I was sexually abused by a teacher - and the school ignored it
A young woman who had sex with her high school teacher in 11th grade is accusing school officials of failing to protect her — arguing they knew about the illicit relationship for more than a year.
Abigail Weissenbach, now 21, claims officials at Brookwood High School in Alabama allowed her to be targeted by her psychology and history teacher Joe Bradley Petrey, whom she started sleeping with in 2013 when she was a 17-year-old junior, according to her federal lawsuit.
Their relationship — which included fooling around in the classroom, having sex at hotels and breakfast dates at school — went on for a year-and-a-half, even though Weissenbach’s dance teachers, Alyce Armstrong and Laurel Gilchrist, alerted administrators of the affair in late 2013 and early 2014, the documents allege.
The then-teen and teacher’s relationship went public in July 2015, when more than 300 “illicit photos” of them were posted on the school’s Facebook page and Twitter.
In her suit, Weissenbach said school officials’ inaction “allowed Petrey to continue to sexually abuse and manipulate” her. She also accused the district of engaging in a “cover-up scheme.”
“They knew, but they didn’t take any action,” Weissenbach recently told ABC 33/40. “If he was investigated, seemingly nothing happened because I sat in his classroom behind his desk every day. I didn’t even have my own desk. And to tell me you don’t notice a student skipping lunch to eat lunch with their teacher, spending in the mornings, sitting with him or being alone in his classroom, to not take action.”
Weissenbach — who also was sexually abused as a youngster, according to her suit — said Petrey preyed on her.
“He kind of coached me in Christianity and talked to me a lot about that and would ask me to sit behind his desk, and it really just grew from there really quickly and it turned into something before I really knew it was going down that path,” she said.
Petrey, then 28, was charged in 2015 with engaging in a sex act with a student younger than 19 after the photos were leaked — but the charges were dropped in February because Weissenbach didn’t cooperate, according to Tuscaloosa News.
“After it came out and the photos were everywhere, his grip on me tightened more than it had before,” said Weissenbach. “So I was not just scared to cooperate with the police. But I felt guilty because that’s what he told me. This was my fault. This was because of me. It was humiliating. I felt bad about it. And I just wanted it all to go away.”
Weissenbach said she’s decided to come forward publicly and sue so others don’t have to go through the same situation.
“I’m finally ready, as hard as it is, to come forward so this doesn’t happen again,” she said. “Because it already happened to me and it’s been terrible but I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”
The Tuscaloosa County Board of Education didn’t comment to ABC 33/40.