this is just normal,” she said. 

“That’s very much grooming behavior,” Shakeshaft said. 

She said any activity or program that allows teachers more access to students, such as the teacher assistant program or international trips, should require additional guidelines and oversight.

In fall 2012, a young female teacher was assigned a desk in the “Man Cave.” Soon after the school year began, she reported to school leaders that Johnston and another teacher were behaving inappropriately in front of colleagues and students, including excessive swearing and talking about being hungover, using marijuana and “flying in” girlfriends for the weekend. 

The new teacher, whose name is redacted in the school records, said the office space was a “hostile work environment” and asked to move. After little action was taken, she resigned just eight weeks into the semester, according to school records. Johnston was required to complete an hourlong training.

Marissa Villegas, who graduated in 2011 and was a teaching assistant her senior year, said teachers like Johnston and Twombley had a “cult-like following” that was “almost exclusively girls.” At the time, she thought it was normal for students and teachers to text, but now, as a kids’ soccer coach, she finds it problematic.

“It was like such a culture of 15-, 16-, 17-, 18-year-old girls being enamored with these adult men who should have been looking out for them, who instead seemed to thrive on the attention,” she said.

Seidman, who left the school in 2017 and ultimately changed careers, said she never witnessed anything egregious enough to report to school leaders. But looking back, she said so much of the problematic behavior had been normalized, which made it difficult to assess.

“I wish there was some way I would have known and could have done something,” Seidman said.

Best practices 

If concerns have been raised regarding a teacher spending alone time with a student where there’s suspected sexual contact, Shakeshaft said it’s not best practice to go directly to the student or teacher. “Of course the teacher is going to say nothing’s going on,” she said. “That’s not really a surprise.”

Instead, the first step should be for the administrator in charge to notify the police so they can investigate. “That’s a crime,” she said. School administrators should also closely monitor the teacher and talk to other students and colleagues who might have observed them together. 

If a school receives an anonymous report, school administrators don’t need to know who the victim is or have concrete evidence to start investigating, she stressed. 

“That’s a common cop-out I hear,” said Shakeshaft, who recently published a book culminating her decades of research titled "Organizational Betrayal: How Schools Enable Sexual Misconduct and How to Stop It."

Guidance from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which provides funding and technical assistance to K-12 school districts across the state, recommends that if a staff member has knowledge or “reasonable cause” to believe that a school employee might be abusing a student, they should first contact the superintendent, who will then determine if law enforcement should be notified.

The Mercer Island School District requires all staff to complete two courses each year regarding sexual misconduct and maintaining professional boundaries with students, according to the district's spokesperson.

Fred Rundle, the superintendent for the Mercer Island School District, told InvestigateWest that he had not been made aware of any allegations of sexual misconduct involving Johnston since he joined the district in 2013. But since allegations against Twombley were made public, he’s been working with the school board to convene a committee to review the district’s policies and protocols related to teacher misconduct and student safety. 

“It wouldn’t be right for us as a district not to take this opportunity to analyze ourselves and see how we can make this a safer environment,” school board member Cristina Martinez told InvestigateWest. “I’m appalled, and this shouldn’t happen to anybody.”

The new committee, which will be selected by the school board, is planned to meet for the first time in November, though the scope of the committee’s work and whether its discussions will be public has yet to be determined. 

While the plans are still in the early stages, the committee will conduct a broad review of policies and training, including how to better educate kids on boundary crossing and how to report teacher misconduct. 

The committee will also look at how teacher misconduct is investigated once it’s reported to the school.

In both Twombley’s and Johnston’s cases, concerns had been reported to the school at the time of the alleged abuse, but they were minimized or brushed aside by administrators, school records show. 

Rundle said it’s challenging to investigate allegations against teachers when administrators aren’t given enough information.

“Because then all we have is an allegation against the staff member, and we can alert them and say, ‘Hey, this has been alleged. There’s nothing about it. But want to give you a heads-up,’” he said. 

“As the district, we can’t just go after and start taking action on that staff member without being able to really do an investigation,” he added. 

Rundle said if a concern is raised about a teacher, he would first reach out to the student in question and their parents. “Eventually, it would be talking to the staff members who would be around in that area,” he added. “It’d be monitoring that, and it could be also going to that staff member and saying, ‘Hey, there’s a concern of what this looks like.’”

He said other times, they might start by contacting an outside organization to make a child abuse and neglect report, or involving the school resource officer. “I know the community wants to know if X then Y, but it’s not always that simple,” he said.

Dan Glowitz, a Mercer Island school board member who pushed for the allegations against Twombley to be made public, worries that his colleagues are treating Twombley’s misconduct as an “isolated incident” and not indicative of a broader issue at the school. He’s skeptical that the newly formed committee will have an impact.

“Committees are sometimes what you do to bury things,” he said. “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing.”

He wants more transparency around how teacher misconduct is handled by the district. He’s been seeking more information regarding another English teacher who quietly left in 2019.

Eric Ayrault, who taught in the English Department from 1997 until 2019 and for a time had an office in the “man cave”, was under investigation by the school district for misconduct related to “maintaining professional staff/student boundaries” before his resignation, school records show, though the actual investigative report was not released to InvestigateWest in time for publication. 

An April 2018 letter from the district to Ayrault said he was under investigation for allegedly making “gender-directed” comments and creating “a hostile, offensive or intimidating environment” in violation of the school’s policy prohibiting sexual harassment of students, according to school records.

The three-week investigation concluded “without a finding.” The same day the investigation concluded, Ayrault signed a separation agreement to resign effective Jan. 10, 2019, the records show.

Ayrault, who did not respond to a request for comment, has taught at seven schools in Colorado and California since, according to his LinkedIn.

Glowitz, who attended Mercer Island High School, believes the community should be notified when a teacher is put on administrative leave for allegations of sexual misconduct. And he hopes that any internal investigation will be made public once the identity of the victim and any identifying information is redacted. 

Shakeshaft said community notification regarding teacher sexual misconduct might be limited by teacher union contracts, though it’s still possible. Typically, the announcement will be vague unless formal charges are filed or the person is arrested, she said.

“A lot of it is guided by the school’s legal department, about how much they’re willing to say in terms of worrying that they might get sued for something,” she added.

Glowitz would also like to see an audit conducted to see if current staff are adhering to existing policy, which states that interactions between students and staff should occur in public spaces, that teachers shouldn’t give students rides home, and electronic communications should only occur within the school’s email system.

“We can’t bury our heads in the sand on this,” he added.

Lasting impact

The former student who had a relationship with Johnston wishes the Mercer Island School District had done more to protect students from being abused by teachers.

“I get really upset that the school board has just been able to say, ‘Oh, I had no idea, I didn’t know this was happening,’” she said, referring to the school board’s response to allegations made against Twombley. “It’s so clear to me that they’ve been sweeping things under the rug, and that they could have done so much more to protect people.”

She feels protective of the former student who reported Twombley in December 2023, whose story was forced into the spotlight. 

“For so long, I thought it was just me, and to hear that it’s not just me, I want victims to know that they’re not alone,” she said. “It just makes me sick to my stomach, and I just wonder how it happened for so long.”

It’s taken years of therapy to begin to unravel the long-term impacts the inappropriate relationship had on her. She struggles with intimacy, trust and being vulnerable with people. She wonders what her life would have been like if Johnston hadn’t taken advantage of her as a teenager.

Opening up about the abuse has been healing, she said. But it’s only been in the last few years that she felt ready to tell more friends and family, nearly 15 years later. 

“I felt like if I had stayed silent, he would have won once again, and he would have gotten what he wanted,” she said. “Being able to speak up has allowed me to free myself.”