June 25, 2026 • 50 mins
Throughout high school, Stephanie carried a painful secret. Years later, she’s ready to confront what happened. And make sure it never happens again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I have something exciting to share with you.
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to do for a long time. Every piece has been
designed and curated for our Betrayal community. We've got mugs, shirts, stickers,
and a guided Betrayal journal filled with thoughtful prompts. Whether
(00:22):
it's for yourself or as a gift for someone you
know who loves the show, these pieces help support the
work we do. Visit Betrayal podcast dot shop to explore
the full collection. Pre Orders are open now. Hi everyone,
it's Andrea. Before we start this episode, I want to
let you know that we will be talking explicitly about
(00:43):
the realities of child sexual abuse, so please be mindful
with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I remember everything that man, for so long had so
much control over me. I cannot just stand by and
do nothing. You will not get away with this.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Today we are sharing Stephanie's story. Stephanie grew
up in upstate New York, near Albany with her parents
and siblings.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My parents had a very tumultuous relationship. I don't think
I coped with the chaos well. I spent a lot
of time in my room.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
In her room, it was quiet, looking out her window
at the woods of upstate New York. Stephanie dreamed of
a sunny and bright, faraway place, Los Angeles, and.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Just had this obsession with the glitz and the glamour
and how exciting it was then, especially for a little
girl in upstate New York, where it snows in its
gray and its gross. La always just had this sunshine
to it and always looked like it would be a
very happy place.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
She hoped she could live there one day. As Stephanie
got older, her parents started arguing more and more. Home
was an exhausting place to be. Her parents split up
and got back together often.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That coincided with really difficult middle school years. Friends would
come and go, and it was really difficult dealing with
that in tandem with things that were going on with
my parents.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
When Stephanie was in seventh grade, her parents announced that
their family would be moving across the country to Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I absolutely did not want to move to Arizona. I
was quite literally kicking and screaming, you can't even stay
together for a year. Why the hell are we moving
across the country.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But Tucson did have one major perk. It was closer
to la.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
They're like, look, we can drive from Tucson Hollywood anytime
you want. If you stop, we'll take you to Hollywood
on a trip. So that kind of softened the blow
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But when she arrived at her new middle school, she
struggled to make friends. The girls in her grade were
not welcoming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Girls are just mean. If anyone has been a middle
school girl, you know that they can be very unkind.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
She spent most of her time at school alone, and
life at home was not much of a comfort. Her
parents were still arguing all the time. It was lonely.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
When I was in eighth grade, I started drinking and
smoking weed and started hanging out with girls that were
a little bit older than I was. And that whole
summer in between eighth grade and ninth grade was just
a lot of drinking in the desert.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The desert stretched fast and shapeless around her. She couldn't
figure out where she belonged in this landscape.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
There were signs that I was unraveling I had withdrawn
a lot.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Stephanie's mom noticed a change in her and was concerned,
so she took her to see a doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I remember being hunched over, looking down, and I remember thinking,
this is how he's going to know that I'm depressed
because I can't even sit up straight. That's when I
was diagnosed with depression.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Her doctor prescribed her antidepressants. Just a few weeks later,
Stephanie started her freshman year of high school.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I went into my freshman year very much alone, feeling
very much isolated, very much broken. I felt like I
didn't really have anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
On the first day of school, Stephanie went from class
to class, meeting her teacher and new classmates.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
I go into my Spanish class and the teacher, Mark Lyndreud,
is standing there. It was very evident right away that
he was trying to come off as that young, cool,
hip teacher, like I want to relate to you guys.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
While his life sounded exotic, he.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Would say I went to Spain and I ran with
the bulls.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
He was still relatable.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He was very into sports. He was one of the
JV coaches on the football team and loved Star Wars.
He used to teach in La. So that perked my
ears of oh cool, like this teacher used to live
in LA, Like awesome, I love LA.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Some kids thought mister Lyndrude was kind of cheesy, but
he always made class fun and he was only twenty
six years old.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And so I'm like, okay, he's not that much older
with us. He is kind of the young hip teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Sevanies High School had a period in the mornings before
classes started, called zero.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
If you needed to do homework or you needed extra help,
you could go in. At that point, I didn't really
want to be home at all, so I started going
to the zero hour.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
One day, during zero hour, Stephanie was walking through the
hallways trying to find a place to do her homework.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I walked by mister Lyndrud's room and there was no
one in there, or maybe one or two people, and
I said, Okay, this looks like a safe place for
me to go to.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She stepped into his classroom.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
His room felt safe because it was quiet. There wasn't arguing,
there weren't people yelling.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
She sat down and did her homework. The next day,
she came back to his classroom in the morning, mister
Lyndrud was always welcoming.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It was just sometimes me and him, sometimes other people.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Soon she was going to mister Lyndrud's room during zero
hour most days. There she didn't have to work about
The mean girls in her grade were her parents' arguments.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'd had so many friends at different schools hurt me
and I really didn't trust other students.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Mister Lyndrud was easier to talk to. He asked her
lots of questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Where are you from? How long have you lived here?
And then he started opening up a little bit about
I came from Texas, I have an ex fiancee. He
trusted me with personal information, and it filled this void
that I wasn't feeling with friends or with my family.
He was really the only person who would sit down
(07:40):
and listen to me and hear me, and I just
didn't have anyone else like that in my life at
that time.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
One day, Stephanie asked to use his computer for a
homework assignment, and.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I'm on his computer and he had his AOL instant
messenger up, and that in a way almost added to
him being that cool, relatable teacher because it's like, oh,
we're on instant Messenger as students. Oh you're on instant Messenger.
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
A message popped up from a woman named Amanda.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
He's like, Oh, that's just my friend Amanda from LA.
Just tell her you know your student using my computer.
And then another one popped up and he's like, Oh,
that's my ex girlfriend. Just tell her I'm busy, or
that you're a student or whatever. I'm thinking, Oh, he
trusts me to respond to all these people in his life.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And Stephanie was starting to trust him too.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It became sort of a friendship and it started to
feel like a very safe place for me to be
in his room.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Eventually, mister Lyndrud told her that she could ditch the
formal way of addressing him, so he stopped being mister Lyndrude,
her Spanish teacher and became Mark, her friend.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
There was one day that I had left school and
I had a question about my Spanish homework, and because
I had been responding through his aim to people, obviously
I knew what his screen name was.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So she sent him a message on AIM asking how
to conjugate a verb in Spanish. Mark responded he was.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Very professional and he explained it to me, and I
apologize sorry reaching out to you here. I just wanted
to make sure I got the homework done and he
said it's okay.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Soon, Stephanie started messaging Mark with homework questions more often.
He would help her, and then their messages moved to
other topics.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
He would say, what are you doing or what are
you up to? Or what are your plans this weekend?
He made me feel like I could just talk to
him about anything that was going on in my life
and that I could trust him. There was part of
me that kept thinking like is this weird? Is this appropriate?
Like should we be having this conversation? But also he
is just being nice and friendly and maybe he does
(09:53):
recognize that I just need a friend.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
If he was offering friendship, she would take it even
and if it was a little unusual. Then one day,
a few weeks later, Mark suggested that they hang out
outside of school.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He asked me, is there a park by your house?
Is there anywhere we could meet? And I happened to
live across the street from this giant park.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
He told her to meet him there on Friday night.
When Friday night came Stephanie told her parents she was
meeting a friend and started walking to the park.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is when I started to feel nervous. What are
we meeting at the park? For fifty percent of me
thought it was weird, but fifty percent of me also said, well,
this feels safe because he's meeting me in a very
public place. All my neighbors are there, a lot of
people from our school are going to be there, so
this must be okay because it's a very, very public park.
(10:54):
He made me feel like we were friends at that point,
and I really didn't have anyone else to hang out with,
especially on a Friday night.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
When she got to the park, a green ASUV pulled
into the parking lot and Mark stepped out. He looked
different than he did at school.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
He had a hat on. He has this very distinct
bald head, so I remember thinking, okay, that's kind of
a disguise, so maybe this isn't okay that we're meeting up,
and I started to feel really uneasy. He starts walking
toward me very aggressively, and he just picks me up
and kisses me, and I just froze. It never occurred
(11:33):
to me that that's what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
As a fourteen year old, Stephanie was overwhelmed and confused.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I didn't know what to do. My brain couldn't process
what was happening.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Stephanie walked home from the park that night, desperately trying
to make sense of this. Mark was her teacher and
she thought he was her friend.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
What just happened to risk being in this park to
his teaching And I'm like, he must really like me
to be willing to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
After that night, Mark began messaging Stephanie more and more,
and then he started driving over to her house and
parking his car outside on the street.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It would be later at night, and so I would
just go outside and sit in his car with him.
He would have me in the backseat and make out,
and then I would have to go to school the
next week like nothing had ever happened.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It was disorienting.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
He's coming over to make out with me. He's also
my teacher, but I'm sitting his class and nobody knows.
And it was a very very confusing spot to be in,
feeling uncomfortable, but just feeling like someone cared, that someone
cared about me enough to listen to me. And want
to be around me.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Mark was grooming her. Grooming is a term used to
describe the process perpetrators use to control their victims. They
start by gaining their victims trust, then isolating them from
their community, labeling their own abuse as a shared secret,
and finally controlling and coercing their victim into staying silent.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
He started telling me, you can never say a word
to anybody. You can never say anything because it's my
dream to be a big football coach. And if you
tell anyone, my dream is ruined. My life is ruined.
I will be blacklisted in everything that I want to
do if you tell anyone. And what are people going
to say about you if they know this is happening.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephanie did what he asked. She didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I couldn't process what was actually happening.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So Mark processed it for her.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He told her, now we've taken this relationship a little
bit of a step further, and we trust each other more.
To do this. In a weird way, I think this
secrecy made me feel like we had this special, trusting relationship.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But keeping the secret meant Mark quickly became the only
person she could talk to. She couldn't talk to anyone
else about what was really happening. So Mark became Stephanie's
closest connection and her only one.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I went into the school year isolated, and now I'm
even more isolated because I can't tell anyone what's going on.
I can't tell everyone who I'm hanging out with at night.
I was rewarded for my silence with attention, with the
attention that I wasn't getting anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
In early January, Stephanie went to Mark's house to watch
a football game. That was the first night he raped her.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I was just very confused. I think I froze. I
couldn't make sense of it happening. And then as soon
as he was done and was like getting dressed, he said,
I guess this makes you my girlfriend now.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Every time Stephanie was uncomfortable or confused or frozen, Mark
jumped in to explain her own feelings to her. He
told her, this is what trust felt like.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Maybe he does really care about me and love me
because he was risking everything and he was risking that
for me.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Mark told Stephanie he was in love with her.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
He made it seem like it was an actual relationship.
For Valentine's Day. He took me to the drive in
and we saw how to lose a guy in ten days.
I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Stephanie saved the ticket stub. She put it in a
box with other mementos from her time with Mark. Mark
started inviting Stephanie over to his house. She told her
parents she was at a friend's and when she was
over at Mark's house, he told her it was only
fair for her to pitch in with household chores.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It wasn't uncommon for me to clean his house. In fact,
it was an expectation. He would have me fold his
shirts a very specific way.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
He explained to Stephanie that this is what being in
a relationship was like. She believed him.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
As he was getting closer to me and making me
feel special. He started somewhat flirting with this other girl
that I was friends with, and I started to feel
jealous because I'm like, oh, I'm losing his attention.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
One day, that girl mentioned something about Coach, which is
what a lot of students called Mark. Hearing her talk
about Mark, Stephanie couldn't keep their secret in any longer.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I just snapped and I was like, Coach is the
one who's been texting me. We're like hanging out, and
she just went silent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
A few days later, Stephanie was at school when she
was asked to see the guidance counselor.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He looked at me and he said, are you having
a relationship with mister Lyndrud And I said no. I
denied it because he had put the fear of God
in me that if I told anyone my life was over,
let alone my life his life. So of course I
(17:21):
was going to be silent because I didn't want to
be the person who crushed his dreams and ruined his life.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
After Stephanie told a classmate that she was hanging out
with their Spanish teacher, the guidance counselor called Stephanie into
his office. He asked her if anything inappropriate was going
on with mister Stephanie denied it.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Of course I was going to be silent because I
didn't want to be the person who crushed his dreams
and ruined his life.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
School administrators questioned mister Lyndrud as well.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
He said nothing happened. The school was like, well, they say,
nothing's going on, and they didn't do any investigation. There's
nothing further.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But rumors had already started spreading through the school as
a heads up. These comments are cruel and hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
People were calling me teacher fucker, and people were like, oh,
I saw her under his desk, and that just further
isolated me more and more. I already didn't have friends,
and now I'm being labeled a slut a whore.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
She was shamed. The few people she was friendly with
at school started avoiding eye contact when she walked down
the hallway. She could hear the girls in her grade
whispering about her as she passed. One day, someone said
something really horrible straight to her face, and.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
The principle was in the hallway and I went up
to him sobbing, and I said, I'm the student that
these rumors are about. Make it stop, Please make it stop.
And he said, well, I can't just get on the
loud speaker and tell everyone that it's not true.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I want to pause here for a moment. When I
heard this part of Stephanie's story, I was shocked by
how many adults knew what was going on and didn't
do anything about it. I think about how alone she
must have felt. Stephanie was trying to protect Mark, but
nobody was protecting her. Now the idea of telling the
(19:46):
truth felt even more impossible.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I was just in so much pain and withdrawal from
everything because the worst possible thing was happening to me.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Through it all, the only person she could talk about
this with was Mark.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That brought me closer to him because I didn't have anybody,
so the rumors and the hurt made me turn to him.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
For her entire freshman year, Mark was the only person
Stephanie really felt was in her corner. Then at the
end of the school year, Mark took a job teaching elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think he got spooked and he left.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But leaving wasn't an option for Stephanie. That summer, Mark
introduced her to his parents.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
He lied to them and said I was nineteen. I
was fifteen. But it made me feel so mature and
so much older, and that's what everyone, when you're a
teenager wants to feel.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Mark's parents welcome Stephanie in.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
They would have me over for dinner, and his mom
was giving me books to read. His mom was giving
us restaurant recommendations. They're like, oh, next time, before you
guys go to the drive and you should go to
this pizza place and get the cal zone.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Mark and Stephanie spent nearly every day together.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We went to the beach and I have photos of
us at the beach together. Having him act that way,
it was like, Okay, this is real, this is a relationship.
I had nothing to compare it to, but it felt real.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Mark told everyone they met that Stephanie was nineteen, and
he asked her to lie about her age. If people asked,
he said age was just a number.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
At some point, I really started to believe that I
was older. That's how much he had me lying to
people that I truly, in some weird way, was like,
oh no, I'm nineteen.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Stephanie got a fake ID for Mark's birthday. That year.
They went out to a bar to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
We went to those New Orleans themed bar and if
you flash your breasts you get beads, And the whole
time we were there, he just kept encouraging me to flash,
the bartenders, to get more drinks, just sexualizing me. This
whole entire bar saw me topless.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
For almost two years. Mark had been her gateway to
the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I couldn't drive. I couldn't go anywhere. If I wanted
to do anything, he would pick me up, he would
drive me. I had to be completely completely dependent on him.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Relying on Mark was beginning to feel suffocating. A few
weeks after his birthday, Stephanie's sister came to town.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I went out with my big sister and her friends,
and I was feeling so much freer because I did
not have to depend on him for attention or something
to do.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That year, Stephanie turned sixteen and got her driver's license.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And that is definitely where things started to change for me. Gradually,
I started being able to go outside his bubble a
lot more. I'm seeing healthy relationships. My world opened up
to so much because I had been so sheltered by him.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
She was still going over to Mark's house a lot,
and he was still asking her to clean up and
do laundry for him. One day she was at his
house by herself.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I just remember there being a lot of papers everywhere,
and I'm like, I need to organize this. I can't
stare at these papers anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
She went to put them in a filing cabinet. That's
when a document caught her eye.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And that's when I found his birth certificate. I pulled
it out and I looked at it, and I'm not
good at math, but I'm doing the math in my head.
When I'm sitting there as a sixteen year old, I'm like,
holy shit, he's thirty two.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mark had told her he was twenty eight, four years
younger than he actually was. As she stood there staring
at his birth certificate, she had a moment of clarity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Clearly, you know you're doing something wrong if you're lying
to tell me that you're younger. And that's when everything
started clicking for me. Of he's twice my age. This
isn't right.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When Mark came home, Stephanie confronted him.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I said, I found your birth certificate, so I know
you're thirty two. And his response was well, I was
already feeling like Chester the molester. I didn't want to
make it worse.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Stephanique laired at him, disgusted.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
What the hell's wrong with you? You were thirty when you
met a fourteen year old. You want me to trust
you with everything, and I don't even know how old
you really are. I want to be on a break.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Mark's face dropped.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
What I said, Yeah, we're on a break.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Something between them had shifted. Mark could sense it too.
He looked scared.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I think that he realized he was losing control of me,
and he spiraled. He said, I'm going to marry you.
I'm looking for rings.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Stephanie almost laughed at him.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I am sixteen years old and a thirty two year
old man is asking me to marry him.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
She left his house. Mark called and texted her NonStop,
begging her not to walk away.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He wanted to talk, he wanted to try to work
things out. And I went to his house and I said,
we're done. This is gross. I can't believe what you've
done to me. He just starts crying, and then he's like,
please don't leave, stay with me. And I looked at
him and I said, you are pathetic. This has been
going on for two years. Do you even realize what
(25:50):
you've done to me. I took my power back as
a sixteen year old in that moment, even though at
that point to me it was just me breaking up
with a boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
It would take over a decade for her to see
the situation for what it really was. No matter how
hard Mark tried to regain control, he couldn't.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I just started distancing myself more and more from him
because I knew that I was going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
She graduated early and finally left her high school behind.
In the fall, she started college at the University of Arizona,
but her time at college was challenging.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I was way into the party scene and I would
not go to class. I would just drink, and my
life really really spiraled from there. I was just drinking
so much and I ended up dropping out of you
of a.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Stephanie never told her parents about Mark's abuse. She didn't
have the words for it. There was so much pain
just under the surface, but she didn't want to feel it.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I was just stuck in this depressive, drunk cycle.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
What happened with Mark followed her wherever she went.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I was just hiding that pain constantly, never making sense
of what I had been through, just masking it and
masking it and masking it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Until one night I went out.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And got extremely intoxicated and got behind the wheel of
my car and thank god, I was pulled over and
I blew a point two four and I got a DUI.
I was relieved. This is what needed to happen. This
cycle is going to break.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
She knew that she couldn't keep masking her pain.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I had to start facing it, and I hadn't faced
it until then.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
She tried to tell a few friends about Mark. She
still didn't have the words to label the experience. She
told people she had dated one of her teachers. People
didn't know what to make of it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So many people were so dismissive of it and minimized it.
There were never any follow up questions. Not a single
person ever told me that was wrong or made it
seem like it was something I should have reported. I
was like, Okay, maybe I'm crazy, Maybe maybe I did
something wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It had been over ten years since she had seen Mark,
and she learned that he wasn't teaching anymore. He'd joined
the military. So she kept the truth about what happened
to herself and she focused on moving forward. She enrolled
in school again. In her late twenties, she became pregnant
after a brief relationship. She decided to keep the baby
(28:29):
and be a single mom. When her son was born,
he became the center of Stephanie's world. She created a
loving home for him and filled their days with joy
and fun. She cherished their daily routines together. Being a
mom gave her the confidence to make a decision she'd
always wanted to make.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
We're moving to La. I'm going as a single mom
with a two year old in tow I don't know
anybody there, but I just saw an opportunity to just
completely start over and go to La.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
La was just as exciting as she always thought.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It would be my first job. There was one of
my dream jobs. I was working for a celebrity, and
I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
For the first time in a long time, Stephanie felt
connected to the younger version of herself, the little girl
who dreamt of building a new life in California. She
got a master's degree in communications and began a career
in marketing and PR.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That really built my confidence a lot. And everything that
I kept doing just kept bringing me more and more
comfortable myself, giving me more and more perspective.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
On occasion, she would hike after work. She loved climbing
the hills dotted with chaparral and sage scrub. Her favorite
trail led to the Hollywood sign.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You look out and you see all of La. I
was starting to feel a shift in myself of feeling
stronger and feeling like I can do things that I
didn't think that I could. And it started to really
click for me that I can handle things and that
I can make things happen.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
She had found the strength to face the hardest parts
of her life, raising her son, moving across the country,
and going back to school. She had reclaimed the different
pieces of her identity one by one, and she recognized
herself again. Then Stephanie turned thirty, the same age as
Mark had been when she first stepped into his classroom
(30:23):
at age fourteen. That birthday brought a sense of clarity
and conviction. What Mark had done was deeply wrong and
it wasn't her fault.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I'm feeling ready to do something about this. One night,
I went online and I looked up Mark and said
he was teaching at a school in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
The last she heard Mark was in the military, but
now she was staring at his LinkedIn profile. He was
back teaching high school students.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
My hand started shaking, and I'm like, ho, he's around
kids again, He's teaching again. What do I do.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That's when she was overcome by a new feeling rage.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So many people didn't show up for me, I can't
be that person. If he is doing this to anybody else,
I cannot let this happen and just stand by and
do nothing.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
So that same night, she sent an email to the
principal of the school where Mark was now teaching.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I just said, you don't know me. I saw online
that Mark Lyndrewd may be a teacher at your school.
I was a student. I had an inappropriate sexual relationship
with him as a fourteen year old student. I just
wanted to let you know.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The principal responded to her email and.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
He said, thank you for letting me know. Did you
ever report this? And I said no, but I think
I'm ready to.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
The principal called the local police department and reported what
Mark had done to Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
That was the first time someone took my claim seriously.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
A detective reached out to Stephanie. They got on the
phone and Detective Durbin asked her to start from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And it was like, okay, he performed oral sex on me,
and she would say, okay, what does that mean. It's
going to be uncomfortable, but I need you to tell
me these things. I had to go into very explicit
detail about things that he would do to me. I
had to tell them every time that I could remember
any sort of a detail, because that was going to
(32:32):
be a charge.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Detective Durbin began making note of the charges against Mark.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
She started saying, sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's
an offense, that's sexual assault. When I started talking to
Detective Durbin and she started using those words, I was like,
Oh my god, that's exactly what this was. This was
never a relationship. He saw me vulnerable, he saw me isolated,
and that made me perfect prey for a pedophile.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
For years, Stephanie knew that what she endured in high
school was wrong, but she never knew how to talk
about it. When she turned thirty, she was ready to
report what happened to her and was connected with the
detective named Detective Durbin. Stephanie told her what happened, and
the detective started making note of the charges against Mark.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
She started saying, sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's
an offense, that's sexual assault. When Detective Durbin started using
those words, I was like, Oh my god, that's exactly
what this was. This was never a relationship. This was
a pedophile grooming me and manipulating me, and it was abused.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Stephanie was angrier than she had ever been, and she
was ready to do whatever was necessary to keep Mark
from abusing another child. Detective Durban asked Stephanie if she
had any other evidence that could corroborate her claims against Mark.
She didn't expect Stephanie to have much. It had been
over a decade.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Clearly, we know that I was being sexually abused the
entire time, but in my fourteen and fifteen year old mind,
it was a relationship. And what do you do as
a fourteen fifteen year old girl when you're in a relationship.
You keep little mementos. So I saved like movie tickets,
drive in tickets, receipts from lingerie he'd make me buy,
(34:44):
and photos. And that was perfect for the criminal investigation
and the trial.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Stephanie dug up that old box. All the things that
Mark had used to gain power over her were now
going to help her take it back. She brought the
evidence to the police and they put together a timeline
of Mark's abuse, corroborated by ticket stubs, receipts, and photos.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We went to the drive in and saw hw to
lose a guy in ten days, and that was on
Valentine's Day. And here's a ticket stub, and here's the
date that he asked me to get this lingerie. I
had these photos with the dates on them, and it
would be like him shirtless in his house or me
laying on the floor with his dog us on the
beach in California, with like his arms wrapped around me.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Detective Durbin told Stephanie about one last thing they could
do to build a case against Mark. They referred to
it as a confrontation call. She explained how it would work.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I call him and it's basically to try to get
him to admit to what he did. The detectives are
in the room unbeknownst to him, and so there's a
record of that, so that then they can go in
and without a doubt arrest him. She said, you don't
have to do this. Sometimes it is healing for people.
Sometimes it's the opposite. And I said, yeah, let's call
(36:03):
that motherfucker. He is teaching and I want to make
sure he's never teaching again.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Stephanie flew from la to Phoenix to meet Detective Durbin
and another detective who would be present for the call. Together,
they made a game plan.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
It was super nerve racking because I don't want to
hear his voice, but if I can get him to
admit this, there's no going back.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Then, with the two detectives by her side, she dialed
Mark's number.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I called him and he answered, and I just started saying,
I need closure. I was fourteen and I was your student.
Why did you do that? And he's like, I was immature,
and he admitted to knowing I was fourteen, admitted to
knowing I was a student. I hope you have a
(36:53):
really great day, is how he ended it.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Stephanie felt quiet.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
And Detective Durbin was like, are you doing you okay?
And I said that was so weird because that man
controlled so much of my life for the last twenty years.
And she looked at me and she said, just so
you know, you had full control of that conversation. He
was fumbling over himself because you had full control.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Two days later, Mark was arrested. The story was picked
up by the local news.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
And a Royal public school teacher has been arrested, accused
of sexual abuse of a minor in Arizona. Police say
Mark Lindward is a teacher at Vista Peeke Preparatory School.
He's been placed on administrative leave.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Stephanie and her team prepared for trial. Stephanie started having
calls with the DA in Tucson. She was also assigned
to victim advocate. A few weeks after Mark's arrest, she
was sent his indictment.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And it says my name on it, and it says
his name, and it says the court, and it says
the charges, and each charge is explained in explicit detail.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
All in all, Mark Lyndrude was facing twenty one charges,
twenty counts of sexual contact with a minor and one
count of sexual abuse of a minor.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
To read those words and then put it together with
that was me, I'm sl that's named in all of
these things. That was me. This is real and what
was done to me was really bad.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
The one thing she'd spent so long trying to hide
was now headline news.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I kind of just sat with myself in it and
I said, I can do one of two things. I
can become smaller and I can feel ashamed, or I
can say no, I'm taking back my power.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
After years of keeping Mark's secret, Stephanie was done staying quiet.
A trial was set for January of twenty twenty two,
but Mark and his legal team delayed it, and then
delayed it again and again. Mark was always having some
kind of emergency or new evidence was being entered into
(39:03):
discovery that caused the trial to be postponed. It was exhausting.
After a while, the prosecution started to talk about giving
Mark a plea deal.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
If we give the plea deal, at least I know
he goes to jail, offer him the plea deal. So
they did, and he declined the plea deal.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
This meant there would be a trial after all, and
Stephanie would have to face Mark in court.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
The reality was setting in of I have to talk
about these charges and their explicit details in a room
full of strangers.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Stephanie had spent years keeping this secret and many more
years pushing this trauma down, but now she had to
face it head on. Not only would Stephanie have to
say what Mark had done to her out loud, but
she would have to testify to her trauma an intimate detail,
to a full room of strangers, and then those strangers
(40:00):
would have to decide if she was credible, if they
believed her. She remembered her high school principal who wrote
her off and the girls who started rumors about her.
She felt like she had been on trial her whole life,
and every jury had found her guilty or dismissed the case.
What if this jury came to the same conclusions. She
(40:23):
shared her concerns with the DA.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
The DA said, I just want you to know that,
no matter what happened, I believe you the validation in
that of maybe he won't be found guilty of anything,
but I am this team of people who support me.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
In that way, she knew whatever came next, she wouldn't
be alone. Stephanie flew from la back to Arizona for court.
The night before the trial, she had a panic attack.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I thought I was dying, and it was just the
biggest panic attack that I've had ever in my life.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
The walls felt like they were caving in on her.
She went to bed feeling shaky.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I don't know what happened in my sleep that night,
but I woke up in the morning and I was like,
let's fucking go. Let's do this. The only way I
can describe it is like an athlete going into a
game you just put your head in the game and
there's nothing else you're thinking of. Laser focused.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
The trial began with jury selection.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
The saddest part about jury's selection. One of the questions
they asked was have you or anyone you know been
raped or sexual assaulted? And the amount of a jurors
who had to be excused because they had, in one
way or another been affected by sexual assault further fueled
(41:50):
me of being like, let's go. This idiot is not
getting away with this.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Stephanie took the stand. The prosecutor asked her questions about
what she had endured, and she answered them. Her voice
was strong and she was in control. Then it was
time for Stephanie to be cross examined by Mark's attorney.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
She clearly did not have a defense because he already
admitted gil.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
So if the facts couldn't be debated, Mark's attorney had
one last plan of attack.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
She opened up her entire thing saying, Stephanie Langletz is
a liar. I was like, that is your defense, let's go,
let's go.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
The cross examination began.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
She would ask me questions like you're saying he met
you at a public park. That's crazy and I'm like, yes,
it is crazy. There was nothing she could have said
that rattled me.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
When the prosecutor was wrapping up, he asked if there
was anything else Stephanie wanted to.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Share, and I said, yeah, I do. As many times
as I saw that number pop up on my phone,
I could tell you what his fever was right now.
And so the diego is what was it? And I
said five to two nine oh four. And I looked
directly in the eyes of Mark when I said it,
and I said five to nine oh four, I remember everything.
(43:14):
You will not get away with this, and his face dropped.
You could just see the defeat.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
The next day, it was timed with the jury to
decide whether Mark was innocent or guilty of the twenty
one charges against him. Stephanie was hopeful that he would
be found guilty on at least a few counts, but
she didn't want to set her hopes too high.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Because each one they have to find me credible for.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Finally, the jury reached a verdict, everyone filed back into
the courtroom and found their seats.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
He was found guilty on every single count, every single count.
They found him guilty on all twenty one counts. I
did not expect that, and that was so powerful. These
people who are total strangers, they believe me.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
A month later, Stephanie traveled back to Tucson for marked
sentencing hearing. She shared a victim impact statement.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
You stole my teenage years for me. I didn't get
to go to prom, I didn't get to do anything
like a teenager does, and instead I found myself at
the bottom of a bottle for many years. And you
have affected every relationship of my life. And I said,
your attorney had no defense, so her defense was to
paint me as a liar. This is why so many
(44:39):
victims don't come forward, is because they're afraid people aren't
gonna believe them.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Later that day, the judge read mark sentence allowed. They
went through all twenty one counts, and for each count
he was found guilty of, there was time added to
a sentence. Mark Lyndrude was sentenced to sixty six years
in prison.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
This man, at this point is in his fifties, so
he is going to die in jail.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
After the trial, a few students who attended the high
school where Mark had been teaching reached out to Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
They thanked me for what I did, and they're like,
he creeped us out. He was my sister's teacher, and
he was saying he was excited for me to be
in his class, and we just want to tell you,
thank you for protecting us. That's why I did it.
I know that they're safe and he will never do
(45:35):
this to someone ever again.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
It didn't have to take this long to stop Mark's abuse.
Stephanie's high school heard about it while it was happening
and failed to properly investigate.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
The school did nothing to protect me. I do think
that they are culpable. Signs were there and they missed
a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
After ten years in Los Angelesanie moved back to Arizona
with her son. They live in Phoenix now, where she
runs her own creative marketing studio, and in the last
few years, Stephanie has formed some close friendships.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
I all of a sudden had this amazing group of
women around me, and it was the first time in
my entire life that I had girlfriends like a good
supportive group of girlfriends. We all support each other, we
all want the best, and that is so genuine.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
When Stephanie walked into Mark Lyndrid's classroom, all those years ago,
she was alone. She struggled to make friends, and it
felt like nobody understood her. But she's not alone anymore.
At Stephanie's birthday party this year, one of her friends
made a toast. There's a recording of it. Her friend
(46:48):
raises the glass and talks about all the things she
loves and cherishes about Stephanie, and then the rest of
her friends jump in to sing Happy Birthday. Stephanie is
beaming while tears well in her eyes.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
They don't see me as a victim or survivor of
sexual abuse. They see me as who I am today.
I'm truly happy the first time.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
We end every weekly episode with the same question, why
do you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Unfortunately, twenty something years after this happened to me, it
still happens. No kids should have to go through this.
It wasn't you. You didn't invite this, you didn't open
yourself up to this. You were manipulated, you were groomed.
You did nothing wrong. There is no shame, there's no guilt,
(47:48):
and there really is a lot of power and validation
on the other side.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly, I.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Saw this figure standing in the doorway. It was an
all black and batman mask and just covered head to
toe in black clothing. I have closing opening my eyes
like am I really seeing this?
Speaker 1 (48:24):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayalpod at
gmail dot com. Please note that we are not a
mental health organization. If you are in crisis or currently
experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local help
(48:46):
or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations that
offer immediate support. In our show notes, we've included a
list of US based resources. You can follow us on
Instagram at betrayal Pod or find me at It's Andrea Gunning.
To access our newsletter and additional content, and to connect
(49:06):
with the Betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal dot
substack dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five star reviews go a long way. Big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
(49:27):
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is
Monique Lebord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer
(49:48):
is Leah Jablow. Production management by Kristin Melcurie, Booking support
by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Tresica Crincheck. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing
and mixing by Mattelvecchio. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by my Music and For more podcasts
(50:10):
from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
Hi everyone, I have something exciting to share with you.
Betrayal finally has merch. This is something I've been wanting
to do for a long time. Every piece has been
designed and curated for our Betrayal community. We've got mugs, shirts, stickers,
and a guided Betrayal journal filled with thoughtful prompts. Whether
(00:22):
it's for yourself or as a gift for someone you
know who loves the show, these pieces help support the
work we do. Visit Betrayal podcast dot shop to explore
the full collection. Pre Orders are open now. Hi everyone,
it's Andrea. Before we start this episode, I want to
let you know that we will be talking explicitly about
(00:43):
the realities of child sexual abuse, so please be mindful
with this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I remember everything that man, for so long had so
much control over me. I cannot just stand by and
do nothing. You will not get away with this.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Today we are sharing Stephanie's story. Stephanie grew
up in upstate New York, near Albany with her parents
and siblings.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
My parents had a very tumultuous relationship. I don't think
I coped with the chaos well. I spent a lot
of time in my room.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
In her room, it was quiet, looking out her window
at the woods of upstate New York. Stephanie dreamed of
a sunny and bright, faraway place, Los Angeles, and.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Just had this obsession with the glitz and the glamour
and how exciting it was then, especially for a little
girl in upstate New York, where it snows in its
gray and its gross. La always just had this sunshine
to it and always looked like it would be a
very happy place.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
She hoped she could live there one day. As Stephanie
got older, her parents started arguing more and more. Home
was an exhausting place to be. Her parents split up
and got back together often.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That coincided with really difficult middle school years. Friends would
come and go, and it was really difficult dealing with
that in tandem with things that were going on with
my parents.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
When Stephanie was in seventh grade, her parents announced that
their family would be moving across the country to Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I absolutely did not want to move to Arizona. I
was quite literally kicking and screaming, you can't even stay
together for a year. Why the hell are we moving
across the country.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But Tucson did have one major perk. It was closer
to la.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
They're like, look, we can drive from Tucson Hollywood anytime
you want. If you stop, we'll take you to Hollywood
on a trip. So that kind of softened the blow
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But when she arrived at her new middle school, she
struggled to make friends. The girls in her grade were
not welcoming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Girls are just mean. If anyone has been a middle
school girl, you know that they can be very unkind.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
She spent most of her time at school alone, and
life at home was not much of a comfort. Her
parents were still arguing all the time. It was lonely.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
When I was in eighth grade, I started drinking and
smoking weed and started hanging out with girls that were
a little bit older than I was. And that whole
summer in between eighth grade and ninth grade was just
a lot of drinking in the desert.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The desert stretched fast and shapeless around her. She couldn't
figure out where she belonged in this landscape.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
There were signs that I was unraveling I had withdrawn
a lot.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Stephanie's mom noticed a change in her and was concerned,
so she took her to see a doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I remember being hunched over, looking down, and I remember thinking,
this is how he's going to know that I'm depressed
because I can't even sit up straight. That's when I
was diagnosed with depression.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Her doctor prescribed her antidepressants. Just a few weeks later,
Stephanie started her freshman year of high school.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I went into my freshman year very much alone, feeling
very much isolated, very much broken. I felt like I
didn't really have anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
On the first day of school, Stephanie went from class
to class, meeting her teacher and new classmates.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
I go into my Spanish class and the teacher, Mark Lyndreud,
is standing there. It was very evident right away that
he was trying to come off as that young, cool,
hip teacher, like I want to relate to you guys.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
While his life sounded exotic, he.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Would say I went to Spain and I ran with
the bulls.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
He was still relatable.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He was very into sports. He was one of the
JV coaches on the football team and loved Star Wars.
He used to teach in La. So that perked my
ears of oh cool, like this teacher used to live
in LA, Like awesome, I love LA.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Some kids thought mister Lyndrude was kind of cheesy, but
he always made class fun and he was only twenty
six years old.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And so I'm like, okay, he's not that much older
with us. He is kind of the young hip teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Sevanies High School had a period in the mornings before
classes started, called zero.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
If you needed to do homework or you needed extra help,
you could go in. At that point, I didn't really
want to be home at all, so I started going
to the zero hour.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
One day, during zero hour, Stephanie was walking through the
hallways trying to find a place to do her homework.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I walked by mister Lyndrud's room and there was no
one in there, or maybe one or two people, and
I said, Okay, this looks like a safe place for
me to go to.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She stepped into his classroom.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
His room felt safe because it was quiet. There wasn't arguing,
there weren't people yelling.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
She sat down and did her homework. The next day,
she came back to his classroom in the morning, mister
Lyndrud was always welcoming.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It was just sometimes me and him, sometimes other people.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Soon she was going to mister Lyndrud's room during zero
hour most days. There she didn't have to work about
The mean girls in her grade were her parents' arguments.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'd had so many friends at different schools hurt me
and I really didn't trust other students.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Mister Lyndrud was easier to talk to. He asked her
lots of questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Where are you from? How long have you lived here?
And then he started opening up a little bit about
I came from Texas, I have an ex fiancee. He
trusted me with personal information, and it filled this void
that I wasn't feeling with friends or with my family.
He was really the only person who would sit down
(07:40):
and listen to me and hear me, and I just
didn't have anyone else like that in my life at
that time.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
One day, Stephanie asked to use his computer for a
homework assignment, and.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I'm on his computer and he had his AOL instant
messenger up, and that in a way almost added to
him being that cool, relatable teacher because it's like, oh,
we're on instant Messenger as students. Oh you're on instant Messenger.
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
A message popped up from a woman named Amanda.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
He's like, Oh, that's just my friend Amanda from LA.
Just tell her you know your student using my computer.
And then another one popped up and he's like, Oh,
that's my ex girlfriend. Just tell her I'm busy, or
that you're a student or whatever. I'm thinking, Oh, he
trusts me to respond to all these people in his life.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And Stephanie was starting to trust him too.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It became sort of a friendship and it started to
feel like a very safe place for me to be
in his room.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Eventually, mister Lyndrud told her that she could ditch the
formal way of addressing him, so he stopped being mister Lyndrude,
her Spanish teacher and became Mark, her friend.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
There was one day that I had left school and
I had a question about my Spanish homework, and because
I had been responding through his aim to people, obviously
I knew what his screen name was.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So she sent him a message on AIM asking how
to conjugate a verb in Spanish. Mark responded he was.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Very professional and he explained it to me, and I
apologize sorry reaching out to you here. I just wanted
to make sure I got the homework done and he
said it's okay.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Soon, Stephanie started messaging Mark with homework questions more often.
He would help her, and then their messages moved to
other topics.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
He would say, what are you doing or what are
you up to? Or what are your plans this weekend?
He made me feel like I could just talk to
him about anything that was going on in my life
and that I could trust him. There was part of
me that kept thinking like is this weird? Is this appropriate?
Like should we be having this conversation? But also he
is just being nice and friendly and maybe he does
(09:53):
recognize that I just need a friend.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
If he was offering friendship, she would take it even
and if it was a little unusual. Then one day,
a few weeks later, Mark suggested that they hang out
outside of school.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He asked me, is there a park by your house?
Is there anywhere we could meet? And I happened to
live across the street from this giant park.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
He told her to meet him there on Friday night.
When Friday night came Stephanie told her parents she was
meeting a friend and started walking to the park.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is when I started to feel nervous. What are
we meeting at the park? For fifty percent of me
thought it was weird, but fifty percent of me also said, well,
this feels safe because he's meeting me in a very
public place. All my neighbors are there, a lot of
people from our school are going to be there, so
this must be okay because it's a very, very public park.
(10:54):
He made me feel like we were friends at that point,
and I really didn't have anyone else to hang out with,
especially on a Friday night.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
When she got to the park, a green ASUV pulled
into the parking lot and Mark stepped out. He looked
different than he did at school.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
He had a hat on. He has this very distinct
bald head, so I remember thinking, okay, that's kind of
a disguise, so maybe this isn't okay that we're meeting up,
and I started to feel really uneasy. He starts walking
toward me very aggressively, and he just picks me up
and kisses me, and I just froze. It never occurred
(11:33):
to me that that's what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
As a fourteen year old, Stephanie was overwhelmed and confused.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I didn't know what to do. My brain couldn't process
what was happening.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Stephanie walked home from the park that night, desperately trying
to make sense of this. Mark was her teacher and
she thought he was her friend.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
What just happened to risk being in this park to
his teaching And I'm like, he must really like me
to be willing to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
After that night, Mark began messaging Stephanie more and more,
and then he started driving over to her house and
parking his car outside on the street.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It would be later at night, and so I would
just go outside and sit in his car with him.
He would have me in the backseat and make out,
and then I would have to go to school the
next week like nothing had ever happened.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It was disorienting.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
He's coming over to make out with me. He's also
my teacher, but I'm sitting his class and nobody knows.
And it was a very very confusing spot to be in,
feeling uncomfortable, but just feeling like someone cared, that someone
cared about me enough to listen to me. And want
to be around me.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Mark was grooming her. Grooming is a term used to
describe the process perpetrators use to control their victims. They
start by gaining their victims trust, then isolating them from
their community, labeling their own abuse as a shared secret,
and finally controlling and coercing their victim into staying silent.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
He started telling me, you can never say a word
to anybody. You can never say anything because it's my
dream to be a big football coach. And if you
tell anyone, my dream is ruined. My life is ruined.
I will be blacklisted in everything that I want to
do if you tell anyone. And what are people going
to say about you if they know this is happening.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephanie did what he asked. She didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I couldn't process what was actually happening.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So Mark processed it for her.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He told her, now we've taken this relationship a little
bit of a step further, and we trust each other more.
To do this. In a weird way, I think this
secrecy made me feel like we had this special, trusting relationship.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
But keeping the secret meant Mark quickly became the only
person she could talk to. She couldn't talk to anyone
else about what was really happening. So Mark became Stephanie's
closest connection and her only one.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I went into the school year isolated, and now I'm
even more isolated because I can't tell anyone what's going on.
I can't tell everyone who I'm hanging out with at night.
I was rewarded for my silence with attention, with the
attention that I wasn't getting anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
In early January, Stephanie went to Mark's house to watch
a football game. That was the first night he raped her.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I was just very confused. I think I froze. I
couldn't make sense of it happening. And then as soon
as he was done and was like getting dressed, he said,
I guess this makes you my girlfriend now.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Every time Stephanie was uncomfortable or confused or frozen, Mark
jumped in to explain her own feelings to her. He
told her, this is what trust felt like.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Maybe he does really care about me and love me
because he was risking everything and he was risking that
for me.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Mark told Stephanie he was in love with her.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
He made it seem like it was an actual relationship.
For Valentine's Day. He took me to the drive in
and we saw how to lose a guy in ten days.
I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Stephanie saved the ticket stub. She put it in a
box with other mementos from her time with Mark. Mark
started inviting Stephanie over to his house. She told her
parents she was at a friend's and when she was
over at Mark's house, he told her it was only
fair for her to pitch in with household chores.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It wasn't uncommon for me to clean his house. In fact,
it was an expectation. He would have me fold his
shirts a very specific way.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
He explained to Stephanie that this is what being in
a relationship was like. She believed him.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
As he was getting closer to me and making me
feel special. He started somewhat flirting with this other girl
that I was friends with, and I started to feel
jealous because I'm like, oh, I'm losing his attention.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
One day, that girl mentioned something about Coach, which is
what a lot of students called Mark. Hearing her talk
about Mark, Stephanie couldn't keep their secret in any longer.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I just snapped and I was like, Coach is the
one who's been texting me. We're like hanging out, and
she just went silent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
A few days later, Stephanie was at school when she
was asked to see the guidance counselor.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He looked at me and he said, are you having
a relationship with mister Lyndrud And I said no. I
denied it because he had put the fear of God
in me that if I told anyone my life was over,
let alone my life his life. So of course I
(17:21):
was going to be silent because I didn't want to
be the person who crushed his dreams and ruined his life.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
After Stephanie told a classmate that she was hanging out
with their Spanish teacher, the guidance counselor called Stephanie into
his office. He asked her if anything inappropriate was going
on with mister Stephanie denied it.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Of course I was going to be silent because I
didn't want to be the person who crushed his dreams
and ruined his life.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
School administrators questioned mister Lyndrud as well.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
He said nothing happened. The school was like, well, they say,
nothing's going on, and they didn't do any investigation. There's
nothing further.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But rumors had already started spreading through the school as
a heads up. These comments are cruel and hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
People were calling me teacher fucker, and people were like, oh,
I saw her under his desk, and that just further
isolated me more and more. I already didn't have friends,
and now I'm being labeled a slut a whore.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
She was shamed. The few people she was friendly with
at school started avoiding eye contact when she walked down
the hallway. She could hear the girls in her grade
whispering about her as she passed. One day, someone said
something really horrible straight to her face, and.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
The principle was in the hallway and I went up
to him sobbing, and I said, I'm the student that
these rumors are about. Make it stop, Please make it stop.
And he said, well, I can't just get on the
loud speaker and tell everyone that it's not true.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I want to pause here for a moment. When I
heard this part of Stephanie's story, I was shocked by
how many adults knew what was going on and didn't
do anything about it. I think about how alone she
must have felt. Stephanie was trying to protect Mark, but
nobody was protecting her. Now the idea of telling the
(19:46):
truth felt even more impossible.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I was just in so much pain and withdrawal from
everything because the worst possible thing was happening to me.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Through it all, the only person she could talk about
this with was Mark.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That brought me closer to him because I didn't have anybody,
so the rumors and the hurt made me turn to him.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
For her entire freshman year, Mark was the only person
Stephanie really felt was in her corner. Then at the
end of the school year, Mark took a job teaching elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think he got spooked and he left.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But leaving wasn't an option for Stephanie. That summer, Mark
introduced her to his parents.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
He lied to them and said I was nineteen. I
was fifteen. But it made me feel so mature and
so much older, and that's what everyone, when you're a
teenager wants to feel.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Mark's parents welcome Stephanie in.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
They would have me over for dinner, and his mom
was giving me books to read. His mom was giving
us restaurant recommendations. They're like, oh, next time, before you
guys go to the drive and you should go to
this pizza place and get the cal zone.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Mark and Stephanie spent nearly every day together.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We went to the beach and I have photos of
us at the beach together. Having him act that way,
it was like, Okay, this is real, this is a relationship.
I had nothing to compare it to, but it felt real.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Mark told everyone they met that Stephanie was nineteen, and
he asked her to lie about her age. If people asked,
he said age was just a number.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
At some point, I really started to believe that I
was older. That's how much he had me lying to
people that I truly, in some weird way, was like,
oh no, I'm nineteen.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Stephanie got a fake ID for Mark's birthday. That year.
They went out to a bar to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
We went to those New Orleans themed bar and if
you flash your breasts you get beads, And the whole
time we were there, he just kept encouraging me to flash,
the bartenders, to get more drinks, just sexualizing me. This
whole entire bar saw me topless.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
For almost two years. Mark had been her gateway to
the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I couldn't drive. I couldn't go anywhere. If I wanted
to do anything, he would pick me up, he would
drive me. I had to be completely completely dependent on him.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Relying on Mark was beginning to feel suffocating. A few
weeks after his birthday, Stephanie's sister came to town.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I went out with my big sister and her friends,
and I was feeling so much freer because I did
not have to depend on him for attention or something
to do.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That year, Stephanie turned sixteen and got her driver's license.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And that is definitely where things started to change for me. Gradually,
I started being able to go outside his bubble a
lot more. I'm seeing healthy relationships. My world opened up
to so much because I had been so sheltered by him.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
She was still going over to Mark's house a lot,
and he was still asking her to clean up and
do laundry for him. One day she was at his
house by herself.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I just remember there being a lot of papers everywhere,
and I'm like, I need to organize this. I can't
stare at these papers anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
She went to put them in a filing cabinet. That's
when a document caught her eye.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And that's when I found his birth certificate. I pulled
it out and I looked at it, and I'm not
good at math, but I'm doing the math in my head.
When I'm sitting there as a sixteen year old, I'm like,
holy shit, he's thirty two.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mark had told her he was twenty eight, four years
younger than he actually was. As she stood there staring
at his birth certificate, she had a moment of clarity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Clearly, you know you're doing something wrong if you're lying
to tell me that you're younger. And that's when everything
started clicking for me. Of he's twice my age. This
isn't right.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When Mark came home, Stephanie confronted him.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I said, I found your birth certificate, so I know
you're thirty two. And his response was well, I was
already feeling like Chester the molester. I didn't want to
make it worse.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Stephanique laired at him, disgusted.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
What the hell's wrong with you? You were thirty when you
met a fourteen year old. You want me to trust
you with everything, and I don't even know how old
you really are. I want to be on a break.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Mark's face dropped.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
What I said, Yeah, we're on a break.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Something between them had shifted. Mark could sense it too.
He looked scared.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I think that he realized he was losing control of me,
and he spiraled. He said, I'm going to marry you.
I'm looking for rings.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Stephanie almost laughed at him.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I am sixteen years old and a thirty two year
old man is asking me to marry him.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
She left his house. Mark called and texted her NonStop,
begging her not to walk away.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He wanted to talk, he wanted to try to work
things out. And I went to his house and I said,
we're done. This is gross. I can't believe what you've
done to me. He just starts crying, and then he's like,
please don't leave, stay with me. And I looked at
him and I said, you are pathetic. This has been
going on for two years. Do you even realize what
(25:50):
you've done to me. I took my power back as
a sixteen year old in that moment, even though at
that point to me it was just me breaking up
with a boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
It would take over a decade for her to see
the situation for what it really was. No matter how
hard Mark tried to regain control, he couldn't.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I just started distancing myself more and more from him
because I knew that I was going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
She graduated early and finally left her high school behind.
In the fall, she started college at the University of Arizona,
but her time at college was challenging.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I was way into the party scene and I would
not go to class. I would just drink, and my
life really really spiraled from there. I was just drinking
so much and I ended up dropping out of you
of a.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Stephanie never told her parents about Mark's abuse. She didn't
have the words for it. There was so much pain
just under the surface, but she didn't want to feel it.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I was just stuck in this depressive, drunk cycle.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
What happened with Mark followed her wherever she went.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I was just hiding that pain constantly, never making sense
of what I had been through, just masking it and
masking it and masking it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Until one night I went out.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And got extremely intoxicated and got behind the wheel of
my car and thank god, I was pulled over and
I blew a point two four and I got a DUI.
I was relieved. This is what needed to happen. This
cycle is going to break.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
She knew that she couldn't keep masking her pain.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I had to start facing it, and I hadn't faced
it until then.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
She tried to tell a few friends about Mark. She
still didn't have the words to label the experience. She
told people she had dated one of her teachers. People
didn't know what to make of it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So many people were so dismissive of it and minimized it.
There were never any follow up questions. Not a single
person ever told me that was wrong or made it
seem like it was something I should have reported. I
was like, Okay, maybe I'm crazy, Maybe maybe I did
something wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It had been over ten years since she had seen Mark,
and she learned that he wasn't teaching anymore. He'd joined
the military. So she kept the truth about what happened
to herself and she focused on moving forward. She enrolled
in school again. In her late twenties, she became pregnant
after a brief relationship. She decided to keep the baby
(28:29):
and be a single mom. When her son was born,
he became the center of Stephanie's world. She created a
loving home for him and filled their days with joy
and fun. She cherished their daily routines together. Being a
mom gave her the confidence to make a decision she'd
always wanted to make.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
We're moving to La. I'm going as a single mom
with a two year old in tow I don't know
anybody there, but I just saw an opportunity to just
completely start over and go to La.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
La was just as exciting as she always thought.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It would be my first job. There was one of
my dream jobs. I was working for a celebrity, and
I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
For the first time in a long time, Stephanie felt
connected to the younger version of herself, the little girl
who dreamt of building a new life in California. She
got a master's degree in communications and began a career
in marketing and PR.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That really built my confidence a lot. And everything that
I kept doing just kept bringing me more and more
comfortable myself, giving me more and more perspective.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
On occasion, she would hike after work. She loved climbing
the hills dotted with chaparral and sage scrub. Her favorite
trail led to the Hollywood sign.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You look out and you see all of La. I
was starting to feel a shift in myself of feeling
stronger and feeling like I can do things that I
didn't think that I could. And it started to really
click for me that I can handle things and that
I can make things happen.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
She had found the strength to face the hardest parts
of her life, raising her son, moving across the country,
and going back to school. She had reclaimed the different
pieces of her identity one by one, and she recognized
herself again. Then Stephanie turned thirty, the same age as
Mark had been when she first stepped into his classroom
(30:23):
at age fourteen. That birthday brought a sense of clarity
and conviction. What Mark had done was deeply wrong and
it wasn't her fault.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I'm feeling ready to do something about this. One night,
I went online and I looked up Mark and said
he was teaching at a school in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
The last she heard Mark was in the military, but
now she was staring at his LinkedIn profile. He was
back teaching high school students.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
My hand started shaking, and I'm like, ho, he's around
kids again, He's teaching again. What do I do.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That's when she was overcome by a new feeling rage.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So many people didn't show up for me, I can't
be that person. If he is doing this to anybody else,
I cannot let this happen and just stand by and
do nothing.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
So that same night, she sent an email to the
principal of the school where Mark was now teaching.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I just said, you don't know me. I saw online
that Mark Lyndrewd may be a teacher at your school.
I was a student. I had an inappropriate sexual relationship
with him as a fourteen year old student. I just
wanted to let you know.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The principal responded to her email and.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
He said, thank you for letting me know. Did you
ever report this? And I said no, but I think
I'm ready to.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
The principal called the local police department and reported what
Mark had done to Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
That was the first time someone took my claim seriously.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
A detective reached out to Stephanie. They got on the
phone and Detective Durbin asked her to start from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And it was like, okay, he performed oral sex on me,
and she would say, okay, what does that mean. It's
going to be uncomfortable, but I need you to tell
me these things. I had to go into very explicit
detail about things that he would do to me. I
had to tell them every time that I could remember
any sort of a detail, because that was going to
(32:32):
be a charge.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Detective Durbin began making note of the charges against Mark.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
She started saying, sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's
an offense, that's sexual assault. When I started talking to
Detective Durbin and she started using those words, I was like,
Oh my god, that's exactly what this was. This was
never a relationship. He saw me vulnerable, he saw me isolated,
and that made me perfect prey for a pedophile.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
For years, Stephanie knew that what she endured in high
school was wrong, but she never knew how to talk
about it. When she turned thirty, she was ready to
report what happened to her and was connected with the
detective named Detective Durbin. Stephanie told her what happened, and
the detective started making note of the charges against Mark.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
She started saying, sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's
an offense, that's sexual assault. When Detective Durbin started using
those words, I was like, Oh my god, that's exactly
what this was. This was never a relationship. This was
a pedophile grooming me and manipulating me, and it was abused.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Stephanie was angrier than she had ever been, and she
was ready to do whatever was necessary to keep Mark
from abusing another child. Detective Durban asked Stephanie if she
had any other evidence that could corroborate her claims against Mark.
She didn't expect Stephanie to have much. It had been
over a decade.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Clearly, we know that I was being sexually abused the
entire time, but in my fourteen and fifteen year old mind,
it was a relationship. And what do you do as
a fourteen fifteen year old girl when you're in a relationship.
You keep little mementos. So I saved like movie tickets,
drive in tickets, receipts from lingerie he'd make me buy,
(34:44):
and photos. And that was perfect for the criminal investigation
and the trial.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Stephanie dug up that old box. All the things that
Mark had used to gain power over her were now
going to help her take it back. She brought the
evidence to the police and they put together a timeline
of Mark's abuse, corroborated by ticket stubs, receipts, and photos.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We went to the drive in and saw hw to
lose a guy in ten days, and that was on
Valentine's Day. And here's a ticket stub, and here's the
date that he asked me to get this lingerie. I
had these photos with the dates on them, and it
would be like him shirtless in his house or me
laying on the floor with his dog us on the
beach in California, with like his arms wrapped around me.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Detective Durbin told Stephanie about one last thing they could
do to build a case against Mark. They referred to
it as a confrontation call. She explained how it would work.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I call him and it's basically to try to get
him to admit to what he did. The detectives are
in the room unbeknownst to him, and so there's a
record of that, so that then they can go in
and without a doubt arrest him. She said, you don't
have to do this. Sometimes it is healing for people.
Sometimes it's the opposite. And I said, yeah, let's call
(36:03):
that motherfucker. He is teaching and I want to make
sure he's never teaching again.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Stephanie flew from la to Phoenix to meet Detective Durbin
and another detective who would be present for the call. Together,
they made a game plan.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
It was super nerve racking because I don't want to
hear his voice, but if I can get him to
admit this, there's no going back.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Then, with the two detectives by her side, she dialed
Mark's number.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I called him and he answered, and I just started saying,
I need closure. I was fourteen and I was your student.
Why did you do that? And he's like, I was immature,
and he admitted to knowing I was fourteen, admitted to
knowing I was a student. I hope you have a
(36:53):
really great day, is how he ended it.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Stephanie felt quiet.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
And Detective Durbin was like, are you doing you okay?
And I said that was so weird because that man
controlled so much of my life for the last twenty years.
And she looked at me and she said, just so
you know, you had full control of that conversation. He
was fumbling over himself because you had full control.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Two days later, Mark was arrested. The story was picked
up by the local news.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
And a Royal public school teacher has been arrested, accused
of sexual abuse of a minor in Arizona. Police say
Mark Lindward is a teacher at Vista Peeke Preparatory School.
He's been placed on administrative leave.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Stephanie and her team prepared for trial. Stephanie started having
calls with the DA in Tucson. She was also assigned
to victim advocate. A few weeks after Mark's arrest, she
was sent his indictment.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And it says my name on it, and it says
his name, and it says the court, and it says
the charges, and each charge is explained in explicit detail.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
All in all, Mark Lyndrude was facing twenty one charges,
twenty counts of sexual contact with a minor and one
count of sexual abuse of a minor.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
To read those words and then put it together with
that was me, I'm sl that's named in all of
these things. That was me. This is real and what
was done to me was really bad.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
The one thing she'd spent so long trying to hide
was now headline news.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I kind of just sat with myself in it and
I said, I can do one of two things. I
can become smaller and I can feel ashamed, or I
can say no, I'm taking back my power.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
After years of keeping Mark's secret, Stephanie was done staying quiet.
A trial was set for January of twenty twenty two,
but Mark and his legal team delayed it, and then
delayed it again and again. Mark was always having some
kind of emergency or new evidence was being entered into
(39:03):
discovery that caused the trial to be postponed. It was exhausting.
After a while, the prosecution started to talk about giving
Mark a plea deal.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
If we give the plea deal, at least I know
he goes to jail, offer him the plea deal. So
they did, and he declined the plea deal.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
This meant there would be a trial after all, and
Stephanie would have to face Mark in court.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
The reality was setting in of I have to talk
about these charges and their explicit details in a room
full of strangers.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Stephanie had spent years keeping this secret and many more
years pushing this trauma down, but now she had to
face it head on. Not only would Stephanie have to
say what Mark had done to her out loud, but
she would have to testify to her trauma an intimate detail,
to a full room of strangers, and then those strangers
(40:00):
would have to decide if she was credible, if they
believed her. She remembered her high school principal who wrote
her off and the girls who started rumors about her.
She felt like she had been on trial her whole life,
and every jury had found her guilty or dismissed the case.
What if this jury came to the same conclusions. She
(40:23):
shared her concerns with the DA.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
The DA said, I just want you to know that,
no matter what happened, I believe you the validation in
that of maybe he won't be found guilty of anything,
but I am this team of people who support me.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
In that way, she knew whatever came next, she wouldn't
be alone. Stephanie flew from la back to Arizona for court.
The night before the trial, she had a panic attack.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I thought I was dying, and it was just the
biggest panic attack that I've had ever in my life.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
The walls felt like they were caving in on her.
She went to bed feeling shaky.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I don't know what happened in my sleep that night,
but I woke up in the morning and I was like,
let's fucking go. Let's do this. The only way I
can describe it is like an athlete going into a
game you just put your head in the game and
there's nothing else you're thinking of. Laser focused.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
The trial began with jury selection.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
The saddest part about jury's selection. One of the questions
they asked was have you or anyone you know been
raped or sexual assaulted? And the amount of a jurors
who had to be excused because they had, in one
way or another been affected by sexual assault further fueled
(41:50):
me of being like, let's go. This idiot is not
getting away with this.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Stephanie took the stand. The prosecutor asked her questions about
what she had endured, and she answered them. Her voice
was strong and she was in control. Then it was
time for Stephanie to be cross examined by Mark's attorney.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
She clearly did not have a defense because he already
admitted gil.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
So if the facts couldn't be debated, Mark's attorney had
one last plan of attack.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
She opened up her entire thing saying, Stephanie Langletz is
a liar. I was like, that is your defense, let's go,
let's go.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
The cross examination began.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
She would ask me questions like you're saying he met
you at a public park. That's crazy and I'm like, yes,
it is crazy. There was nothing she could have said
that rattled me.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
When the prosecutor was wrapping up, he asked if there
was anything else Stephanie wanted to.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Share, and I said, yeah, I do. As many times
as I saw that number pop up on my phone,
I could tell you what his fever was right now.
And so the diego is what was it? And I
said five to two nine oh four. And I looked
directly in the eyes of Mark when I said it,
and I said five to nine oh four, I remember everything.
(43:14):
You will not get away with this, and his face dropped.
You could just see the defeat.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
The next day, it was timed with the jury to
decide whether Mark was innocent or guilty of the twenty
one charges against him. Stephanie was hopeful that he would
be found guilty on at least a few counts, but
she didn't want to set her hopes too high.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Because each one they have to find me credible for.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Finally, the jury reached a verdict, everyone filed back into
the courtroom and found their seats.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
He was found guilty on every single count, every single count.
They found him guilty on all twenty one counts. I
did not expect that, and that was so powerful. These
people who are total strangers, they believe me.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
A month later, Stephanie traveled back to Tucson for marked
sentencing hearing. She shared a victim impact statement.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
You stole my teenage years for me. I didn't get
to go to prom, I didn't get to do anything
like a teenager does, and instead I found myself at
the bottom of a bottle for many years. And you
have affected every relationship of my life. And I said,
your attorney had no defense, so her defense was to
paint me as a liar. This is why so many
(44:39):
victims don't come forward, is because they're afraid people aren't
gonna believe them.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Later that day, the judge read mark sentence allowed. They
went through all twenty one counts, and for each count
he was found guilty of, there was time added to
a sentence. Mark Lyndrude was sentenced to sixty six years
in prison.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
This man, at this point is in his fifties, so
he is going to die in jail.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
After the trial, a few students who attended the high
school where Mark had been teaching reached out to Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
They thanked me for what I did, and they're like,
he creeped us out. He was my sister's teacher, and
he was saying he was excited for me to be
in his class, and we just want to tell you,
thank you for protecting us. That's why I did it.
I know that they're safe and he will never do
(45:35):
this to someone ever again.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
It didn't have to take this long to stop Mark's abuse.
Stephanie's high school heard about it while it was happening
and failed to properly investigate.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
The school did nothing to protect me. I do think
that they are culpable. Signs were there and they missed
a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
After ten years in Los Angelesanie moved back to Arizona
with her son. They live in Phoenix now, where she
runs her own creative marketing studio, and in the last
few years, Stephanie has formed some close friendships.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
I all of a sudden had this amazing group of
women around me, and it was the first time in
my entire life that I had girlfriends like a good
supportive group of girlfriends. We all support each other, we
all want the best, and that is so genuine.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
When Stephanie walked into Mark Lyndrid's classroom, all those years ago,
she was alone. She struggled to make friends, and it
felt like nobody understood her. But she's not alone anymore.
At Stephanie's birthday party this year, one of her friends
made a toast. There's a recording of it. Her friend
(46:48):
raises the glass and talks about all the things she
loves and cherishes about Stephanie, and then the rest of
her friends jump in to sing Happy Birthday. Stephanie is
beaming while tears well in her eyes.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
They don't see me as a victim or survivor of
sexual abuse. They see me as who I am today.
I'm truly happy the first time.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
We end every weekly episode with the same question, why
do you want to share your story?
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Unfortunately, twenty something years after this happened to me, it
still happens. No kids should have to go through this.
It wasn't you. You didn't invite this, you didn't open
yourself up to this. You were manipulated, you were groomed.
You did nothing wrong. There is no shame, there's no guilt,
(47:48):
and there really is a lot of power and validation
on the other side.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly, I.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Saw this figure standing in the doorway. It was an
all black and batman mask and just covered head to
toe in black clothing. I have closing opening my eyes
like am I really seeing this?
Speaker 1 (48:24):
If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please
email Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That is Betrayalpod at
gmail dot com. Please note that we are not a
mental health organization. If you are in crisis or currently
experiencing domestic violence, we encourage you to seek local help
(48:46):
or dial nine to one one. Please contact organizations that
offer immediate support. In our show notes, we've included a
list of US based resources. You can follow us on
Instagram at betrayal Pod or find me at It's Andrea Gunning.
To access our newsletter and additional content, and to connect
(49:06):
with the Betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal dot
substack dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five star reviews go a long way. Big thank you
to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of
(49:27):
Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy
Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning,
written and produced by Olivia Hewitt. Our story editor is
Monique Lebord, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our associate producer
(49:48):
is Leah Jablow. Production management by Kristin Melcurie, Booking support
by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Tresica Crincheck. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins with additional editing
and mixing by Mattelvecchio. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by my Music and For more podcasts
(50:10):
from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
Host
Andrea Gunning
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