Rotten Mango - #200: 13 Popular High School Football Players Gang Raped Their Disabled Classmate - “The Princes of Glen Ridge”

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

When I say “it was the town’s best-kept secret,” what do you imagine? Maybe an unknown hole-in-the-wall restaurant with the best milkshakes? Maybe a secret hangout spot near the river with the best city views. Not for the town of Glen Ridge; it was much darker than that. For them, their best-kept secret was their boys. The town’s group of star athletes - the football players, wrestlers, basketball players, and the most popular boys in class. So why are they a secret? Well, they’re not. But the secret was over a dozen of the most popular boys gang raped a disabled high school girl. They assaulted her with a baseball bat and broomstick. It was a secret kept by the boys, the parents, teachers, faculty members, coaches, and social workers, for 3 full months before the police were alerted. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rambles. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay to description starting at $12.99 per month. Better being better.

Welcome to this week's main episode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue. You know how they always say, like, this is the town's best kept secret. What do you imagine when you hear those words? Maybe you're thinking of a restaurant that only all the locals know about, you know, not a tourist trap. The one that only seats five people on the inside. You'll never find a Yelp page for it, but it has got the best steak in fries that you will ever consume in your whole life. Is that the best secret a town has? Or maybe the best kept secret in a town is a nice, secluded riverbed that has the most insane views

of the entire city. Maybe that's what it is. But not for the nice upper-class town of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. As an outsider, you might think that this town has no secrets. With its perfectly manicured lawns, all American schools, but they did. They had their best kept secret. They were called

the boys, our boys. I know it sounds like that superhero Amazon show. It's not. They weren't. They weren't super heroes. They were the top football players, wrestlers, and basketball players of their senior year class. The town revolved around them. They were like the sun. They all came from prominent families that were active in the community, so why are they a secret? Well they're not. But the town's best kept secret is that over a dozen of the most popular high school boys were allegedly involved in the gang group of a disabled high school girl. They penetrated her with a baseball bat and a broomstick.

Thirteen of the most popular kids were present in the basement during the alleged rape. The boys tried to get her to come back down to the basement a second time. But it wasn't a secret just between the 13 boys. No, it was a secret between the whole town. The high school students, the jocks, the teachers, faculty members, the parents, coaches, social workers,

they would keep this secret for three full months before someone finally went to the police. As always, full show notes are available at rottonminglepodcast.com, but there is the most in-depth heartbreaking, well-researched book on this case called Our Guys by Bernard Lecvitz. Now, I just want to say that it took the author six years to research for this book. He interviewed over 250 people.

I mean, the book deeply reflects all the work that he's put into it. It is shattering. I think everyone who has had any personal experience of sexual harassment or even being peer pressured, the feeling of letting unwanted touching slide because you're scared. You want to fit in during high school.

You don't want to cause drama. Anyone who has been sexually assaulted is going to find this book incredibly hard to get through. Bernard doesn't just tell us about the case, which he does in great length, but he shows us the inner workings of the minds of high school boys who would get together to gang a girl with disabilities. And the worst part is that they're not even the only ones that fault. They're parents, they're teachers, I mean the whole community, they're all at fault and they're all really disgusting. I mean I cried multiple times during this book. It was just, it was such a heart and read, but it was so necessary.

I think if you've ever found yourself thinking, oh, it's not all men. Or, well, why was she at the party? What was she wearing? Or even, well, we can't ruin someone's life over an allegation. Then this book should be a very enlightening read for you. So with that being said, let's get into it. Signed note, the victim's identity was sealed by the courts,

so I'm going to be calling them the F the favor family but that is not their real names. When Leslie was five years old she was hanging out at the park. That was like her favorite place to be. I mean she loved to be able to play basketball, feel the breeze in her hair, she loved hanging out with other kids, that was her dream at five years old like any other five year old. All she wanted to do was make friends at the park. And lucky for Leslie, it was her lucky day. A group of the coolest boys in school had approached her, and they wanted to see if she wanted to hang out with them. Was that even a question? I mean, she ran over there with the biggest smile. Like, she just wanted a friend, maybe two, and now these were the most popular boys in school. And one of the boys reached out his hand,

sticking something in Leslie's face. Hey Leslie, look at this pen. It's chocolate. The ink in the pen is chocolate. Taste it Leslie, try tasting it. She grabbed the pen and she inspected it. She smelled it. It didn't smell like chocolate.

It didn't smell like chocolate at all. It actually smelled disgusting. It smelled exactly like dog poop. Leslie looked at the boys who were smiling so sweetly in front of her. She looked at the pen. Why would these boys want her to eat dog poop? But if they were her friends and they wanted her to do it, then she should do it right. It's probably not dog poop.

Leslie would do anything for her friends. So she tried it. And immediately she was disgusted. And in that moment, Leslie's older sister walked by, and she put two and two together, and she marched over, snatched Leslie by her arm, brought her home, and she was emotional. She was telling their mom,

Mom, the kids were all picking on her, I saw it. Leslie's mom was so confused. Sweetie, is that true? Why would you do something like that? Why would you taste it? It's true, Mom, but they're my friends. They're my friends, okay? You just don't get it.

Leslie's parents wanted to call the parents of all the boys involved, but she felt worried. If she complained and caused a scene, it would only do Leslie more harm. It would only draw more attention to Leslie's intellectual impairment, and that is the last thing the family wanted. Leslie longed, she literally strived to feel normal. This was the last thing that she

would have wanted. So Leslie's parents didn't complain but they were so disgusted at the boys. I mean how could they do that? You know and they also noticed that Leslie was coming home with these red welts up and down her arms. Leslie what happened to you? Oh the boys were pinching me. Why didn't you tell them to stop? I don't know. Leslie and her parents did not know at this point, but the secret was out. The boys felt like you could do almost anything to Leslie. If you pretended that you were her friend, you could get away with anything.

So their favorite thing to do was pinch her and call her brainless headless or just hey insert our word Leslie's parents felt like they were in over their heads I mean how are they supposed to protect Leslie from these boy bullies? And how do they do it without even harming Leslie more without drawing more attention to her? They were so confused that they hired a child psychologist Now this is what's interesting the child psychologist just told Leslie's parents, lots of children have problems, but they outgrow the problems. Why don't we wait and see if Leslie outgrows her problems?

The psychologist didn't say that the biggest problem in town was the fact that boys had bullied a girl into eating dog feces and that the type of problem only gets bigger and bigger until something really bad happens happens He didn't say that. He just said Leslie had some problems. Let's see if she outgrows them Because convincing a mentally impaired person to eat dog feces is completely normal. I don't even know what these adults were thinking Nothing about the boys were normal none of it none of their behavior screamed normal Sure, that was when they were five years old. Listen, I never dared do something like that at five years old. But okay, fine. You know, their behavior, you guessed it, only gets worse with time. And you're like, why

did anyone stand up to the jocks? The boys is the town calls them. Well, let's break down the school clicks for you real quick. Now we're jumping to fast forwarding to high school. Glenridge High School consisted of a few groups of, I guess, kids. We have the achievers. You already know which ones I'm talking about, okay? They're the ones that care about their grades. They hate everyone.

They can't wait till the day that they're gonna go to one of the Ivy leagues on a full scholarship. They think that this whole town is stupid. The whole school, it's filled with dumb people. They just wanna get out of this weird football town. They're the ones that would stay after school to study to participate in Model UN. The jocks only ever associated with them

to get answers for the homework. That was it. They were the smart kids. These were the kids that were gonna go to Princeton one day. Then you had the jazz kids. These are like the artsy kids. I guess what you would call the theater kids now. They're into music.

They love the arts. They're the ones that are going to end up at schools like Pratt or the fashion institute of technology in New York. Then you have the rejects. They hate all things preppy. They think it's disgusting. That 99.9% of the school shows up to school in those vineyard vines, shorts. You know the ones with the whales

and their little popped-collared polo teas they hate it they're kind of like the emo kits you know the grunge kits they like the heavy metal they smoke the weed they drink they don't care for college they just hate the small town of lululemon wearing weirdos what's out weird it's a tiny little town in New Jersey it called Glenridge now at the top of top of the pyramid, the top of the food chain, the sharks. There were the jocs, aka the boys. Now, you imagine that anyone who is an athlete is going to be a joc, but not necessarily. You had to play sports, okay?

But it had to be one of the more aggressive ones. Tennyson golf don't count. It had to be hands-on aggressive and violence boards, football, wrestling, maybe basketball and baseball, maybe. So the jock is a positive thing. Jocks actually have a negative connotation to the name jocks. It's kind of like meathead. You know, like when you say jock, I think the instant association is, um, Chad, yeah. And you had to be good looking. You had to be liked by the girls. And you had to be a total and complete dick

with a capital D. Like, you had to be willing to bully everyone that wasn't a jock, including the girl that you have a crush on for some reason. Oddly enough, the jocks were the meanest to the girls. More than bullying the guys that they deemed were not manly enough, they bullied girls. What?

Yeah, it's weird. The jocks in this school are very weird, which then brings me to a subgroup of the jocks called the jockets at Glenridge. The jockets. OK, now it might seem like the jocks, like the jockets, right? Not really. The jockets loved the jocks.

It was like the entourage for the jocks. People who wanted a seat at the jock table, but they weren't there yet. The jocks, they tolerated them. They didn't think that they were as weird as the achievers or the jazz kids, you know, but they didn't love them. The jockettes were guys and girls.

They were just hungry for some jock attention. They went to every single game. They decorated the jock's lockers before the games. I mean, they were the entourage. There were the entourage. There were the girls that would do anything to be acknowledged by one of the jocks, and the way that the jocks viewed girls fell into three categories. The first being, unattractive girls that they would never pursue.

But they don't just simply ignore the girls, they still took immense pleasure in bullying the girls for their looks. The second group, they actually had a name. They were called the Little Mothers. Yeah, it says alarming as you imagine. These were the ones that Jocs would hang out with, but these were the girls that the Jocs had known most of their lives and would never try to sleep with or do anything sexual with them. They were kept around for emotional support. They were like surrogate moms for the Jocs. If the Jocs were hurt, the Little Mothers would rally and stay up all night making care packages for the jocks.

They would help them with their homework, they would offer sisterly advice. If a girl rejected a jock, the little mothers would rally around and re-inflate his ego with their little air pumps. Uh-huh. Honestly, their lives revolved around the jocks, and what did the jocks provide them? Some social power, some social protection, and they were invited to all the parties. Even though the jocks would rather talk to the hot girls than talk to them so they were mainly ignored at the parties, but at least they were there. Okay, at least they could sit with the jocks during lunch. The jocks loved the little mothers, because unlike their own moms and their own sisters, none of them were judgmental. None of them ever

wanted something from them. They took on that mom roll, but they never really disciplined the boys. They were just faithful friends and followers who would do anything for the jocks. Then there were the pretty girls that the jocks would invite to parties. The girls that they would try to sleep with, but they would never consider them friends because you can't sleep with a friend. So the last two groups were always invited to the jock parties, the pretty girls and the little mothers. And there were requirements. To keep getting invited, you had to laugh at all the jock's jokes. You had to make them feel like men. And if they touched you when you didn't want to be touched and you didn't feel comfortable, the jocks would only allow one high-pitched

squeal of protest. But it had to be brief. and you had to follow it up with a giggle. It could never be a don't ever do that again. It could never be a, hey, I didn't consent to that, don't do that. It had to be, oh, what are you doing? That was it. That was what they expected you to react to, to straight up sexual assault and harassment. The ideal girl for a jock from Glen Ridge, if you asked him, was easygoing, perky, patient, and never complaints.

But the jock's didn't really date. I mean, none of them had serious girlfriends like you would expect high schoolers to have. You know, the high school relationships were like, I'm going to marry this person. We're going to spend the rest of our lives together. I would die without this person. The jock's never had that. In fact, one girl said, I mean, I would have liked to date one of the drugs. I did what I did go on a couple dates with one of them, but I think the guys were really just close with one another. They never really got close with

girls. So every day is for the boys. Yeah, every day is for the boys. Monday through Sunday. Uh-huh. If a job asked you to a party, you might think it's a date, right? You get excited. You spend hours getting ready. It's like the most popular kid in school. But then the minute that you get to the party, you might think it's a date, right? You get excited, you spend hours getting ready. It's like the most popular kid in school. But then the minute that you get to the party, he's off to hang out with his buddies. The party was segregated by gender. It was like the lamest party ever.

So the guys would be drinking in one corner and the girls would be just standing around in another corner. That's so weird. We can't get it. Just date each other. No. It's okay.

Sometimes the date that you brought to the party would come up to you and be like, Hey, so you got to go find a different ride home because I'm going in one of the boys house. And then he would just leave the party. It's that that dating might have stirred a feeling of affection and empathy and tenderness for girls, you know? Because as you date, you start realizing, wow, the opposite gender is a full-fledged human being. These are equal people. But the jocks never dated.

They only felt those feelings for each other. Okay, we're gonna get into it. We're gonna like dissect this whole thing. Anyway, but first, the little mothers were used for sympathy and favors. The pretty girls were used as trophies and sexual outlets and just pretty much objects. And all the other girls that were not attractive enough were considered subhuman. Actually in fact all girls were considered not real humans. The jocks even had their own language on how to categorize girls.

A girl that gave blow jobs to any of the jocks was automatically called a vacuum. She lost her name and she was called a vacuum because you get it. If a girl showed a lot of enthusiasm for oral sex, she was called the Helmet Wash Queen. I guess like they're helmets and I don't know like a car wash. I don't know. Girls that were down to have sexual relations, any of them like any girl that was quote DTF were just called animals. Yeah, they would go to a party and they'd be like God, the party was just like full of animals. That meant like there were a lot of girls that were down to have sexual relations. I mean, I feel like that should tell us all we need to know about these guys.

And sometimes the jocks would pressure a girl to give them a couple of them blow jobs, like one after another, and then they would call her a seal. Yeah, everyone in the high school knew what a seal meant. It meant that you were like a trained seal at a sea world, at a circus, that you would do whatever the jocks commanded you to do. If you were a seal, you might even hear the jocks winking behind your back in the hallways. Speaking of winking, the jocks once held a picnic and they called it a pig-nick and they told the whole school that they would let any girl come to their pig-nick, which never happened.

So of course all the girls, all the jockeads, they lined up to join the guys at the picnic, right? But once they got in front of all the boys, they were told, you wanna come into the picnic? The pig, Nick, then you have to be a pig. Oink for us. What? Oink. Get on all fours and oink like a pig. That's not good enough. Oink harder.

Come on! Like, really get into the character. You're a pig. Tell oink like a pig. That's not good enough. Oink harder. Come on! Like really get into the character. You're a pig. Tell me you're a pig. They literally lived to degrade girls for the sole purpose of what? Getting patted on the back by their fellow jock buddies. One time a girl with a disability was going door to door selling girl scout cookies.

And the jocks were hanging out watching porn together. Okay, we're not even gonna get into the circle dukes right now, because I'm gonna go in depth in a second. Okay, they watched porn together and would jack off into a piece of bread. Hold on, they invite the girl in. Her name is Leslie.

She's very excited to be invited in by the popular guys that she literally grew up around. So she starts talking about like the Girl Scout cookies and they start talking about the porn that they were just watching. It was about a girl who got excited about putting all sorts of objects into her vagina. And according to Leslie, Chris, one of the jocks went over to the fridge, pulled out a package of frozen hot dogs and told her to put it inside her vagina.

No. It's kind of unclear whether or not it happened because Leslie said that she said no in some reports and another time she told officers later on that she did put the hot dog inside of her because she was scared. So it's unclear. Later when questioned by the police, the jock said, no, you've got it wrong. She came over while we were eating hot dogs and completely out of nowhere, just asked if she could put it inside of her.

Yeah, because that makes total sense. When has that not happened to you when you're casually eating hot dogs with the boys? At parties, the jock's entire goal was to get a blowjob from a girl that was deemed by the whole group as pretty. But more than that, the jock's goal was to make sure that his teammates saw that he was sexually pleased. Okay, this is where it gets wild. Other party goers, remember, this is where it gets wild.

Other party goers remember, and these are high school kids. Sometimes a jock would go upstairs with a girl, and after some time he would run down the stairs and announce to his buddies, I just got a blowjob. I just got a blowjob from her. Oh yeah, and then they would all shout like, yeah, hi five him, and then he would cock his head up the stairs and say, hey, see your turn. And another jock would run up to try and get a blowjob from the same girl. And it was like their way of bonding as brothers and as friends.

While speaking of fraternal bonding, they liked to circle jerk each other. Okay, hear me out. But they would get together, turn on some porn, and they would even do this at parties. They would go into a separate room and start watching porn on the TV, but the girls weren't allowed in the room because porn was just for men, and they would just masturbate together. And they would watch porn as if it was like football,

so they would be masturbating on the couch and they would scream things like, yeah, fuck her! Like as if they're watching football and someone is scoring. This is the most bizarre high school I've ever heard of. This is a freaking real town? This is absolutely bizarre. Yeah, sometimes they would take turns ejaculating into a piece of bread. When they were done with that piece of bread, like, it's like 10 guys ejaculation in that bread, they would top off

the bread with another slice, maybe throw some jam and pv and j in there, and bring it to school the next day and try to convince someone to eat it. Nobody would eat it, thank god. And more alarmingly, the boys were big on voyeurism. They wanted to watch each other get blow jobs. Okay, it's weird. Sometimes it would be that a jok and a girl would go upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and the jok would purposely leave the door unclosed. They would open it ajar. So that his buddies could sneak up in a few minutes to watch through the open door crack what was going on. During parties it was not uncommon to see a bunch of jocks run down the stairs and scream to

their other buddies, okay your turn you got to go up and see what they're doing. She's unbelievably disgusting because she's disgusting for doing what he's doing. It's so weird. But when the excitement of that wore off they started getting more illegal. A guy would find a girl to have sex with or to get a blowjob from. And he would tell all the other guys which room he's going into upstairs.

He's like, okay, I'm gonna be in my bedroom. So then the jocks would sneak away, go find hiding spots in that very room, in the closet. Like, there'd be 10 jocks, crammed together in a closet, or under the bed. Then the jock and the girl would go into the room, and she would have no idea that the entire wrestling team was hiding in the closet watching her engage in sexual activities. Because for the jock, it was less about sexual satisfaction. It was less about the blowjob itself or the sex itself. It was more about knowing that his boys knew that he was getting some.

It was about sharing the experience with them. This reminds me of the TikTok that was like, a lot of straight men are sexually attracted to women, but are emotionally and mentally attracted to men. Like, this is literally the definition of that. So most of the time the girl would find out that she's being watched. Usually someone in the closet would cough or make a noise by accident or their phone would go off and all the joks would jump out and they would all just start laughing

and high-fiving each other. And now the girl had two choices. She could experience social death, literally be an outcast in school from this day forward, by expressing how she really felt, which was betrayal, traumatized, violated, disgusted, degraded, upset, or she could awkwardly laugh away the shock and deal with the trauma when she gets home, and at least when she goes back to school tomorrow, she won't be bullied. I mean, what would you pick?

I think most of us would pick the latter because why be traumatized and bullied on Monday. It was actually a normal thing for girls to start being paranoid that someone was watching them. They would say things like, wait, are you sure nobody's in the closet? I don't want to go upstairs. I'm scared someone's watching. In that case, the jocks which is circle around her and pressure her to have sexual relations with another girl at the party. They're like, come on, so they wanted to watch like two girls do each other, and they would pressure it, and they promise that they would be her friend forever and protect her socially, and she would become like the top dog of all the girls at school.

And that was just phase one. The voyeurism was just one half of what the boys did. Part two was their fun. They would go to school the following Monday and talk loudly about what they did with who and literally everyone would hear. All the other classmates would hear, the teachers would hear, I mean, there was like no secret in this town. It was gross.

One of the jocks even took a picture of himself having sex with a girl on the golf course, like a polaroid, slipped it into the display case at school where all the trophies are, so that everyone could see the picture. Girls would witness this, and instead of warning other girls or being grossed out by the guys, and vowing never to hang out with them again

The girls actually blamed the girls and I'm not saying all the girls, but um, this was like the jockheads, okay? They said I mean you can't hold a guy responsible for what happened You just expect high school guys to act like that and it's up to the girl to control the situation to exercise moral restraint The girls who go upstairs with jocks are just stupid. I would never do that act like that and it's up to the girl to control the situation, to exercise moral restraint. The girls who go upstairs with jocks are just stupid. I would never do that. And you're like, what kind of girl would ever say that? This was actually literally a quote by one of the most popular girls in the whole school. Her name was Tara and she was the only one that was dating a jock. Like she was in a real high school relationship. So by default,

all the other girls looked up to her and they followed her lead like she was the queen B because she was the only other girl that had a jock wrapped around her finger. She was special. She was like the first lady of the jockheads. I know, I want to get unbelievable. The other girls prayed and wished for what Tara had. So other quote, girl friends of jocks, they were just used for like sexual frustrations. They never went on dates. A lot of people compared them to overworked under appreciated housewives, but they would get the girlfriend title. But Tara, she was dating one of the jocks named Peter, and they would go on dates. And the girls were really jealous because Peter actually treated Tara like an equal, which was unheard of here.

I mean, just listen to this. One time a close girlfriend of the jocks got super drunk at a party. She starts feeling sick. I mean, she's obviously drinking too much. And instead of helping her, being like, hey guys, I'm gonna take her home, or like, hey, we gotta go outside like she's really feeling sick. The jocks threw her in a closet like a bag of garbage, and they locked the door so that she couldn't get out and bother them the rest of the party. So she was left in the dark in a closet,

sicked her stomach, choking on her vomit for hours. They considered the say successful wild party, they thought it was the highlight of the year, locking a girl in the closet. So you're like, okay, well why didn't they just stop being nice to the guys or like find new friends to talk to? Which speaking of, these guys were the worst ways for a young girl to start her sexual journey. Because sex for the jocks was not interactive.

They really actually had sex. They preferred when things were done to them. So they really liked getting blow jobs and hand jobs, but not sex because it was too much work. Yeah, they definitely don't know where the clitoris is, even now I'm sure. So why did the girls just find a new group to hang out with? Well, they don't want to be Mary Ryan. Okay, you're like, who's Mary Ryan? Let me tell you about a party

called Ryan's rec. Mary Ryan was a nobody at school. She was really quiet. Shy. She just kind of blended into the walls. They said nobody cared for her. She, she almost had this very passive week personality. Then one day, she went into the cafeteria, walked straight up to the jock table and she was nervous. Everyone could tell. And hi, hi, okay, I'm Mary. I'm like in your English class. My parents are going to be away next weekend and I'm going to have a big party and everyone is invited if you guys want to come. I mean it was clear that Mary Ryan wanted to be known as she wanted to fit in with the popular kids so she invited the popular kids but the problem was and Tara said, you know none of us liked

Mary Ryan and if someone didn't like you they're not going to have respect for your home. A friend of the jock said, oh yeah this was bad. If you're a girl and the jocks don't respect you and if they don't like you, forget it. It's over. Another wrestler said, Mary was the kind of girl where she smiled a lot and she tried to be nice to you, but most of us didn't accept it. She was kind of weak. Like she never tried to offend people, so I mean, everyone just walked all over her. And she had just given the jocks a free pastor house for the entire weekend with no adult

supervision and they didn't give a fork about Mary so they felt like they could be as crazy as they wanted. In fact, they felt like they needed to out crazy each other. And just a side note, the jock parties weren't just about underage drinking and circle jerks and sex. It got pretty violent. One time the jocks went to go beat up a random kid. Okay, so one of the kids from the artsy crowd

was hosting a party at his house without his parents. And all the artsy kids were there. And the jok showed up. They never hang out with the artsy kids, but they just wanted an outlet to like hang out and underage drink. So they're trying to get in through the door, and the kid is like, dude, you literally bully all of us.

We hate you. You're uncultured piece of shit. Can you leave? They dragged him out to his own front lawn, and they jumped him. So yeah, word about Mary Ryan's party was starting to spread. And it was spreading quick, like wildfire. The boys said that it was going to be back-to-back parties the whole weekend, because it was a long weekend.

Monday was a holiday. So they're going to have ragers, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at Mary Ryan's house. Friday night was a disaster. Mary Ryan's house. Friday night was a disaster. Mary Ryan didn't recognize most of the kids that showed up. I mean, there were kids from the wrestling teams from all over the state of New Jersey. It was like 100 kids jammed packed into Mary Ryan's house. She was so stressed. She had even given up asking where they were from. What school did you go to? Because it didn't even matter. They

certainly weren't from her school. And Friday night was the test. Everyone had a great time except Mary. So now we're at spread. Hey, Mary Ryan's party was fucking crazy. More people showed up Saturday night. More kids, more alcohol. They had to open up all the windows and doors because all the smoking made the entire house foggy. Like there was a thick fog of smoke. And within an hour, it was attack of the jocks. They had taken everything out of the fridge and kept the door open, leaving all the food

spoiling out in the counter. Why, I don't know, okay? Then someone, one of the jocks, has a great idea to take apart all the furniture. Within an hour, the jocks had smashed the legs off of every piece of furniture, so I'm talking kitchen table, kitchen chair, desk, side tables, coffee tables, everything. If it had a leg, the leg was smashed off. One of the jocks got the bright idea to use one of the kitchen chair legs as a battering ram,

and all the other jocks were cheering. One, two, three, charge! And the kid went from one side of the room with the leg and rammed into the dry wall of the other side of the room. Left a hole. Then he backed all the way back up and started again until the hole was three feet wide in diameter. When it got big enough, they started on the other wall.

They were trying to tear it down the whole house. Yeah, for no reason. Other than they think that's fun, I guess. I don't know. Beeps me, it sounds good. These kids have like no... Yeah. No sense of consequences. Oh, just to... Like when I was growing up, if I accidentally like freaking break a pen, I'm like stressing.

Yeah, did you know he did a headstand on the wall and his butt smashed through his head? Yeah, I smashed through a tiny hole on the wall and I had to patch it up. Yeah. By myself. Yeah. Walking to Home Depot and everything. And his parents still talk about it to this day.

Yeah, like, that's consequences, right? You don't know. Just your weight, because they have none. Oh, and this is just the beginning. This is the appetizer of Ryan's wreck. Then the jocks decided that the amputated furniture was posing as a safety hazard. So they started throwing every single piece of furniture off the back deck into the backyard. Meanwhile, in another corner of the house, two jocks were sipping beer in vodka, looking at the

built-in bookshelf on the wall. Just drinking. And one of them says, I bet you can't break that in half. Is that a challenge? So he puts down his drink as if he were squatting on a gym. He squats down, puts the shelves behind his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and starts to pull up and stand up. The entire built-in shelf along with everything on it can crashing to the ground. Then some of the jocks started breaking pieces of the shelving. It was like bamboo shelving over their heads and using it as swords to poke at each other,

there was another jock who was alone in the corner, staring at a fish tank. Just thinking. And he quietly put down his drink, walked to the kitchen, got the entire bottle of dish detergent and poured it into the tank. All the fish died. So the jocks decided, well the fish are dead, so let's go throw out this glass fish tank into the backyard with all the water. Mary was so distraught she tried to stop the jocks but there was literally no one even listened. Sometimes girls would kind of pull her aside the jock cats. They would pull her aside and say things like,

it's okay, we'll help you clean later. They wouldn't. It's okay, we'll help you clean later. They wouldn't. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Price is very based on how you buy. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this?

No. Who's going to catch us? What a police! It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100% I saved my soul just like everybody else does.

Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. That was Saturday. Sunday rolled around and more people showed up and Mary couldn't say no. Literally they stormed into her house. And this time the wrestlers came, so they had been away for like a way game the whole weekend. The wrestlers weren't even there. I was like the football players. Now the wrestlers were here too. Some more jocks.

More jocks. One of them had a dad that worked in construction and he said, I mean, I went into this place and the things I saw I could not believe. There were rooms in the house that looked like a construction crew had gone in there with crowbars and just destroyed the place. So the jocks start walking through like the main floor of the house and they're kind of annoyed. It seemed like everything to be destroyed was already destroyed Saturday night. Then they found out that there was an upstairs in a basement. Listen, I did some really embarrassing things as a high schooler, but you would not catch me around being like,

oh my God, Kevin! While I saw him destroying drywall in someone else's house, like you would not catch me ever doing that. So the jock's found out that there's an upstairs in a basement, so they started taking everything apart, battering through the walls, spray painting every wall with graffiti, they stabbed Mary's parents' water bed to cause a flood.

The kids started smashing the railing guards off the stairs. They started sliding up and down the stairs with mattresses, and Mary was just in her room sobbing. Oh my god. Kids were throwing all of Mary's parents belongings onto the snow outside, and someone said that Mary was just getting smaller and smaller, like she was sinking into the corner of her room and she looked like she just wanted to disappear and then she heard the kids chanting. Ryan's wreck, Ryan's wreck, Mary Ryan, Ryan's wreck, that's what they were calling it. And then she heard a

Yelp, she ran downstairs, someone had tried to microwave her cat. Thankfully she was able to open the door in time, but the smell of burning flesh and burning flour. Freaking kidding me, they put the cat inside, actually. Yeah, and turned it on. Like these are psychopathic killers. Allegedly, I mean, I can't say that cause they're gonna sue me, but like if you microwave a cat,

you should be on an FBI watch list. I don't care what you say, like that's serial killer. Mary was so traumatized. She ran upstairs to the railing of the window and she said, stop! Everyone leave or also I'm gonna throw myself out the window. It was silent. The kids gathered outside. They saw her from the window. They looked at each other. And then one of the jocks started. Jump, jump, jump, and they all started chanting jump. One of the guys, Charlie, okay, he's important later. He's like kind of a joke, kind of not, okay.

He's, I wouldn't call him a jock yet because he's not really obsessed with the jokes, but he was one of the best athletes in the school, right? So it's kind of weird, we'll get into it, but he knew that this had to stop. Like someone was going'll get into it. But he knew that this had to stop. Like someone was gonna get seriously hurt. So even though he knew if he was caught for being like the snitch, he would be bullied for the rest of his high school life, he couldn't do it.

He called 911. The police rushed over, the party was now done. Everybody had scurried off. Ryan's wreck is what it would forever be called. And it was almost like this urban legend at Glenridge High. The jocks felt like it was the highlight of their lives. They wrote about it in their senior year books. Like you know when you get a little spot to do a quote-unstuff, Ryan's wreck was the highlight of the year. The officers did not arrest anyone but they wrote in their reports that the crime was malicious mischief.

The entire house all three floors were in shambles. But nobody was charged with the crime. Nobody was punished. Nobody was was charged with the crime, nobody was punished, nobody was punished by the school teachers, parents, the law, nobody faced any consequences, and it seemed like nobody was sorry, nobody offered to help clean up the place, nobody reached out to Mary to see if she was okay, Mary never even came back to school. When her parents came back home, they moved to another state. Meanwhile, the guys, this was cemented in jock history. One jock proudly said, it just goes to show what can happen to a girl when we don't like her. That is such a creepy thing to say. I don't even know

how to describe that. One parent of a girl who was bullied by the jock said, if I think back, I can see a group getting stronger and closer every time that they humiliated a girl together. It was like football. It was a shared experience for them to bully girls. For them, it was about being a man amongst men. I can't help but wonder if they ever thought a girl was even human. So the boys were in this never-ending loop of doing bad things and getting rewarded. But why was it so important to the community to protect a bunch of jocks who enjoyed

gang being an intellectually impaired girl who was incapable of giving consent with a broom in a baseball bat and ruining people's houses and bullying and harassing sexually harassing every girl in the community? A lot of that had to do with Glenridge itself. If you look up Glenridge now, people will report it as being one of the best suburban towns to live in New Jersey. It's about 40. I want to say like a 40 minute drive from New York City, probably not with traffic.

If you work in New York City, it's like the best suburban escape. It's close enough that you can commute, you know, a long day of rubbing elbows with sweaty strangers on the subway. And now you're in this beautiful single family home with your manicured lawn out in Glenridge. It's safe, clean, peaceful. And the lawns of each house are pristine. You would get a letter from your neighbors if it wasn't.

The crime rates, although the community members are polite, they knew each other, the schools were good. I mean, this was suburban heaven. Glen Ridge is often described with three key words, tranquil, charming, and prosperous. And that's the type of people who live there? Yeah, I know. What? It's the type of town where children grow up with every advantage. Like, majority of the Glen Ridge families were pretty well off,

and none of the high schoolers had to worry about paying tuition for college Like they didn't have to worry about getting a job during high school or in college They didn't have to worry about food, clothes, or living cost if they needed to buy a new car Or if they needed to you know get an apartment for college no worries their parents would handle it That's the problem. Yeah Most of the kids in Glen Ridge had the luxury of easing into adulthood. And what did everyone pride themselves on in Glenridge? Sports.

OK, I feel like we hear this about every freaking small town like they're obsessed with sports and a lot of the times the players aren't even that good. No offense. Actually offense. If they were popped into the middle of a bigger town or city, they would be considered at best

mediocre average That's me being nice, but in this small town they're treated like town celebrities Just for being part of the football team the wrestling team They were like the princes of the high school. They ran the school for what being painfully average That's what. Glandridge was no different. In fact, the adults, the community pillars, they looked at the high school jocks as our boys. Our guys, they were the foundation of the community. They were considered every

mom's dream and every father's pride, the all-American boy, which side note, Thomas Mopather went to Glenridge High School, and you're like, who the hell is that? Well, Thomas would later graduate and change his name to Tom Cruise. Huh. Yeah, so... Tom Cruise was a Glenridge boy. The same high school? Yeah.

Well, not everyone in Glenridge was rich. There were a couple of lower income families, but they all settled near the south end of town. And everyone said that they were practically invisible to the rest of everyone. If you bought a house on the south end, you might as well have not existed. You were an outsider.

The running joke was that there was an invisible wall around Glen Ridge, and the wall had an acronym. It stood for white alliance for leisure living. Because in order to get into Glenridge, you had to be white, well off, and Christian, three requirements. I mean, okay, I'm sure things have gotten better. When I look at Google, it seems like it's gotten better,

but this is how bad it was a while ago. There was a family who employed a black babysitter and the family would let the babysitter go before the sunset. Because if you were black and driving around Glen Ridge at night, you would be pulled over and harassed by the police. And that's a very nice way of putting it. If you weren't white and if you didn't come for money or had parents who were well-known

figures in town, you would treat it differently in school, not just by students, but by teachers too. And everyone was comedically out of touch. Like, it's not even funny at all. But by teachers too, and everyone was comedically out of touch. Like, it's not even funny at all, okay? One time there was a heated controversial town meeting about building a swimming pool in the school. That would obviously be paid for by, you know, the parents.

And the parents just kept repeating. I mean, why do we need to build a pool at the school when the kids can just go to the country club? It took a few brave, lower-income parents to stand up and say, we don't all go to the country club. Many people in this town will never be able to be part of the country club. The room fell silent, it was awkward.

But the pool was never built because there was only one class in Glenridge that mattered, and it was the wealthy. And this is important later, but Glenridge at the time was a very, very traditional town. Okay, so in terms of genders, the nuclear family was set up like this. Typically, most families had two working parents.

You're like, how is that traditional? That seems well, right? No. The wife would come home after her job, and she would still be in charge of all the housework, looking after the kids, decorating, and organizing dinner parties. Meanwhile, the husband would be in charge of disciplining the kids and making major purchases.

I'm sorry, what? I do the major purchases in this relationship, okay? Too many. No, I'm just kidding. But it's like a really weird thing. Why is a major purchase part of the... What are they buying? Weird balance.

At parties, the men would gather around the grill to talk about jobs, money, and sports. And the women would talk about children, food, and household appliances. Did you see Lauren's new air fryer? That's a good one. And both parents would engage in gossip. Okay, every couple loved it. And then if the couple had kids, the boys were taught that being vigorous, assertive, competitive, aggressive, that is admirable. That's what being a man is.

Winning is better than losing. And girls were taught, don't get your shoes dirty. You have to be feminine and attractive and cute. And you can't be too smart in front of boys. Oh, the boys only bullying you because he likes you. The daughters were typically encouraged to go to college that the parents would pay for, but ultimately the parents just wanted her fate to be to get married and have a family of her own. In terms of leniency, the boys had it. The boys did anything wild and the response was, my boys will be boys, but if the girls did anything that was remotely wild or the least not

bit or the tiny bit not feminine, it would be a scandal. It would be gossip for weeks amongst adults. So let's introduce the boys, shall we? What's so great about that? Well, we have the twins Kyle and Kevin Scherzer. They lived right next to the local park and this local park is going to be important later. So the Scherzer back deck actually looked into the park.

So it's like connected and it was like an extension of their backyard. And let me tell you, this back deck of the twins house was the absolute party spot. It was where you were crowned popular. If you were invited to a party in the twins backyard or that deck, you were a popular kid. The world was now going to be your oyster. It was like the frat house for the local high school, for the jocks, the boys. Now, Kyle and Kevin were very much into toxic masculinity. They had two older brothers, and their dad was very much the macho man.

I mean, their main experience with any woman was their mom, but their mom literally worked her whole life to just please everyone in the family. Like, she'd be the mom that's like, my boys. So their dad, Jack, was a big member of Glenridge. He worked in New York City, and after work, he would commute back home, and he would never miss a freaking game.

He was there for every single game of every single season of every year, even if his kids weren't playing. He was there. He lived and died by sports. It's very much giving peak-to-high school, dude. Jack was also someone that you would never want to criticize his boys in front of. He thought the twins were perfect. Other than that massive red flag, Jack was the life of the party. He was

very boy stress. People said that the twins mom, her life revolved around the success of her boys. If they were successful, she was successful. If you asked her what her Saturday was like, she would say this, and she did say this, okay, this is not me like paraphrasing. She said, was Saturday I was mopping the floor when the boys and Jack were out at the football game, and then Jack came home, and then the boys came home later, and I served in her, and then I think I cleaned a little bit more. Her friend said she really seemed to live to make her family comfortable. So Kyle, one of the twins, he looks like um, listen I'm just trying to describe them to you, but honestly, just think me Ted Athletic Kid.

For all of them, like that's the vibe. He had brown eyes that would pierce into your soul, he was tall, he loved to wear those baseball hats that were a little too small for his head, and he had this goofy grin. Just look goofy. Is this mean? I'm so sorry? I'm not really sorry. He was one of the more popular, more handsome ones. Everyone at Glenridge High School would have voted him the best athlete in all of senior

class, but he definitely wasn't the hardest working or the smartest. His teachers would write in all of his reports that he had low motivation and he was disruptive in class. One teacher was so exhausted with Kyle, causing problems. That she threw her hands up and with tears in her eyes she said, Kyle, you are aging me. I am older than my ears. Why should I sit here and take this nonsense? My life is too short for this.

But apparently Glenridge did not have great requirements for sports because Kyle, he was captain of the baseball team and he and his twin brother Kevin were co-captains of the football team. And Kyle was actually considered the more chill of the two twins. He was the one that would lay back and listen and his brother Kevin was the one that would interrupt you non-stop. Kevin looked pretty much identical to his twin-quile. They were both well built. Kevin looks a little bit more, like his smile was a bit more reserved in pictures, but he was a total beefcake. Like, looks like a meat patty. I don't know what else to say, I'm sorry. He was over six feet tall, spent all day in the gym. He did have a tendency to keep his mouth open all the time, so people said that he looked a little bit shocked, always.

And for that reason, he was voted most gullible of the senior class, but he was the worst of the worse, like he did worst in school, always fell behind in grades. His GPA was 1.75 out of four, whereas his brother Kyle's was 1.82. So not much of a difference, but he was at one point put into an accessibility class to help students with disabilities, but his parents at one point put into an accessibility class to help students with disabilities. But his parents essentially got him out of those classes. And honestly, I think those classes would have helped.

But his parents didn't like the stigma. All of Kevin's teachers said that he was compulsive, rude, disrespectful, but anytime they told Kevin's parents list, they just brushed it off. They chalked it to Kevin being a boy. You know, young boys aren't the nicest, They're wild. They got a lot of energy. So, Kay. Kevin also had a tendency to be a sexual harasser from a young ripe age. I mean, the guy would just go what behind girls and always and snap their bras. It was terrifying for girls. If you didn't like it, he would make fun of you.

A girl named Diane rejected Kevin and told him to stop. And from then on, every time he passed her, he would say, Diane, flat as a board still, huh? Dan would try to laugh it off, but it was upsetting. Like, she felt like there was nothing she could do. Teachers, other students, I mean, they heard him bullying her and they did nothing to stop it. Diane said, Kevin made her terrified of all the boys for a while. She started thinking that all boys were like Kevin and Kyle. Like they were all perverted and mean. But it wasn't just Diane that Kevin was sexually harassing. Kevin would do it to the teachers.

Not the bra snapping, but whenever a teacher was turned around, Kevin would get up to pretend to get, I don't know, like a stapler, walk up behind him in front of the whole class, and pretend to dry up the teacher's doggy style. Yeah, and when he wasn't doing that, he would pull down his pants and moon the entire class behind him. And then he would just sit on his bare butt in class. I don't know why he did that and I don't know why the teachers didn't notice, or they

didn't say anything. Kevin also loved to wear sweatpants to school and whenever he got a boner, he would tighten his pants so that everyone could see the outline of his boner, and then he would tap on girls' shoulders and point down with a cocky smile. He got off on their reactions of shock and disgust. And once that wore off... These are the popular kids! Yeah, that's what I'm saying!

How would these the popular kids? Like, these would be the weird kids. I really, like, I guess I'm trying to imagine back when I was in high school, there were a lot of really aggressive guys that were the popular kids, but this just goes to show. High school in the real world and adulthood are so different.

Because these are the canceled kids. These are like the weirdos at work. Kevin would start to tap on the girls' shoulders different because these are the canceled kids. These are like the weirdos at work. Kevin would start to tap on the girl's shoulders and point down and when that got, you know, a little bit old, he would actually stick his hand in and start masturbating and tap on the girl's shoulders

so that they could see that he was masturbating through his pants. Everyone just said, if Kevin could get one girl to react to scream So that they could see that he was masturbating through his pants. Everyone just said, if Kevin could get one girl to react to scream or to bury her face in her hands, his whole day was made. The more Kevin got away with it, the more shit he pulled. From then on, every single French class, Kevin would find a moment where the teacher was intensely writing something on the board.

He would get up and whip out his penis, just whip it around. I mean, it got to the point where the students weren't even shocked anymore. Nobody even got offended anymore. It became normal, which is alarming. The kids would just roll their eyes and say, Kevin, stop. And they would say things like he just wants attention. Don't give it to him. But then he would only up the stakes. I mean, it got to the point where he was full on masturbating out in the open when teachers would leave the room, just masturbating. And other students were so desensitized that nobody even reported him, nobody told their parents, nobody told, I don't know a guidance counselor, the principal. There is one teacher's note in his file that reported his sexual harassment and it was so mild.

It just said, Kevin has a habit of showing off his body. He's very physical, puts his hands in his pants. That's it. One teacher wrote in their file that Kevin might have pubic lice because his hands are always in his pants. I'm not even making this shit up. Like how are they so? I don't even know what to say. It's not clueless. It's like, it's so negligent. you know what to say. It's not clueless. It's like, it's, it's so negligent. That's it. Two tiny little notes about pubic lice and mild habit of showing off his body for years of traumatizing other students. Nobody got Kevin any help. Nothing. So he just kept going. Girls were terrified of passing the twins locker after class ended because they had a habit of

throwing a girl onto the ground or up against the lockers and dry-humping her while their friends cheered them on Sometimes they would take girls' hands and put it on their crutches and say things like come on Diane's Suck it, blow it, put it in your mouth and all the other boys would laugh and high-five them or pat them on the back So again, why did the girls put up with it? There was almost this brainwashing being done by the community. That if you were part of the jocks, you were someone. You were important.

And if the jocks noticed you, they did things to you. I mean, they did this to their friends. They did this to their girlfriends. That meant that you were part of them, didn't it? One girl said, it was weird. I felt degraded, but I also felt in a way accepted, because I saw the boys do these things to the poppy that girls, and it felt like I was part of the crowd. The teachers saw the guys dry, humping and sexually assaulting girls and they never did anything.

They did not want to deal with the boys but they did write in their reports because yeah, that'll do something. The teachers said that the twins were dangerously immature and that the twins love to call teachers crazy and would tell them to go to the insane asylum in front of the entire class. So we have Kyle and Kevin the twins. Then we have the archer brothers. We have Paul and Chris Archer. They were one year apart, Paul being the older brother. He was the senior and Chris was the junior. Paul is described as being more of a follower. But he was also described as being one of the best looking in his class. He was voted nicest smile.

He had curly, blonde hair. He looked like he was walking out of a J-Crew catalog, just very preppy athletic boy. He had these brown eyes and thick eyelashes. He looked kind of more like a softer jock. And his brother, Chris, was the more aggressive one and the smarter one. So Paul had a graduating GPA of 2.91 out of 4 and Chris had a GPA of 3.65.

I mean, crazy. Also I don't think GPA defines anyone, I'm just adding it in to give you more context. Also, Chris had an IQ of 121. He got the best grades out of all of his friends, people said it was weird. Chris could be hanging out all night, never study, and still get good grades. But the teachers didn't like Chris. One of them said, he was academically very quick. He could memorize things in a flash, but he was resentful if you didn't praise him. He felt like he was above everyone. He always looked at teachers with a smirk.

He was considered attractive amongst his grade, though. He almost had this more, quote, mixed look to him. He had angular cheekbones, straight light brown hair, and pale blue piercing eyes. It almost looked like he was half white, half Asian is what everyone described him to be. Friends said that his eyes would stop you dead in your tracks. Like, they just had this intensity to them. It felt like his eyes could read your soul. All the jock said, Chris had the most energy out of everyone. Like we could be sitting around watching TV. Chris would be jumping up and down. Like we gotta go, we gotta go, let's go, let's get out of here. They would go to the amusement park, right? Every single

ride that there was and everyone was so wiped basically crawling back to their cars so tired. But Chris would be jumping into the water fountain to cause trouble. Then the next day, there would be a test. Everyone would fail because they were out all night, but not Chris. He would at least get a 90 or higher. People said if I was in the car with Chris and he was driving, you would be smart to be scared. He's the type to drive through someone's entire front lawn like a stranger's entire front lawn just because he thought it was funny for the hell of it. He also loves starting fights. Like if you accidentally bumped into Chris and that caused Chris to bump into someone,

instead of fighting you, he would fight that random person he bumped into. Like start a full-blown fight, like a physical violent fight. He was also a bit of a peer pressure. He was like the idea maker of the group. One time he approached his friends and was like, we're gonna execute a gorilla raid against the Country Club.

Reason? No reason. It'll be fun. So he and his friends got into two golf carts in the country club, drove to the tennis court and pretty much demolished everything, vandalized the country club locker room and the golf carts everything, wrecked the place. The police found out and it wasn't hard to find out

who was behind it because the boys were bragging all day in school in front of students and teachers and they were charged with burglary and criminal mischief. Just charged. The charges were dropped by the country club. What? Since the boy's parents were all members, and of course the parents offered to pay for all the repairs and then some.

So there really weren't no consequences. Speaking of parents paying off people, the archer parents were probably the most well-loved parents in the entire town of Glenridge. Doug Archer, the dad, was practically Mr. Popular, Mr. Congeniality. He was a salesman for work and his wife was a nurse and she was as nice as they come they said. That's how everyone described her.

She was a loving mom, she was thoughtful, but she knew she was a mom of boys. So whereas the shurs are the twins parents, they would never, never register in their head that their boys could cause trouble. But Mr. Zartre, I mean, she would always say, hey, if my kids cause trouble, you tell me right away, okay? Like if someone called to say, oh, your kids are at a party under age drinking,

they would be very appreciative to the caller. They would go rally up their boys and they would be disciplined. But the archers weren't perfect. They were hypocritical too. So one time the archers were campaigning for other adults to not serve alcohol to their kids or supply alcohol at parties. So a lot of the parents were having trouble because some parents would straight up be like, I'm going out of town. You want me to buy some vodka for you before I go? So there was a petition to get parents to stop doing that because it's not like your kid is drinking vodka in a vacuum

Like they're inviting all of our kids to your house, right? But in the same breath the archers campaigned for the police to not arrest kids who are underage drinking and let the parents handle it at home So it's like kind of weird, you know They definitely weren't great parents by any means in my humble opinion, but they did live on the most expensive street in Glenridge, which was called Millionaires Road by the locals, yeah. And they were very active in the town. Then you had Bryant Grober, who was a senior. Now, Bryant's parents were the most prestigious, the most established, distinguished of the bunch, aka the richest. Brian Stadd was a very

successful doctor and his mom was a nurse who had the best cookies in town. And the family lived down the street from the country club and they were very rich. Like they had oil paintings hanging up all around the house. They had a grand piano in the middle of their living room. It was a very formal house. They had an area of rugs that always looked freshly vacuumed. But overall, Dr. Grober seemed to be a nice guy He seemed to be a nice man like he wasn't a football dad like the other dad so far have been football dad Skye was an intellectual he was an academic A lot of people said that if you don't have insurance and you didn't have money

Dr. Grober would lose a lot of bills in his office He wouldn't charge you for some things That's nice. Yeah, so the Grober parents did seem to be nice people. Brian himself was a very cheerful kid. People said especially when he was young, he had this more main character vibe about him. Like he definitely looked like a jock, but more of an artsy jock. And the house was strong with feminine energy. Dr. Grober, the dad, was a very scholarly man, so he treated his wife more like an equal. Because you know, that's what smart men do. A senior poll said that Brian had

the nicest eyes in his class. They were the striking blue color. He had this curly brown hair. He definitely booked arts here. Like, that's how I would best describe it. A lot of the kids said that he looked like the stereotypical statues of the Greek or Roman gods. Like he had a Olympian vibe to him. But when Bryant was young, a lot of people loved him. But they said that he was the ultimate crowd follower. So, okay, so for example, when he was young, he was more of a man than he would actually be when he grew up.

When he was young, he was influenced easily by the bullies and his fellow friends. He just wanted to do what was right. So let's call her Sarah. Sarah was one of the only black girls in the entire town, and Sarah considered Bryant one of her closest friends. He never talked to her differently. He treated her like he treated any other girl, which honestly says less about Bryant

than it does about the racism in the town. Yeah. So anyway, one day all the kids are playing spin the bottle. The bottle lands on Sarah and everyone starts flipping out like, I'm not kissing a black girl. They sent that. And Brian goes, why what's wrong with Sarah? And he leans over in front of everyone and says,

if it's okay, can I kiss you? And he kissed her. They were 12. Sarah thought she was in love. But as time passed and high school came about, the Bryant that Sarah knew was replaced by beefcake-jock Bryant. One day, Bryant and his friends were walking around the cafeteria and they passed by Sarah,

and the twins stopped. Kyle Leans over in front of everyone says, Sarah, you're getting too much sun these days, you're looking like an insert slur. The jok's laugh and they high-five each other. Kevin had his own little joke. He said, Sarah, I saw a black guy down the street. You know him, right? Because he's black and they all high five him, pat him on the back. Now his Brian's turn and the twins looked over at him just waiting and he looked at Sarah and said, I saw a whole bunch of insert slur at a local restaurant. I didn't know your family ate there these days and the boys were slapping his back and they walked away.

Sarah was disgusted. The fact that she ever liked Brian was disgusting because he was a vile person. Then there was Peter Quigley. He was voted best looking and best body of the senior year class, which is perfect because his girlfriend Terra, remember her, was voted best body as well. So they were just fucking perfect for each other. Even though the twins were the captain of the which is perfect because his girlfriend Tara, remember her, was voted best body as well. So they were just fucking perfect for each other. Even though the twins were the captain of the football team, if you secretly asked all the teammates who the best athlete was on the team,

they would pick Peter. So Peter's parents weren't as active in the town as the others, but they were pleasant. Just a bit more low-key. His dad was an accountant, didn't care to go to all the games, but Peter was the only one of the jocks in a serious high school relationship. Yeah. He would even hold her hand in the hallways. It's a big deal. But how did the other jocks feel about that? Oh, Tara was the prettiest girl in the whole school. So they they were

high-fiving him. They accepted her. She was one of them. Then you have Richard Corcoran. He was the son of Richard Corcoran's senior, who was a detective in the Glen Ridge police force. Not only was he a detective, he was a lieutenant. This is important later. And his dad was just a force to be reckoned with. As a kid, Richard's dad was just known as face. They call them face, because he had a really big face.

I know, don't shoot the messenger, okay, because I got a big face too. Don't be mad at me, but he liked his nickname, okay? And Richie was probably the most scared of his parents. Like his dad was the end all be all authority, not just in the house, but he was the freaking lieutenant of the town. Like it doesn't get more authoritative than that. Richard was also very much into sports. He would tell his son Richie, you don't play to have a good time. You played a win son.

That's how he was taught. So Richie was no stranger to throwing a temper tantrum in front of the crowd if his team lost the game. And where is if a girl did that at a girl's game? It would be seen as emotional hysterical unhinged. But when a boy did it at a football game, it was seen as passionate, dedicated to the game, a winner. He just can't stand losing, you know. I call it hysterical. It's just a game, buddy. The same principles did not apply to academia, it seems, because Richie was, his grades were a bit small, okay. And side note, I'm not trying to be like, oh my God, gender inequality, but the town literally did it. There was a young girl who was caught drunk,

underage drinking, and she lost her position as president of two clubs and was banned from extracurricular activities, which would heavily, heavily impact her college applications, and she was a smart girl. She lost everything, it was her first strike. Whereas the boys were caught doing all sorts of disgusting things. Underage drinking, sexual harassment, bullying, assault of other boys, property destruction, and they maintained their sports. They maintained their positions as captains of the team.

One teacher said this about Richie. One minute he could be so charming that you want to love him. And the next minute he was ready to fight It's hard to say what's at him off But his his face would get right out of nowhere in his eyes with narrow and he looked like he was ready to blow For seniors the correlatives Richie was voted loudest and most obnoxious So yeah, he definitely peaked in high school for sure Even the football coach thought that Richie was crazy He said Richie played through the pain. I mean it was unlike any other boy Like he liked it, it seemed. He would severely sprain his ankle and I would tell him to go see the doctor,

but he would keep playing. I think what's interesting is about all of them, except for Bryant Grobert, none of them had any sisters. None of them had any close female relatives or friends. All they had were their mothers who took a much more passive role in the family compared to the headstrong athletic macho men Dance and that's not to say that in order to have a good man grow up He has to live in a home where the mom is in charge and the dad is not and he's got to like have so many sisters That's not what I'm saying But their dads were literal definitions of jocks in high school and they kind of never left that mentality as adults And then they instilled a lot of that toxic masculinity standards into their children. I

think that if they had sisters maybe they could realize that women were I don't know individuals they were people they had their own interests right but it didn't seem like their own fathers treated women like equals so why would they? The book pointed out brothers and sisters don't always get along but they get to know each other on an individual level and see each other as equals in the family. So other boys who don't have sisters, usually they fill that void by developing friendships on the playgrounds with girls at an early age. So they get a lot of girlfriends, right? Not like girlfriends, but you get it. But for these boys, they only ever hung out with

boys as a kid, not just high school, but as a kid. They hung out with their dads, their brothers, and Glenridge was a town that was oddly segregated by gender. All the things that boys were supposed to do, like sports and playing in the mud, the girls were not supposed to do because it wasn't feminine or cute. So inevitably, girls and guys didn't really spend much time together until they got to the age where they were figuring out their sexualities. And that is like a recipe for disaster. So all these like small, unique circumstances created this bizarre environment.

Just so bizarre. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying like rape and sexual violence is bizarre and unheard of because it happens everywhere. But in the sense of like the parties like what I was just telling it's so bizarre. No. Like they would masturbate in class. Like that's weird. in the sense of like the parties like what I was just telling it's so bizarre no like they would masturbating class like that's weird it's so weird and then all these boys would get together and play football football was the end all be all in Glenridge if you didn't play football you were in nobody if you didn't love football and cheer on the boys during games you were in nobody

but oddly if you were in the band which played before football games and was an integral part of football, you were called a band insert homophobic slur. Even parents called band kids band insert homophobic slur. What? Yeah, parents. It's like ridiculous, ridiculous. You were called a homophobic slur for having a talent and being part of the band. What? But when it came to the jocks, they were excused

for every little thing that they might have done. The jocks are being too loud, acting inappropriately. A girl's they're too aggressive with girls was because they're boys. They'll grow out of it. Their hormones will calm down. They're just, they got too much energy. Meanwhile, the whole town has to be victimized by them for what? So then they could grow out of it. Like, how is that fair?

The boys knew that the rules didn't apply to them. They knew that they were special. Why were they special? I don't know. Okay. Everyone in town kept telling them they were. Even on big game days, the boys would get kisses and supports from their mommies and they would get looks of pride and approval from their fathers and brothers. And then they would go to school where their doctors were decorated by the cheerleaders and you could have missed it. The cheerleaders would have cakes ready in front of the doctors, mounds of candy. Some players would even find notes that would say, I love your body in their lockers.

Or even bras or worn underwear. I feel like it's the other boys. Yeah. They're sending each other. or even bras or worn underwear. I feel like it's the other boys. Yeah, they're sending each other. Yeah, because it really didn't make sense, like all for what? Being an average football player in a small town that would never make it to the NFL,

and if you think I'm being scathing and rude, I'm being serious. They were so average, the football team had one victory and eight losses that season. I mean, technically that's below average. They were losing. This not even average. The average would be four or four, yeah.

I mean, I sound sour, but they were really not good at football. But the whole town made the guys feel like they were tom Brady. They felt like they had the whole world in the palm of their hands. They felt like they were walking Olympian gods and everyone bended to their every whim. Their moms would wake up at 5 a.m. to drive them to practice, would cook them nutritious filling meals, would excuse their lack of grades, would even bake fresh snacks and cookies for after-game rewards. Yeah, the other points out that Glenridge is interesting, because the guys were obsessed with guys. The boys performed for the men that were watching.

Their brothers and their dads and their uncles. It was the men that they were trying to impress with their aggressiveness, their competitiveness. And then they would go back to their locker rooms where they bonded with their boys over the game. They built this bond that at the end of the day, they were with each other and nothing mattered more than the game and winning.

They were loyal to each other. I mean, their whole lives, their whole sense of worth, was about other men. And they thought, if there was a guy that wasn't like them, then they weren't real men. A student named Phil said that he used to be friends with the jocks, and they were so proud of being the worst of the worst.

And if you didn't do the things that they did, they would take it out on you. Like, they would hit a kid when he was down, not metaphorically. Literally, they would jump kids. Honestly, a lot of the blame goes to the community itself, okay? It was just... I'm sure Glen Ridge is an amazing, beautiful place now filled with amazing warm people, but back then, it was weird.

There was a teacher, for example, who won a national teaching prize for like $5,000. And she wanted to donate her entire award to establish a student organization to heighten awareness for drunk driving. Because in the past few years, a lot of younger people had passed from drunk driving in the recent area. But the teacher was told,

hey lady, keep your damn money. What? I'm trying to donate it. No, if you create an organization like that, outsiders will feel like Glenridge has some sort of underage drinking and driving problem. So keep your damn money. Which side note they did. High schoolers were starting to drink as young as 13 years old. If you weren't willing to underage drink at parties by the age of 14 max, you were a loser. You were never invited to parties again. I'm sorry, what?

Another time the teachers asked the students to keep a journal, they thought it would help the kids writing skills, and the parents held a town meeting and shut it down. They said it was a breach of their family privacy to keep a journal of like what they did that day. So you're like, okay, maybe it's just the parents that have a problem and the teachers are fine. No. So there was a student with Tourette's in one of the jock's class and all the jock's tortured him. They made fun of him

for his tics which made the student agitated because it's not like something he can control. But the teacher would turn around and notice the class wasn't paying attention and fully understand what's going on here and the teacher would say to the kid with Tourette's. Gerald cut that out. Instead of saying, hey jock, stop making fun of a child with disability. What is wrong with you? You're despicable and you need help. They would say Gerald cut it out. Yeah, the teachers were fucked up, honestly. The boys knew the teachers were never gonna stand up to them either.

One time a teacher asked the class to write a paper on the things that they like to do on the weekends. And one of the Jock stood up and said, Mrs. Romeo, we might as well end this discussion right now because on the things that they like to do on the weekends. And one of the jocks stood up and said, Mrs. Romeo, we might as well end this discussion right now because on the weekends, we all like to get drunk and have as much sex as we can and then we come back to school on Monday. So do you really want a paper on that? And he sat back down and all the jocks were like, oh, you told her. Mrs. Romeo didn't discipline them.

She just sighed and went back to her assignment instructions. So the boys were protected by Glenridge. But Glenridge was very selective in who they protect. The boys were seen as worth protecting. Leslie was not. Because Leslie lived life in a completely different mode. Let's talk about Leslie. Leslie was adopted as a baby by

parents Ross and Charlie Faber. These are all fake names. They had met in college, they were college sweethearts and both of them were no strangers to hard work. They both had the same values in life. They believed if you work hard you play by the rules, work on your marriage, your family, your life won't be perfect because God doesn't believe in perfect, but it'll be pretty close. They were really good people. Friends said that you would never hear the Faber's gossiping or you're talking ever. Instead of, did you hear what so and so in her kid did, can you believe it? The Faber's were very much, did you know that Karen's mother is sick in the hospital? We should all arrange to help Karen out. What do you think that she needs in this time right now?

The Faber's had more books than they had furniture in their house. And when they moved to Glen Ridge, from the moment that they set foot in Glen Ridge, they knew that they wanted to live here. The streets were lined with trees. They were lit up by these beautiful gas lamps, gas lamps. So by the third visit with a real estate agent,

they had put in an offer in one of the more modest homes in the area. They really didn't have as much money as the other residents because, you know, Rosalyn she taught social studies at a neighboring town's middle school and Charlie was like a low level manager. But both of them had grown up in the city, like literally in the city. Ros had grown up in Brooklyn and Charlie was from the Bronx. So this was like suburban paradise for these New Yorkers. And it felt like the perfect place to have kids, which Charlie and Ross found out

that they were unable to have children of their own. So they adopted their first child, a 16-day old baby girl whom they named Carol, again, not her real name, and Ross left her job to be a full-time mom, and three years later, they wanted another kid, but now it's even harder to adopt because they already adopted a baby

and other couples were begging for their first baby So the favors they were asked to give a list of hard dealbreakers So the favors are like okay, well we can't be picky. We just have two dealbreakers The child should be white not because they were racist But they had no idea how to raise a child of color and they didn't know if they could provide a good life, especially in a town as Judge mental as Glen Ridge. They said it didn't feel fair or right to the child, and they wanted the child to be reasonably healthy. Okay, so what if the child is suffering from any impairments? Because we have this little girl in Canada who is

struggling with an intellectual impairment. Do you have any specifics? The agency was vague. They said, her development seems to be not keeping up pace with other children her age, but the doctors don't know why. We think personally that the problem, if it even is one, it will pass. The favors were nervous, to be honest, but they wanted a child, and they really wanted another one, and they were good people who could help a child. So they adopted 10 month old Leslie into their home from Canada. They said it was the happiest day of their lives. But as Leslie grew, there were some things that worried the papers. They said that they were concerned because even at just 10 months, she was having trouble sitting up.

She was never able to crawl more than a foot or two. But the pediatrician always had encouraging conversations. They felt like, okay, well with love and encouragement, Leslie's going to develop well and healthy with time. But then elementary school came around and there was more news for concern. The teachers said that Leslie wasn't fitting in academically or socially. They wanted to test her to see if there was anything that they weren't seeing. Leslie's tests were infuriating because they were not accurate. The Glenridge's child study team reported that Leslie was, and I quote, neurologically impaired, they told the favor parents that with time,

Leslie was going to make great progress and things would be just fine. She was just on a different timeline than the other kids. So they're like, okay, let's hold that hope. And as Leslie's getting older, I mean, it seems like things are going well. She's so extraverted. She loves socializing. She loves other kids. She's so cheerful and she's so physically active.

I mean, the scroll loved her sports. But then with that energy, there was a bit more problems with the favors. They were trying to let Leslie have the same freedoms as other kids her age, but they were inclined to want to hover over her because, you know, they're scared, they're protective, they're worried. And at an early age, Leslie started showing what they called, and I quote, a thirst for attention. Like, it could be as simple as a smile, or a pat, what they called, and I quote, a thirst for attention. Like it could be as simple as a smile, or a pat, or a wink, or a wave, whatever it was.

Other kids would have loved it. But Leslie, it seemed like she craved it. She seemed like it was her life. For example, when Leslie joined the tennis team as she got older, sometimes she was more occupied at getting the coach to look at her and pay attention to her than actually winning the game. She would run off the court and yell, look at me coach, I'm about to serve, look at me, look at me serve coach, look at me coach, let me show you my serve in the middle of the game. Other kids thought Leslie was quote weird. They said that she was too happy, too cheerful,

too talkative. Sometimes she would go on these excited monologues where it didn't quite make sense to everyone else around her, but it made sense to Leslie. And if Leslie made a friend, she would stick to them like glue. Sometimes if Leslie felt a burst of happiness, she would jump up and hug you out of nowhere. The other kids for some reason didn't like that. Then the crushing news came.

Leslie's parents were told by the teachers that Leslie's learning level would never progress beyond the second grade. She will be at the cognitive level of an eight-year-old for the rest of her life. Her IQ was tested to be 49. The average in the US is anywhere between 80 to 110. Leslie's was the lower 1% of the population. Only 1% of the population is below 70, and only 1% of the population is below 70 and only 1% of the population is above 120. The psychologists went on to tell Leslie's parents,

were worried for Leslie. She may be influenced by peers and may not be fully aware of the consequences of her behavior. There is a childlike quality to her perception of social protocol. She has interest, great interest in establishing social relations with others, but she appears to lack the social skills to do so. protocol, she has interest, great interest in establishing social relations with others, but she appears to lack the social skills to do so. To add to that, the school felt like Leslie was a prime candidate for rape. They weren't thinking from other students, but they were thinking from...

In life? Yeah, in life. That is crazy. It was a bleak conversation, but mixed with her disability and mixed with her personal yearning to want to be liked and her friendliness to strangers and she was said to take everything at face value. So she never thought, okay, why is this person saying this to me? Do they have an ulterior motive? It was a bleak conversation. The favors were so worried that they had to put Leslie on birth control of pills. They told her it was a supplement to help regulate her period.

So yeah, they were worried about Leslie. They were trying their best to let Leslie live a normal life regardless of what the teachers said, regardless of her diagnosis, but they didn't want others to treat Leslie differently. And they did a good job. To someone who didn't know Leslie well or just saw her for a split second, you would gather, she loves sports, she's outgoing, she's talkative, very friendly, but the favors were worried because Leslie was struggling with a condition that wasn't always visible. They said that Leslie wasn't, I quote, easily manipulated, vulnerable to suggestion. As long as she thought that someone liked

her or wanted to be her friend, Leslie would do anything to please that person, anything. So it made her vulnerable in ways that other 17 year olds may not be. She was just extra vulnerable. So to give you an example and this is um this is the park that Leslie would go to for the majority of her life. The park that the twins backyard looked into. Yeah. It was about five minutes from Leslie's house and one day she was there. She's 11 years old by herself and this big 18 year old boy comes up to her. And let's call him Mike. And he comes up to her and he starts fondling her breasts. Forces her to sit on his lap and he kisses her.

Then he unzipped his pants, pulled them all the way down, and took her pants off, flung his penis around, and then pinched Leslie's buttocks. Leslie ran away at this point in tears. She ran straight home to her mom and she said, Mom, something bad happened to me at the park. There was a bad kid there. What, what did he do?

He did bad things to me. He did very bad things. What kind of things? He grabbed me and Leslie was sobbing at this point. It didn't matter because Ross was already on the phone with 911. The police arrested the 18-year-old. But here's where things get worse.

You're like, how do they get worse? Okay. Leslie is upset with her parents. She felt betrayed. She didn't know that she would have to sit there and tell the police what happened. She felt embarrassed. She didn't want to talk about it. And her parents made her.

She cried and said, if anything like this ever happens again, please. Please promise me you won't make me tell anyone. And then Leslie sobbed. Now it gets worse. The 18 year old molester was charged with second degree sexual assault and public loonness. Even admitted to all the things that he did, he was like, yeah, I did that. But the prosecutors, they went easy on him.

He wasn't even given jail time. Just community, service, and his record would be wiped after three years. He was 18, no? Yeah, you're like how on earth? The 18 year old's dad was one of the most successful high school football coaches in all of New Jersey. So the 18 year old gets off no consequences and what happens to Lesley. She was retraumatized with having to recount everything to the police a bunch of strangers that she was uncomfortable with and people started talking in Glenridge. They thought, well, if the young man is free, it must mean he didn't do all those things she said he did. Which means, we have a little liar on our hands.

Or maybe she was just embarrassed because she wanted to do those things. She consented to do those things. Which just shut up because you can't consent to those things at 11 years old. It's legally impossible. But some people took it even further. Adults took it even further. They speculated that Leslie seduced the 18-year-old boy. Another mom said, oh it's just another Leslie story. She made it all up. Nothing ever happened. She just always has these fantastical stories. You know Leslie.

But Leslie is trying to not let it get to her. She's trying to live her best life. She was a multifaceted girl. She pitched for the girl softball team. She played guard for the basketball team. She sold Girl Scout cookies door to door and she did have a hiccup because she did have to be transferred out of Glenrich High to a different high school because Glenrich didn't care to provide classes that would suit her needs, but she was still considered a student at Glenridge. So she did all of her sports at Glenridge. Well, when she wasn't in practice or in school, you would see Leslie riding around on her bike, smiling brightly at everyone that she passed. She would say, hi to everyone, to everyone, people she knew, people she didn't know. Which side note about softball, there was one game where it was Leslie's debut game as a picture.

A ton of the students in the stands were yelling the R word. What? Yeah, and apparently all the parents just went deaf for those point two seconds that the kids were, I don't know, hurling slurs. Leslie didn't let it get to her. She was on a roll. She was batting one after the other, and it was their last inning of pitching. When a player from the opposing team comes over, and says, Les, can you please just let me hit one ball? If you let me, I'll be your best friend forever. So Lesley throws the ball, turns her new best friend so softly, and it causes Lesley's team to lose the game. But at least she won a friend right? She didn't. The girl had taken advantage of Leslie. And Leslie's

dad was so confused he ran up to his daughter and said, Les, what was that? What did you practically just hand her the ball to hit? She said, I don't know. It was just my friend. And then he stopped and he smiled. How could he be mad at his daughter who would do anything for a friend? A psychologist who later worked with Leslie said that Leslie's concept of friendship is one that is typically found in children that are substantially younger, which makes sense. So younger children count friends as someone that they just engage in fun activities with, that they hang out with, right? And the kids don't behave aggressively towards them. So then that is friendship. But as you get older, you develop a more nuanced view of friendship, right? So Leslie genuinely thought that this girl was her friend because she said that. And they were playing softball.

And that's why she didn't care if her team ever lost or won. All she cared was that everyone was having fun and that they were friends. Leslie's teammate said, that's the thing about Leslie. If you just smiled at her, she would give you the world. All she ever wanted was to be accepted by the other kids, to be part of the gang, and the kids that she always admired the most because she was a good athlete were the jocks. She loves sports. She would see other girls fawning over the jocks and she would want that too.

Another classmate said, it just made me so mad. Leslie was the brunt of everybody's shit. She was the reject. She sat alone at lunch and she tried so hard to attach herself to the popular kids, but she was always mocked. They were pretending to take her seriously, but they were laughing at her. She just wanted to be a part of them. A classmate said, the twins, the leaders of the jocks, the brainless jocks, would yell

it Leslie all the time. Come on, take off your shirt, Leslie, show us your boobs! Leslie, show us how you French kiss! Leslie, I bet you don't know how to pull your pants down! And Leslie would just laugh, and she would never get angry at them, even though they would degrade her in every way possible. Some of the fellow jocks remember, oh yeah, Leslie was the perfect target for us because she would never run us out.

We could harass her all we wanted. A lot of them said, it seemed like Leslie had a hard time to tell if the jocks were being friendly or if they were making fun of her. Leslie hoped that they were being friendly because she just wanted to be their friend. And it made sense. Leslie knew most of the popular jocks all her life. She practically grew up around Kyle and Kevin the twins Like she grew up around them, keyword around like she was never really part of their lives

Although they were a part of hers because she idolized them from the get-go But um she grew up around them and for the archer boys, Chris and Paul archer remember the parents are kind of okay Leslie's parents were friends with the archer parents like they weren't best friends, but they kind of had similarities. It said that both couples had a strong sense of social responsibility. But the Archer's were a lot more social. Like if you were at a party, the Archer parents would work the room. Outgoing. The favors they were quiet.

You had to make an effort to get to know them. They would be the couple in the corner at a party. If life were a popularity contest, which it's not, well in this case, it might be. Let's just say that the archers were way ahead. The Faber family was known as good people who do good things, but they kind of closed off. Hard to get to know. Anyway, Leslie and her parents were somewhat close to the archer, so that meant that Leslie would go to the archer boys house sometimes and kind of hang out, you know, because her

parents brought her along. And because of her closer proximity, Leslie developed a bit of a crush on Paul archer, which is important later. Leslie felt like Paul was the nicer of the two brothers. He had these eyes that could melt to you and he was good looking, very good at sports. Leslie remembered that Paul would sometimes talk to her about sports and he treated her like, like anyone, well sometimes you would be very mean, but sometimes he was nice. He was a cool guy. Leslie would later say, I really liked Paul. He's cute, he's handsome, he's my hero. His brother, Chris, on the other hand, he was popular, he was one of the boys,

but he was a bit meaner to Leslie. He just had these cold pale eyes that would almost look past her as if she didn't exist or if she didn't have the privilege to exist in his world. He never talked to her about anything really. And if he did, he almost always had this smirk

on his face when he talked to her. So naturally, Leslie liked Paula a lot more. But it was still important for Leslie to be liked by Chris. Leslie felt it was important to be liked by everyone. As everyone got older, Leslie felt like she had to up the ante. So in order to gain friends, she would sometimes do more and more shocking things because she thought, if I get their attention, they're gonna like me, right? Leslie psychologist said, Leslie would do anything to gain a modicum of social acceptance.

She saw her own sexuality as a means of pleasing others. For example, Leslie had seen teen movies about summer camps and all those crazy wild things like she heard other teenagers talk about, like skinny dipping at the lakes. So one day at camp, Leslie went to the bathroom, stripped down to just her bra and undies, started running from one corner of the cabin to the other. The girls were so confused. They thought to themselves, what? What on earth is she doing?

But Leslie felt like if she stood out, everyone would want to be her friend. The afternoon of March 1st, after school got out, Leslie rushed through the front door. She stomped up the stairs like every high school kid that just got out of class, and within minutes she's running back down the stairs. Ross is confused. Wait, are you leaving again? Where are you going Leslie? Mom, I'm gonna shoot some hoops at the park.

Okay, well, just, if you're gonna be late, just remember to call us, you have to call okay, you're supposed to be home at 5'30 on weekdays. Don't worry mom. And just like that, 17 yearyear-old Leslie was out the door. She had her basketball, her portable radio, she loved it, it was like a pink color. She was bubbling with excitement, she loved the park. Listen, it wasn't easy for Ross to see Leslie leave. It was never easy, but she's trying to reason with herself.

The park is a five-minute walk from the house, and sure, any other place like a big city like New York City Five minutes is dangerous Roswell never but this was Glen Ridge Everyone knew each other and even just on the walk to the park Leslie would pass by friendly houses of family friends All the other kids ran off to the park alone without parents Leslie would want to so she let her go Leslie is walking to the park the weather is cool. It's March 1st So the first signs of spring are springing to life

She passed by the playground and she noticed this this big stick in the grass It's about a foot long and painted red. She picked it up and she threw it The stick was nicely balanced and she thought it would make a good growing stick So she kept it. So now she's holding on to her new throwing stick her bright pink radio and her basketball She gets to the court and she starts to play by herself. Now she did notice, I mean, how could she not noticed, that at the other side of the park, the boys were gathered, the boys were gathered

to play baseball. They had their baseball gloves, their cleats, their bats. They just, it was like, chalk heaven. Leslie was literally getting a bit distracted by the athletes, the popular kids from culinary high school, the boys. So for the next 30 minutes, you know, she's trying to focus on her basketball. She's part of the team, so it's good to brush up on her skills, but also she's kind of focusing on the boys who are loud and

rembuckish and laughing and throwing mock punches at each other. It was like the movies. They're doing the guy stuff, the popular guy stuff, but to Leslie's surprise and excitement. After about 30 minutes, she saw them making their way towards the basketball court, or no, towards her? Were they walking towards her right now? Oh my god, they were. Leslie watched as they stopped a few feet away from her and started waving to her. All of them, like one big happy family, she waved back.

Then one of the boys, Chris Archer, broke off from the group and started walking towards Leslie. This is the Archer brother that she doesn't like, the mean one, with the piercing eyes. And he had this big smile on his face. It was in a smart, it was a nice smile this time. Hey, you want to come over to the twins house and we can hang out? It's going to be a huge party. The twins house? The deck?

Are you kidding? Leslie was excited. But there was a brief moment where she thought, okay, that's a little bit weird. Why would they randomly invite me to a party out of the blue? Why would they want to hang out with me when they only call me the R word? Uh, I think I actually have to go home.

But Chris put on his best smile. Come on, my brother Paul is going to be there and he wants to see you. He wants to take you out on a date. Leslie's face lit up. She nodded and started gathering up her things. She would later say that Chris told her that Paul liked her. And that's why she went. So she's grabbing her stuff, her basketball, her radio, her throwing stick,

and she starts walking with the boys to the house. And she said that she felt really included on the walk. Chris put his arm around her and she said, and I quote, he was really like romantic. She said that Chris on the journey to the twins house, the three minute walk made her feel and I quote, wonderful. So when they get to the twins house, and today it wasn't going to be a deck party because the sun was setting and it was too cold. They were going to play an intendo in the basement instead. So that's where they led Leslie and she felt this rush. She felt like she was part of the pretty popular girls that were always invited to the twins parties. She felt like she was part of the jocks that they had finally accepted her. And in the basement her eyes lit up. They were there were athletic trophies everywhere.

A sofa TV folding chairs baseball bats gloves practice bats. Um, they were called fun go bats. This is important, but they're slightly narrower than a regular bat, which by the way, I don't know if you guys have seen bats, but they're really big. Yeah, like a regulation size bat. They're really big. Um, important later. There was a refrigerator and next to that a fire engine red broom.

It was like a clubhouse for the boys. Their secret layer and Leslie was finally invited. Side note, this basement really was a basement, meaning there was only one exit, which were the steps that would lead upstairs and that was it. So anyway, Leslie remembered that there were already seniors in the basement when she came down. When she got there, more juniors and sophomores started joining in periodically.

So it was literally jokks of all ages. Is it a party or more like... More like just hanging out, yeah. It was a good day for the boys to throw a little kickback, I guess. The twins' parents were out of town in Florida, so they had the entire house to themselves. Well, minus the fact that Kyle and Kevin's elderly grandma was there, but like, what was she gonna do?

The boys wanted to live it up, do something crazy, do something crazy worthwhile. Because it's not every day that you get a house without adult supervision. They wanted to let loose. Some of the boys were lounging on the couch, but most of the guys were standing near the stairs. One of the boys even started opening up the folding chairs and arranging them in front of the couch, facing the couch. Not the stairs. One of the boys even started opening up the folding chairs and arranging them in front of the couch, facing the couch, not the TV. Anyway, in the hectic emotion, Chris starts leading Leslie to the sofa where there's

another popular senior already sitting there. His name is Bryant Grober, one of the richest kids in town, remember? Leslie doesn't really know him that well, but she knew that he played football and that he was really cute. And in the beginning, everything was living up to Leslie's dreams. All the guys are being nice. They're engaging in small talk. So Leslie, how's the basketball team doing? Are you still pitching this season for the softball team? And then a woman appeared on the stairs. An elderly woman and she said, Kevin, you have a phone call and she went back up. That made Leslie feel good. There was an adult here, so the party couldn't get that crazy, right?

Which means that she couldn't get in trouble from her parents, which was reassuring. Considering Leslie was the only girl in the room in a room full of 13 high school jocks. Kevin comes back down the stairs and all the boys kind of quiet down a bit. For considering that there were 13 guys there, everyone was suspiciously quiet. And then it happened. Leslie was sitting in between Chris Archer and Bryant Grober on the couch,

and Chris leans over and whispers something to Leslie. And then Bryant pulls off his pants and then is underwear. And a sophomore who witnessed the whole incident said Leslie looked very confused. I mean, this isn't even a setting of a party that's getting wild. All the other guys, they were positioned to be sitting, staring at Leslie or standing, staring at Leslie. Nobody was in the party mood. They were all watching. Now, it's debated, but it's been widely suggested and said that Chris told Leslie to take off her clothes

and he assisted her. Other boy said she just looked very confused. And that is when a sophomore and a few of the underclassments said, let's get out of here. And they left. A few of the seniors left too. Phil Grant was a senior baseball player and he started to feel very weird about it. So what does he do? He just leaves with another body of his. Phil actually stopped to talk to Paul Archer on his way out because Paul was his best friend and he said, come on, let's go, this is wrong. But Paul didn't leave. Paul is the one that Leslie likes. He was the bait, remember? He was there. He was there and he didn't leave. He stood where he was and Phil got the message. He was going to stay for the show

and to be with his brother, Chris. And at the top of the stairs, Phil remembers someone shouting at him, come on, don't go, don't miss this. And Phil said he knew he should have said, this is wrong, we gotta stop this. But he said that these were his friends. And if he said that, he would experience social death. So instead, he said, gotta go home, see you guys later. Which side note, again, adding to the theory about this town, Phil was one of the

only guys in the drop group whose house seemed to be run by woman. His entire house was filled with powerful women and Phil had an older sister that was very headstrong. Both his mom and sister hated him hanging out with the jocks. They said that the jocks were horrible people. Phil's sister would say things like, ill mom, I saw Phil hanging out with the jocks today and they're just shitty people, mom, they could get away with murder.

And I hate the idea of having a little brother that's a freaking jok. At home, Phil respected his mom and his sister, but at school, he wanted to fit in. So he didn't say anything. He didn't put a stop to it. He didn't even learn an adult or the police after. He just ran out. At this point, six guys guys had left and now there were still seven left.

Kyle and Kevin the twins, this was their house, then you had the archer brothers, Chris, who lured Leslie into the basement and Paul, who was Leslie's biggest crush. Then you had Bryant Grober, the senior that was panceless on the couch, and then two other friends. Peter quickly and Richard Quarkrin, Richard, the lieutenant's son. The really unstable one. The obnoxious, yeah unstable one. And they're not leaving, not until they're done with Leslie. Leslie would later explain what happened to her in bits and pieces. She said that she remembered the boys standing around the couch and Bryant told her to suck

his dick. And she said no. But he forced her by grabbing the back of her head and forcing it down on him. And the boys were yelling things like go further, go further. At one point she heard a boy scream at her, you whore. She heard some of them laughing. Some of them asked, how does it feel? Does it make you feel good?

They kept asking her to masturbate in front of them. They were asking and laughing, how many fingers can you fit in your vagina? Come on, I know you feel good. They kept asking her to masturbate in front of them. They were asking and laughing how many fingers can you fit in your vagina. Come on, I know you do it, don't lie to us. We know you do that kind of stuff. Show us how you do it. They begged her to give them hand jobs or rather they were trying to coerce her into giving the menu a stimulation of their private parts. And then someone said, Croulee, let's play a joke. And she remembered, the guys got up, got the bat and the broom.

Placed a plastic bag around the broom, handle, and rubbed it with Vaseline, and they inserted it into her. She said it was very scary. She was sexually assaulted by the handle of the broom. Leslie said they kept asking if it felt good. They were laughing, crying. Te tears were coming out of her eyes, and it hurt a lot.

There was a small voice that said, and it might have been Kyle. Stop, you're hurting her. But then another voice had overpowered it and said, do it more, and then everyone started laughing. Then someone grabbed the bat, and they sexually assaulted her with the bat. Then they took her new throwing stick that they found at the and they sexually assaulted her with the bat.

Then they took her new throwing stick that they found at the park, that she found at the park. They inserted that into her as well. Leslie remembered the boys talking to her after the game and they said, Leslie, this is gonna be our secret. We're gonna be mad if you talk to someone about this and you're gonna be expelled from school.

Plus, we'll tell your mom what you did if you break our secret, okay? Here Leslie, put your hand with ours. You know, in sports, you know how teams will put their hands on top of each other and count to three before throwing their hands in the air. It's supposed to build sportsmanship like, nah, right? That's what they made Leslie do after they gained her. And then they told her, hurry, get out of here. Leslie said after she got out, she waited in the cold outside the house for a while. She didn't really know what to do. She was supposed to go on a date with Paul.

Was he gonna come out and talk to her? But he didn't come out. So she walked to the park, thinking that maybe Paul Archer would meet her there. But he never showed. And that is part one of the Glenn Ridge King case. It has to be two parts because like I'm shaking, but it's insane. Like you would think that the case is over because you're like, okay, well the boys are going to get arrested and we're going to be done. The amount of insanity that ensues, Leslie gets set up by defense attorneys,

like literally set up, she gets recorded, secretly, like it's ridiculous. So please stay tuned for part two, which is going to be uploaded as the mini-sode. Yeah, please go read the book in the meantime, because I don't even know what to say. Stay safe out there. Bye. Yeah, please go read the book in the meantime because I don't even know what to say Stay safe out there. Bye