A second woman has accused Joseph Koetters of sexually abusing her while she was his student at an elite all-girls Los Angeles private school. She spoke exclusively to BuzzFeed News. “I know there are more of us out there,” she said.
Former teacher Dr. Joseph Koetters (left) arraigned in Los Angeles Superior Court on February 25, represented by his attorney Leonard Levine (right).
Michael Robinson Chavez / Getty Images
A second woman says former teacher Dr. Joseph Koetters sexually abused her in 2004, when she was his 16-year-old student at The Marlborough School in Los Angeles. Just two months ago, Koetters was charged with four felony sex crimes relating to another former student.
Marcy (not her real name) said she has spoken with the Los Angeles Police Department and plans to meet with them later this week to report that she and Koetters, 47, had a "full-blown sexual relationship" during her junior year at Marlborough, an elite private school for girls in grades 7–12.
In an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed News, she said Koetters wooed her when she was a junior in his AP English class by complimenting her taste in music and literature and telling her that he had never felt this way about anyone else before. Soon, Marcy said, he was regularly pressuring her into ditching class to have sex with him. Koetters' wife was pregnant with her third child at the time, she said, but he told Marcy that he hoped to run away with her one day and have children of their own. Although Marcy often missed half-days of school and her friends asked why Koetters stared at her in class, no one at Marlborough ever inquired further into her relationship with Koetters, Marcy said.
"I would have thought someone would have noticed that I was skipping classes — that I was getting off the school bus and actually walking in the other direction — or the strange way we acted around each other, but no one ever did," Marcy said. "I think they should have noticed."
In addition to working with the LAPD's ongoing criminal investigation, Marcy is considering her legal options and recently retained lawyer David M. Ring, who also represents Koetters' other alleged victim. He is planning on filing two civil lawsuits against Marlborough in early April.
"The civil lawsuits will prove that Marlborough knew about Koetters' bad conduct for years and did nothing about it," Ring said. He expects more victims to come forward. "We know Koetters engaged in similar misconduct dating back to his very first job in the early 1990s at Polytechnic High. Marlborough knew it, yet hired him anyways."
A Marlborough spokesperson said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on Marcy's story because of "threatened litigation."
Marcy, now 27, told BuzzFeed News that her relationship with Koetters has caused her immense guilt, anxiety, and depression throughout her life. As a result, she's cycled through emotionally abusive relationships, she said.
"I'm only now coming to terms with the fact that he is a predator and I was a victim, but for a really long time I thought it was my fault," she said.
Koetters first approached Marcy the same way he did the other women who spoke to BuzzFeed News last July: by recommending books and flattering her intellect. Koetters told Marcy that she was "cool" enough to appreciate the explicit experimental fiction he gave her, but that he liked more about her than her taste in literature.
"I would give you an 'A' if it was just based on how I feel about you," she remembers him telling her.
Private meetings about books turned into late-night emails and instant message conversations, Marcy said, in which Koetters complained about his loveless marriage and told Marcy she was thoughtful for caring about him. Then, during a meeting, Marcy said he touched her knee. When she didn't protest, Koetters suggested the two of them meet at a nearby Noah's Bagels. Marcy took the Marlborough bus to school that day. When she got off, she turned in the wrong direction. He picked her up and drove her to a hiking trail in the hills. That's when he kissed her for the first time, she said. When Koetters asked Marcy if she wanted to have sex with him right there, she didn't even know what he was talking about; it was her first intimate relationship, she said.
"He made it feel very natural and normal, but he also kept saying that he couldn't resist himself around me, that he couldn't control himself," Marcy said. "He always said there was something special between us."
They started having sex several times a week, Marcy said. She would often ditch entire half-days of school to spend time with Koetters at parks, in the back of his car, and even at his house when his wife was at work. Sometimes, she said, his kids would come home, and he would ask Marcy to hide from them. Koetters' wife's pregnancy added to Marcy's overwhelming sense of guilt. Marcy said he often talked to her about baby names.
"This is difficult to talk about because I still feel guilty," she said. "It's hard to feel like it's not a reflection on me."
Even though she didn't get in as much trouble as she expected for skipping class, Marcy's relationship with Koetters impacted her education, Marcy said. "I went from this kid who cared about school so much to someone who was constantly trying to hide what she was doing from others," Marcy said. "It was so distracting. I didn't do very well that semester."
She still doesn't understand why no one noticed how many classes she missed — and why no one examined her relationship with Koetters more closely. Her friends noticed that Koetters had a habit of gazing at Marcy intently after reading romantic poetry in class, she said, and he would often stare at her in the hallways.
But no one noticed — and Marcy said Koetters was an expert manipulator.
"One time I asked him if he was just using me for sex, and he was like, 'How could you even say that?'" she recalled. "He told me he loved me, that this had never happened before with anyone else."
Their relationship petered out when Koetters' wife had her baby and Marcy went on summer vacation, Marcy said. When she returned to Marlborough for her senior year, Marcy had a new boyfriend and refused Koetters' advances. But she still felt attached to him. Once she overheard a younger girl talking about how Koetters was flirting with her. It made her sick. She ran to Koetters' office and asked him if it was true. "Of course not," he told Marcy, and told her he would solve the problem by reporting it to the administration himself. Marcy said she worries that Koetters' strategy may have worked. In 2014, after the allegations against Koetters received media attention, Marlborough launched its own investigation. The subsequent report noted that a student reported improper behavior by Koetters in 2005.
"At the time she reported it, the student's complaint was not fully investigated by the Head of School, who incorrectly questioned the veracity and motive of the student's allegations regarding Koetters. The decision not to fully investigate the student's complaint represented a serious error in judgment by the Head of School," the report said.
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