Focus: Adults in the Room - Adults in the Room: The Ultimatum

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

“You let Tom Hudson off the hook." That was one of the first things Paul (not his real name) said to host Isolde Raftery during their first conversation earlier this year. He wanted her to know about his own experience with Hudson, which included years of manipulation and molestation.   And that wasn’t all. Paul also recounted harrowing details about Hudson’s death, puncturing the narrative Isolde held true for so many years.  In this final episode of Adults in the Room, we uncover how extensive Tom Hudson’s crimes were … and how little we really understood about his death.  CONTENT ADVISORY: This episode includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse, drug abuse, and suicide, and includes a slur for gay men.  If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741. Please take care while listening.   KUOW only allows sources anonymity on rare occasions. You can read our entire ethics policy, which details how we approach anonymous sourcing, here.  Get in touch with the team by email at [e-mail]. Support KUOW and projects like this by donating at kuow.org/donate/focus. Adults in the Room is part of FOCUS, a dedicated documentary channel from KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR network. It is hosted by Isolde Raftery. Original reporting by Isolde Raftery, Jeannie Yandel, and Will James. Our producers are Will James and Alec Cowan. Our editor is Jeannie Yandel. Music by BC Campbell. Additional music by Alec Cowan.   Special thanks to King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, Phyllis Fletcher, John Bancroft, Mary Mills, and Levi Pulkkinen.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The midterm elections are drawing near, meaning fact-based reporting is more important than ever. I'm Libby Dankman, host of Sound Side, where we bring you news and conversation rooted in the Pacific Northwest. We dealt beyond the headlines to bring you different perspectives on stories that impact your life right here in Washington State. And we're easy to find Monday through Thursday at noon and 8 p.m. on KUOW 94-9 FM. Or you can listen anytime on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. Focus from KOWW in Seattle. This episode includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse, drug abuse, and suicide, and it includes a quote containing a slur for gay men around 17 minutes.

A description of suicide is at 46 minutes. I know many of you have been listening to this podcast with your children, And as a mom, I strongly encourage you to preview this episode before listening with young people. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline. Or contact the crisis text line by texting T-A-L-K to 741-741. Please take care while listening. I was doing dishes one evening at home in Seattle a couple months ago when my phone buzzed. It was a text from an unfamiliar number.

Hello, Azolda, the message said. I would like to speak with you off the record. Unfortunately, I have a lot to share. I had gotten used to strangers reaching out to me. As episodes of adults in the room dropped, I was contacted. by dozens of people about their experiences with Garfield High School science teacher, Tom Hudson, who was on the faculty there until his death in 2000. Some men told me how Mr. Hudson had pressured them to shower naked with him when they were

students at Garfield, much like Jonathan Hill, who we introduced in episode four. Others said they had quit Mr. Hudson's outdoors program because he made them uncomfortable. But up to this point, in the years that I've been investigating this story, no one had admitted to me that Mr. Hudson laid hands on them sexually. As a young reporter, I was trained to chase every possible lead. That's why I try to respond quickly to those who get in touch with me. Otherwise, I could miss out on key information. But the timing of this mysterious text message was,

terrible. We were working nights and weekends, racing to finish the podcast, and I didn't have the energy to do much else. I wrote to the texter and asked if we could wait a week to talk. Almost immediately, I received a message back. I know it sounds irrational, the text said, but it took a lot for me to reach out to you. The person said it felt like being thrown away with the trash. I should have expected this raw response. When it comes to vulnerable sources, reporters need to make sure individuals feel safe and protected. It was obvious from our communication that the texter thought it was risky to contact me and now felt rejected. So I wrote back immediately with an apology, and I agreed to meet the very next day, even though it was right

before our deadline. That evening, the mystery person sent me his name and divulged that he was a prominent attorney who sat on multiple nonprofit boards. His LinkedIn profile corroborated all that. I also saw that this man had been interviewed on several industry podcasts about his area of expertise, and he came across as thoughtful and deeply ethical. Early the next morning, the man arrived at KUOW neatly dressed, wearing khakis, a polo shirt and loafers with his hair slicked back. He greeted me warmly.

But I could tell he was nervous. His face was red and a little sweaty. The man stammered a lot. This wasn't the poise, confident person I'd researched online. I took him to a small conference room with dim lighting. It was a Saturday, so the building was almost empty. After we sat down, the first thing he said was that he'd been listening to our podcast, and he needed to tell me something in person.

We had let Tom Hudson off the hook. The man looked at me closely to see if I understood what he meant. Mr. Hudson, he said, was a child rapist. Then, for nearly three intense hours, he recounted in detail how the teacher molested him, starting in the late 1980s and extending into the 1990s. It was a harrowing and deeply emotional conversation. But that wasn't all.

If you've listened to this series, you know that my best friend, Ella Husshagen and I were students at Garfield in the late 1990s, and heard rumors that Mr. Hudson was abusing boys there. I told my mom, who reported what we'd learned to authorities. Soon after, Mr. Hudson was placed on leave, and before any further action, could be taken, he died by suicide. People in our community blamed Ella and me for our teacher's death, but I didn't realize how little we understood about his final days until I met this new source who said that he was on the phone with Mr. Hudson as he was dying,

that he knew why our former teacher took his life and that it had nothing to do with Ella and me. I could see how difficult it was for this man to open up to me, a stranger, and a journalist. He had kept his past private for decades, only sharing his painful history and the trauma it caused him with a few others in his life. What he told me punctured the narrative I held true for so many years. The question now was whether he would agree to tell you his story. From KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, this is Adults in the Room. Episode 8. The ultimatum.

I'm Azolda Raftery. As I wound down this surreal conversation with my visitor, I knew two things. First, I wanted to feature him in a new episode. And second, I had no control. over how long that might take, or if it would happen at all. The man explained that he wasn't ready for his colleagues and some relatives

to know what he'd gone through. He worried how this story would impact his standing in the community. He wasn't wrong to be concerned. Survivors of sexual violence, especially men, are often stigmatized. I told him that coming forward wouldn't be easy, but in my experience,

most survivors find relief in unburdening themselves, and that the people in their lives overwhelmingly support them. The man listened intently and said he wasn't sure about his next steps, but he didn't say no to appearing on the podcast and agreed to stay in touch. He started texting me routinely, sometimes sharing bits of his daily life, like photos of a giant bouncy castle at a family event, or of his kids on vacation.

I wondered if he was sniffing me out, but he said later he was building a rapport with me. Occasionally, we'd discuss what a taped on-the-record interview would look like. After a few weeks of these almost daily interactions, I could tell that he was warming up to the idea. He had kept his story's secret for so long, and it clearly weighed on him. Yes, the man was scared of going public, but more scared about what the silence would do to him if he didn't. He had lots of questions about the process, like who writes the interview questions? Full disclosure, I do with my editor and producer. And would he play a role in writing the script for the episode?

The answer, no, but I would fact-check it with him when the script was finished. I sent long, detailed responses walking him through each step, and I scheduled a call to talk things through further. During our conversation, he surprised me by saying he'd do the interview, but only if he could remain anonymous. This was not a small request. In journalism, it's best practice not to use anonymous sources. Revealing people's names holds them and us accountable to the truth. However, it's long been the norm to allow survivors of sexual abuse to protect their identities, largely because of the stigma I mentioned before. KUOW's ethics policy says that, quote,

the grant of anonymity should be the last resort. It also says that we have an obligation to establish that our source is credible and reliable before we make this decision. Here's how I did that with the texter. For starters, he consistently documented these incidents soon after they occurred, many years ago and has kept those records.

He shared several of those with me. They matched the story you're about to hear. He also shared his trauma at the time with two close friends. They both verified with me the abuse he suffered. They cited the same facts and evidence that the texter told me in my one-on-one conversations with him. I explained this to my editor and managers at KOWW, and they approved my request to give this source

a pseudonym to use in the rest of the episode. He chose the name Paul. We also altered his voice a little to further shield his identity. I continued to vet Paul in other ways, which I'll tell you about later in the episode. After he agreed to the conditions, we met twice at KOWW for extensive interviews. So how are you? I'm doing okay. Yeah?

How are you? This is big. This is big. Yeah. It is. I was up a good part of the night. Yeah. Remembering things, thinking about things.

In the late 1980s, Paul was an eighth grader at Meany Middle School in South Seattle. He was a smart kid with high test scores, but he was often boarding class and wasn't shy about breaking the rules. One time, the mischievous teen super glued coins to the hallway floor and watched as other students struck. to pick them up. Another time, for close to a month, he operated a candy reselling scheme. I would go around and take orders from a bunch of different kids, like what they wanted to buy at the store. And then, at lunchtime, I would sneak off campus, which wasn't really that hard, and walk to the corner store, and pick everything up. His fellow students asked him for gummies, gobb stoppers, and starbursts. The boy would

provide the candy at an inflated price and use the profits to buy food he wanted to eat instead of the lunch his mom packed. In the fall of eighth grade, Paul told me he pulled a stunt that got him into a lot of trouble and changed his life forever. He set fire to a classroom vent. Smoke billowed through the building and kids had to be evacuated. The 13-year-old loved the chaos he caused, so he tried the prank again. the next day. This time he got caught and was punished with three days of detention in a portable

classroom outside the building. Not that he minded. As he was led down the hallway, he said he laughed and saluted his fellow students. Overseen detention was a man in his late 40s, new to teaching, with a voice that thundered across the classroom. His name was Tom Hudson. And somehow it ended up that I was the only person in in-school suspension for those three days. So I was alone with Tom all day. On day one, Mr. Hudson gave the boy a genetics textbook. He devoured it. On day two, Mr. Hudson talked to him about sex.

We spent hours talking about all kinds of sex, his sex life, who he slept with and this and that. And I thought it was cool, right? Because it was like confident. We're crossing the line. like we're having an adult conversation. On day three, Mr. Hudson brought in videotapes of pornography for the eighth grader to take home. There were all kinds of hardcore scenarios on these tapes, including one of porn star Ron Jeremy as a teacher having sex with his student.

It was the boy's first experience viewing porn, and it was the first secret he shared with Mr. Hudson. Today, he realizes how sinister it was. Looking back on that, now, I don't understand how he was alone in that room that whole time and how all of this was allowed to play out. It's so far over the line, and obviously was the grooming behavior, the conversations, the crossing the line of creating that distance from other adults that you create with the secrets, being that adults. that they'll talk to about, you know, all kinds of things

that other adults won't talk to you about for good reason. After three days in detention, the middle schooler returned to his regular classes. He didn't see much of Mr. Hudson for the rest of the term and moved on to high school the next year. Mr. Hudson got a job at a different school, where, coincidentally, the boy's mom worked as a teacher. Mr. Hudson befriended her right away.

That winter, Mr. Hudson asked, asked if her son would like to go snow camping with him and a group of other kids and adults. It sounded like fun. Paul remembered how cold it was on that trip and how he wound up in the same tent as Mr. Hudson. He positioned it so we slept next to each other in the tent and, you know, with that,

there's some spooning, you know, you're both in your sleeping bag, that type of behavior. It was the first time Mr. Hudson crossed a physical boundary with the boy. As a high school freshman, Paul said he was still a class clown. He was in constant trouble and told me his parents felt he was out of control. His mom talked to Mr. Hudson about it, and the teacher responded with an unusual proposition. What if her unruly kid moved in with him and his wife? And Tom, you know, the way that he sold this was, you know, boys come and live with us.

We take in boys who are having a little trouble and we help them get turned around and everything. And this is something, you know, we've done regularly. The boys' parents were grateful for the help. And besides, they trusted Mr. Hudson. They accepted his offer. So I was sent out of my house. I felt I was kicked out of my house and sent to live. with him. At first, the ninth grader was looking forward to getting away from his parents and living

with his new adult friend. He was obviously cool because of this other stuff and the porn and the talk and the so forth. And so, you know, right away, you're right back into those real frank conversations and things like that. But over a period of a couple of weeks, that quickly moved on into when his wife was not there, into actual child molestation, and then beyond. I asked Paul what he meant by molestation and beyond. I knew it would be painful for him to answer.

He tensed up and said he didn't want to detail lewd acts. What I will say is that Tom Hudson was a child rapist. Paul told me he was using one. Washington state's legal definition of child rape in the third degree. That means sexual intercourse or fallatio with a minor aged 14 or 15. It's a felony that could result in a five-year prison sentence. Paul said he was 15 when Mr. Hudson first assaulted him, and that when he lived at the Hudson's house, the abuse was constant. The teacher berated the teen as he abused him, often calling him a fag.

He made me think that I had started it. It was my fault. I had seduced him. He'd never done anything like this before. And he convinced me of that, and that therefore it was my fault. I was guilty. And, you know, if anything ever came out, everybody would hate me. They wouldn't be able to believe what I had done because it was such a terrible

thing that I had done by causing this. Paul said that at the time he didn't understand that Mr. Hudson was manipulating him. He'd been led to believe that he wasn't just difficult, but that he was bad, so bad that his parents had no choice but to kick him out, so bad that Mr. Hudson felt compelled to fix him. That made things even harder. For me, I was trapped in this, there's this hero and savior relationship that everybody believes and talks about from the outside. And, you know, there's no way that I could break out of that. He lived with the Hudson's for more than three months from spring into the summer.

Mr. Hudson's mind games weighed heavily on the team who didn't want his kids. parents and friends to hate him for corrupting a teacher, a married one at that, and a man. So Paul told me he didn't tell anyone what Mr. Hudson was doing to him. On sound politics, we'll walk you through your ballot this election season. And keep you informed about the issues defining races across the state. Like the millionaire's tax and how it's affecting the state Supreme Court races. I'm Scott Greenstone. And I'm Libby Dankman. Every week we break down the big storylines in this Washington and the other one.

So you will be a better informed voter and everyone's favorite party guy. That's not a guarantee. Listen now on the KOWW app or wherever you get your podcasts. About a month after Paul returned home from living with the Hudson's, he started 10th grade at Garfield High School. Mr. Hudson was there too. He'd been hired to teach science. You might think it would bother the teen, seeing that. man who abused him at school every day, but he still viewed Mr. Hudson as a sort of surrogate parent, someone who took him seriously and had his best interests at heart. He did do things like work out deals with my teachers so that there were extra credit

projects that we did together and everything. Sometimes Paul said he would go to Mr. Hudson for advice, asking him how to talk to girls, but his mentor discouraged him from acting on his crushes. He would find ways of undermining my confidence or making me think they don't really like me or things like that. As I'm older now and I look back in retrospect, I can see how he purposefully interfered and prevented relationships from developing.

The two of them also spent time together outside school. Sometimes they'd be alone at Mr. Hudson's house or they'd go hiking in the woods. At each location, Mr. Hudson abused him. During this period, teenage Paul was often high or drunk. Mr. Hudson was his supplier, stalking him with beer and prescription meds. Several times, they drove together to Canada. The teacher would buy bottles of coating there, sharing it with the boy,

telling him to keep the medication in case of a mountain emergency. But Paul told me he assumed Mr. Hudson was saying that with a wink. Why else would he give him hundreds of pain pills? I wondered about that too. It turns out there's research on this. Sex traffickers will give drugs to their victims to create dependence and numb their trauma. Paul explained that was why he used the coding

Mr. Hudson gave him. There's a lot of self-medication. And, you know, when you see a kid who's doing that, you know, there's got to be a reason for that. Kids just don't get high every single day. without some reason. The more Mr. Hudson abused him, the more drugs the teen took, and the more he acted out. Paul said he started ditching school, and for a stretch during his sophomore year, told me he missed

69 out of 90 classes. He looked for trouble outside of school as well, once breaking two knuckles in a fight over a girl. Another time, he kicked in the door of an abandoned house and came across a squatter. Both pulled out knives and faced each other, but before Paul could move, he said the squatter slashed his arm. Panicked, he bolted, and managed to get away. I even did things like deliberately call the police on myself and get chased,

and I don't know if I somehow wanted to get caught or I didn't, but there was a lot of this sort of cries for help and self-destructive behavior. Paul told me his parents saw he was. still struggling. So in the spring of his sophomore year, they spoke with Mr. Hudson, who offered to take in their son for another few months. The adults all agreed

it was the best thing for the volatile teen. The worse the behavior got, then, oh, he needs, you know, more help. But obviously, this more help is what's fueling the behavior because it's

abuse that's ongoing for those years. In total, Paul said he lived with the Hudson's for roughly nine months, from his freshman to his junior years of high school. Mr. Hudson repeatedly said he was the only boy he'd been intimate with. Paul said he believed his mentor at the time, mostly. The two would often go on walks together in the Hudson's neighborhood. During one of those walks, they bumped into a young man who was initially friendly.

Mr. Hudson said that this acquaintance had also lived at his house years earlier. When he mentioned that Paul sometimes stayed there too, the young man's face changed. It was a look of muted horror. But I had no idea why that would be. I just remember thinking, well, that was kind of odd. Paul said he never asked Mr. Hudson about his relationship with the guy they met on the street. Today, he wonders if Mr. Hudson abused that young man, too. Did Tom Hudson lose interest in you at something?

Eventually. By his junior year, the teen saw less of Mr. Hudson. The teacher was focused on a new outdoors program he'd started at Garfield, the precursor to post-84. Paul told me the abuse slowed during that time, but it didn't stop. There was just a lot less time, you know, certainly one-on-one in those later years that had crested, so to speak. The bit of distance gave him a new perspective.

According to Paul, Mr. Hudson was often high on pain pills, making him erratic. Paul also told me that he'd started taking high school more seriously at this point, and he found himself disliking Mr. Hudson for acting so irresponsibly. But he lived in near constant fear that his parents and friends would notice his growing resentment of his teacher and worried it was only a matter of time before his terrible secret was uncovered. So Paul said he decided to get out of Washington State and as far from Mr. Hudson as he could.

College might be the ticket out. The teen's grades were lackluster, but his test scores were nearly perfect. He knew a strong letter of recommendation would help and asked Mr. Hudson to write one for him. The teacher agreed, and penned an effusive letter valorizing his student as an outdoorsman and a natural leader. Paul told me that when he was accepted into an elite liberal arts college out of state,

he hoped to leave both Seattle and Mr. Hudson behind him, if only. He had befriended my parents. He had befriended, I mean, my friend's parents. I mean, everybody. and I still had to, in my mind, maintain this myth. I thought I was going to maintain it for my entire life. I asked Paul if he'd considered coming forward about Mr. Hudson's abuse after moving away. Maybe this was the time to tell his parents what had happened in high school.

Paul's answer was an unequivocal no. He was terrified that everyone would take Mr. Hudson's. Hudson's word over his. If it was believed, it would be like, well, there was this great person who did all these wonderful things for you. And then you, like, seduced him, whatever, got him to do this. And it's all your fault because you took this, you know, really good person and, you know, you're the reason that all this happened.

And then I wouldn't be able to live with that. And I would have to have to. I'd have to kill myself. That would be the only escape at that point. Paul made it very clear to me that maintaining the fiction that he and Mr. Hudson remained close was a matter of life and death. Paul said that in college,

he still did drugs and drank to numb the pain from his trauma. But he also made friends who encouraged him to study hard and not wait until the last day to write his papers. Slowly, he started to see, life beyond Tom Hudson. Then in 1994, during his junior year of college, Paul told me he got an unexpected phone call. On the line was an investigator from Seattle Public Schools. He wanted to know more about a naked photo of Mr. Hudson and two Garfield students that had recently surfaced. We told you about that photo in episode six. But before the investigator could say why he was calling,

the rattled college student hung up. At that time, I thought that it was about me. They were trying to find me. And if they found me, everything would come out and it would be terrible. The investigator didn't reach out again, and the student believed his secret was safe. Jason Fox, one of the kids in the photo, also refused to talk to the investigator.

The school district's inquiry fizzled, although Mr. Hudson did receive a stern letter telling him to stop spending time alone with students. But Mr. Hudson ignored that directive and the district never enforced it. I wished that, obviously, that investigation had turned out differently. I wished that I could have been able to say something at the time, but I just couldn't.

After college, Paul was accepted into a graduate program at a prestigious university on the East Coast. In December 1999, he returned to Seattle for the holidays. Mr. Hudson heard he was in town and called to invite him for a walk. Paul said he still felt he had to maintain appearances and agreed to go. During the walk, Mr. Hudson revealed that the school district was investigating him again. This was the inquiry that started after I told him, my mom what Ella had confided

in me, that Mr. Hudson was drinking with his students and pressuring them to shower naked with him. After my mom reported the allegations, the school district suspended the teacher and began investigating him. Mr. Hudson had been on leave for a

month by the time he met up with his former student. As they walked, Paul said he listened to Mr. Hudson's account of the claims against him. Then he asked, Well, are you guilty? Of course, I know he's guilty with me, but, like, I'm also thinking this isn't about me because I'm long gone and off the scene.

So he says, yes, he's guilty, but they haven't found the right students yet, plural. I was almost like, yeah, I've abused all these people and I can't even find him yet. He had no remorse at all. And that hit like a thunder clap. I just couldn't believe it. This is the first time that I ever had any idea that there were other people besides me. Paul said his mind raced as he tried to make sense of this shocking information.

I felt that, you know, maybe I could have done something to stop that in the past, you know, so that it wouldn't have gone beyond me. He thought back to that strange interaction with the young man they encountered on the street in Mr. Hudson's neighborhood, and the call he received from the school district's investigator. Paul told me he tried to figure out how long Mr. Hudson had been abusing boys, how many there might have been, and why Mr. Hudson. Hudson was admitting all this to him. Why do you think he confessed to you? I don't fully know. Maybe he was seeking some kind of validation or somehow that I would tell him that, you know,

well, that's okay or I'll stand up for you or for me to tell him not to do that or some form of rescue or something. Some form of rescue. That made sense to me. Mr. Hudson had a pattern. of taking risks and then needing to be saved from his own recklessness. Recall in episode one that I told you his students had pulled him from the bottom of a 30-foot crevasse on a freezing Mount Olympus, and how multiple times before that, search and rescue choppers had swooped down to pluck the stranded teacher from mountaintops. But Paul told me he didn't want to save his mentor. I wanted him to own up to what he'd done.

That would have been the best thing for him to do. He's away from everyone. He's not doing anything and he's in jail. But he doesn't appear that there's any reason he's going to do that. Paul remembered how it sounded like Mr. Hudson was boasting about not being caught, and that if the district let him off the hook again, he'd keep grooming and abusing boys. Paul told me he knew right then that Mr. Hudson had to be stopped. He just didn't know how to do that.

The two of them finished their walk and didn't see each other again on that trip. On his flight back to the East Coast, Paul said he agonized over what Mr. Hudson told him. I was really focused on it has to stop. Like, this just has to stop. can't get away with this again. And there were really two ways to bring it into it. Either I testified or he died. Paul told me that for years he had believed the lie that he was the only boy Mr. Hudson had sexually abused.

But now he knew that the teacher had assaulted multiple kids. Paul recalled wondering if he could have stopped Mr. Hudson in 1994 if he hadn't hung up on the investigator. Now, five years later, these new revelations gave him another chance. But approaching the authorities would mean submitting to depositions led by potentially aggressive defense attorneys and revealing his secret for friends and family to hear. He didn't think he could bear reliving the trauma. The other boys Mr. Hudson abused would have to endure all that too. I thought about how I had been at that time when I was in high school. And if I had been put on a stand at that age, it would have just destroyed me. And I was afraid that, you know, the students he was abusing

might kill themselves or, you know, they might decide not to testify or they'd get torn apart. And people wouldn't believe them. And so as I thought through that, I thought, well, there can't be a trial because of what that will bring. And so I thought something has to be done to stop him. And I'm going to have to do something. I'm going to have to put an end to this. You know, I might have to find some way to kill him. Paul imagined going home for the summer

and inviting Mr. Hudson on a remote hike that would take them to a cliff. When they reached the top, he would push his former teacher off the edge. Mr. Hudson had a bad knee and was a thrill seeker. Maybe people would believe his luck had finally run out. But before the grad student got too deep into researching the perfect trail to commit his crime, he realized he couldn't murder Tom Hudson. I mean, it was a stupid idea. Obviously, that's illegal, and there would be consequences for me.

It also might not work and so on and so forth. He needed a different plan. Back at school, Paul said he spent weeks sitting on the couch in his basement apartment, smoking pot and trying to figure out what to do about his former teacher. Man, that was brutal. That was brutal. And there was no one I could talk to at all. So I'm all alone. Then one night in mid-January, the phone rang.

It was Mr. Hudson calling, sounding drunk or high. After a few minutes of rambling and without any prompting, the teacher started describing how he groomed the boys he abused. Mr. Hudson said it usually started with him talking generally about sex. Then he would introduce the boys to porn and isolate them from friends and other adults so he could look for an opening to abuse them. Mr. Hudson admitted this was the tactic he'd used on Paul, too. He went through how he had accomplished that in detail,

and how this wasn't my fault and how it was his fault, which is, I mean, his attempt to make good, I guess, and apologized. But I mean, all of that rings. obviously hollow and I don't know if he even felt bad about the kids that he was abusing at the time but but he did go through and say that and get into detail about how he had planned it out and executed to that plan

he just laid it all out Paul maintained that he doesn't know why Mr. Hudson was telling him about his playbook but he said Mr. Hudson knew he had always kept the abuse a secret. Maybe he'd stay quiet about these new revelations too. A few days later, Mr. Hudson called a second time. Paul told me he sounded inebriated again.

Mr. Hudson was now sharing that the school's investigation was closing in and that he was contemplating suicide. As we explained in an earlier episode, Mr. Hudson had been saying the same thing for weeks to another Garfield student at the time, Jonathan Hill. Those calls had thrown Jonathan's life into chaos as he pleaded with his teacher not to kill himself. But for Paul, Mr. Hudson's suicidal ideation

offered a potential solution. Well, if he kills himself, that'll be great. That will solve the whole problem. He won't be able to abuse any more kids. and no one will have to know what happened to me. It'll all be over. Paul said he knew he had leverage to push Mr. Hudson toward that outcome, so he used it by giving his former teacher an ultimatum.

Paul told me he set a firm deadline for Mr. Hudson to turn himself in and confess his crimes. He said he didn't specify who Mr. Hudson should go to. The deadline was sometime in February. He doesn't remember the exact date. But Paul said he told Mr. Hudson to come forward by then, or he would. I'm going to tell them everything. I'm going to tell them what you did to me.

I'm going to tell them what you have admitted to me that you've done to everyone else, and I'm going to lay it out, and so that's what's going to happen. Paul told me he was scared, even thinking about going to the authorities, but he was betting he wouldn't have to. He felt confident Mr. Hudson would choose death over facing consequences for his actions and he could sense the man's desperation through the phone line. The walls are closing in on him.

At one point there, and I think it's right in response to that, he asked if he could come out and visit. And I think he probably wanted to try to talk me out of that or who knows what. Or, I mean, to be honest, he's so high enough. drunk. Who knows? Paul told me he declined Mr. Hudson's request and hung up the phone. Then he waited. A few weeks later, on February 2, 2000, Tom Hudson called his former student one last time. The midterm elections are drawing near, meaning fact-based reporting is more important than ever.

I'm Libby Dankman, host of Soundside, where we bring you news and conversation, rooted in the Pacific Northwest. We dealt beyond the headlines to bring you different perspectives on stories that impact your life right here in Washington State, and we're easy to find Monday through Thursday at noon and 8 p.m.

on KUOW 949 FM. Or you can listen anytime on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. The phone call came in the middle of the night. It was a few weeks after Paul imposed a deadline on Mr. Hudson to admit to authority that he had sexually abused boys. Paul told me he was at his apartment on the East Coast.

Mr. Hudson sounded intoxicated once again. And he says, you know, this is a goodbye. They're going to find me. I'm dead tomorrow. And, you know, it's going to look like natural causes. At first, he couldn't understand what Mr. Hudson was talking about. They were going to find him. Who were they? Where and why was he going to be found?

He was obviously really, really high, and his mind was kind of coming apart. He was getting less lucid as we talked. Paul said he knew what his former teacher was like under the influence, but there was something different about this call. Mr. Hudson revealed that he'd taken a bunch of prescription pills. And that's when Paul told me he realized, This was Mr. Hudson's response to his ultimatum. Mr. Hudson now seemed to be on the phone while he was dying.

As the grad student had suspected, Mr. Hudson would rather die than confess his crimes to authorities. Did you hope it was what was happening? Well, I certainly thought it would be a great thing. If he did then or if he did later that night or whatever, right? was planning to. I certainly didn't think the world would be worse off for that. After about 20 minutes of listening to the teacher's ramblings, Paul said he hung up the phone without saying goodbye. He can't remember what Mr. Hudson was talking about. At that point,

he was too far gone to say anything coherent. Besides, Paul told me he was tired of Mr. Hudson's apologies. After all that had happened between them, he found they meant nothing. The next day, Paul said he got another phone call. He doesn't remember from home. But that person told him that Tom Hudson had been found dead. He had checked himself into a tiny motel at a marina north of Seattle. Staff found his body. How did you feel when you learned he had died? Relief. there wasn't going to be any kind of trial. He wasn't going to drag it out for all the kids.

I would keep the secret of what happened to me. Secret forever was my initial thought. Ten days later, a thousand people attended Mr. Hudson's funeral at Town Hall in Seattle. Paul was one of them. He was concerned about what people would say if he didn't show up. He told me that he got high before the memorial, hoping it would make the service more bearer. It didn't.

Every time that I was talking to a friend or a family and they'd mention him and, you know, how great he was and how much he did for me and how, you know, terrible it was that he had killed himself and I had presented publicly as that's how I felt. But inside, it was eating away at me. Paul said he watched as the crowd wept for his abuser, including the devastated kids sitting cross-legged on the floor at the front of the people. of the Great Hall, wearing fern crowns to honor their late mentor. But Paul told me in that moment, he felt proud. He may not have pushed Tom Hudson off a cliff, but he'd still found a way to protect those boys. And Paul was the only person alive who knew how he'd saved them. But in the months after that funeral, those positive feelings faded. Paul told me that to his dismember, Mr. Hudson's death didn't diminish his pain.

He still felt the need to show respect and admiration for Mr. Hudson in front of friends and family. It was all a lie, and it was a lie that I had been telling for a long, long time. What was the lie? You know, the lie was the relationship. The lie was that he had come in as this white night and done all these great things for me. We'd had this great relationship when actually, you know, he was a child molester who had done terrible things

to me and to lots and lots of other boys when I was a kid and vulnerable and under his protection and that, you know, he had almost ruined my life. As the one-year anniversary of Mr. Hudson's death approached, Paul said he'd grown despondent.

The trauma from the abuse had become too much to handle, and he couldn't tell anyone about it. I came to a point where I just couldn't live with it anymore, and I decided to commit suicide. Paul told me he went to the back patio of his East Coast apartment, hung a rope from the deck above, tied a noose, and put his head through it. And as I was preparing that, there was a voice that said, you know, look, why don't you just take a quick break. You can, you know, reach out to some friends, family. Why don't you tell them what happened and see if they hate you?

And if they do, well, you only lose 20 minutes. you can go right back to this and finish the job. But if they don't, then you don't really have to do this. So I thought, well, that seems like a reasonable deal. Paul said he called his brother first and told him about the abuse he suffered and the ultimatum he issued before Mr. Hudson died. Then he called a close friend and confessed everything to him, too. They were horrified.

They were sad. By what he had done to you. But what he had done. Yeah. Not by me. Which was, well, that was genuinely surprising to me. Was it a relief? It was a huge relief.

I couldn't believe it. Paul told me he didn't attempt suicide that night. He realized he'd been trapped by another lie of Mr. Hudson's that if he told the truth about his abuse, his friends and family would hate him. In the weeks that followed, Paul said he mailed his parents a letter, detailing what Mr. Hudson had done to him. When they read it, they called him immediately.

They were obviously really sad. They were apologetic. They felt terrible. So they really took ownership. for their piece of it. They did take ownership. Yeah, yeah, they did. They weren't the only people he contacted. I wrote letters to adults who, you know, had failed.

A man had conversations with them. I had written a letter to his widow. Paul gave me a digital copy of that letter and agreed to let me share some of it with you. I'm sorry to have to write this. starts, I feel you must know the truth about Tom's relationship with me. His actions took a terrible toll on me, destroying my already fragile sense of self-worth and confusing my sexuality. Ultimately, I realize that the shame is all Tom's and that I need to heal and escape from the false reality he imprisoned me in. We reached out to Mr. Hudson's widow for a

an interview. She declined to speak to us, but confirmed receiving a letter like the one Paul described. She also sent us this comment about her husband. I was completely blindsided after his death and memorial as soon as some revelations came to my attention. Twenty-five years later, here we are. After Paul told me his story, I recounted it to a few people whose opinions I value. I wanted their reactions. All expressed disbelief. The story seemed too good to be true, they said. Was I sure about this guy?

I was defensive at first. Yes, of course I trusted him. While I appreciated their honest responses, I was also annoyed with them. Reactions like theirs can prevent victims from coming forward because they fear people won't believe them. But more importantly, over the past few months, I've come to know Paul well.

We've spent hours talking. I know his real name, where he works, where he attends church, and that he gains nothing from lying. I've observed him sweating and stammering and crying throughout our interactions. I've asked him the same questions in multiple ways, and he's never strayed from his story. I should add that it's not unusual for people to question accounts of heinous abuse. A domestic violence prosecutor explained this phenomenon to me years ago.

She said she doesn't present every lurid detail in court because jurors can be overwhelmed and end up blaming victims. I've worried that sharing too much of my fact-checking process in this episode would reinforce the false stereotype that victims lie about abuse. But as I've said, I don't want you to doubt his story. so here are some of the other ways I verified it. We conducted a forensic digital examination of Paul's letter to Mr. Hudson's widow, which he wrote on his computer.

This analysis confirmed the document was created about a year after Mr. Hudson died, was written in 12 minutes and hasn't been altered since. Mr. Hudson's widow also confirmed that a boy lived with them around the same time that Paul told me he did. I spoke to two of Paul's friends who were aware of the role Paul played in Mr. Hudson's death and the ultimatum he gave his former mentor. In our fact checks, both friends corroborated Paul's story. They told me they were devastated for Paul. It had been painful for them too, knowing how Paul has suffered for so long. There are some things I cannot fact of course. I can't confirm that Mr. Hudson confessed to abusing other boys to Paul during that

walk they took and in their subsequent phone calls, or that Mr. Hudson called him as he was dying. But Paul's account, at every step, matches what I've independently verified with the people he's confided in. And a Seattle Times article quoted another former Garfield student who talked by phone with the teacher the night he died. So it makes sense that Mr. Hudson could have called Paul as well. Piecing Paul's story together hasn't been easy, but he has put up with me through hours of interviews and many invasive questions because he wants to help other survivors. He wants them to know there can be light on the other side of darkness and that it's possible to have a good life, even after enduring years of childhood sexual abuse.

When we started releasing episodes of adults in the room, before I knew Paul existed, he told me he was anxious about what we would reveal about Mr. Hudson. So he created a mini support system for himself. Every Tuesday morning, Paul listened to the latest episode and debriefed with one of the two close friends I later spoke with. Paul made it clear to me that at first, he didn't like the podcast, and he was annoyed with me. He felt I'd made the narrative about myself. But Paul explained that his opinion changed

after we chronicled the stories of Ocean Mason, Jonathan Hill, and Jason Fox. That's when he decided to get in touch with me. The message that I want to convey is one of hope, and also responsibility. I think it's important to understand how much damage this does and to be real about that, both to set the record straight with respect to Tom,

but also to just, you know, make sure that people understand and can't hide from the really destructive effects that this has on children. You know, I made it through and survive, I doubt that's the case for everybody that encountered Tom Hudson. You know, I just want people to know that if something is happening to them or has happened to them, and if you're feeling like, look, I have to, I can't live with this anymore, everybody will hate me. That's not true, and it won't turn out that way.

At the beginning of this podcast, I set out to learn if Ella and I were truly to blame for Tom Hudson's death. This experience has brought me closure, but not in the way I thought it would. From the moment I had my mom report the allegations of Tom Hudson's abuse to the day the man died, just two months had gone by. So I think our actions must have played a part. But I've also come to see the past in a new light, thanks to Paul. when I listened to the podcasts and I heard he'd had all these conversations with Jonathan about suicide and made Jonathan then feel for many, many years that he was somehow partially responsible for Tom's death. And, you know, you and your friend felt that you were responsible for launching this whole investigation that ultimately resulted in his death, although it also turned out that someone else had reported it too.

and then he put all of this on me as well, and I thought, you know, for decades, who knows how many people have been carrying this idea that his death was somehow one of our faults. And it's his final way of just screwing everybody over and just laying that burden on all of us. But, you know, at the end of the day, Tom's death was his own fault. He chose to do that.

As Paul said this, it dawned on me. There was another way to look at everything that happened 25 years ago. While Ella and I weren't aware of him in 1999, the three of us were unknowingly working together to prevent Tom Hudson from abusing more boys. And it wasn't just us. There was the student who told Seattle Public Schools investigator Eddie Hill in 1990. that Tom Hudson was making him and other boys at Garfield uncomfortable. I still don't know that boy's identity.

And there was Rosie Bancroft, my fellow reporter at the Messenger, Garfield's high school newspaper, who shared what she knew about the abuse, hoping we might write about it. Adults obstructed us at nearly every step. Parents defended Tom Hudson. Teachers knocked us down. administrators ignored our pleas. But in the end, the kids prevailed. We didn't kill a man.

We stopped a monster. Adults in the room is part of Focus, a dedicated documentary channel from KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR network. KUW podcasts are made possible because of listener support. If you enjoyed this podcast, please make a donation or become a monthly member at KUOW.org. Original reporting for this series was done by me is older after.

Ella Husshagen, Jeannie Yandel, and Will James. Our producers are Will James and Alec Cowan. Our editor is Jeannie Yandel. Music by B.C. Campbell. Additional music by Alec Cowan. Logo designed by Alicia Villa. Amelia Peacock manages our marketing. and promotions.

KUAW's director of new content is Brendan Sweeney. Our director of marketing is Michaela Giannati Boyle. Our director of community engagement is Zeki Hamid. KUAW's chief content officer is Marshall Eisen. Special thanks for this episode to Phyllis Fletcher. John Bancroft, who kept crucial records for decades. My therapist, Mary Mills, and my husband Levi, for wrangling our board. so I could write. And a very special thank you to KSARC, King County Sexual Assault Resource Center

for providing support at our event in June. I'm Azolteri. Thank you for listening. Are you the one that gets the plans out of the group chat and into an actual restaurant? Let me help you out. I'm Randy Fullwood, host of Seattle Eats, and I got to say this podcast is for you. Every week I talk to chefs, critics, industry people about the best places to eat in Seattle. So you always know where to go next. Listen to Seattle Eats on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.