Stephanie Langlitz | Betrayal Weekly

Hi, everyone, it's Andrea. Before we start this episode, I want to let you know that we will be talking explicitly about the realities of child sexual abuse, so please be mindful with this episode.

I remember everything that man, for so long had so much control over me. I cannot just stand by and do nothing. You will not get away with this.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. Today we are sharing Stephanie's story. Stephanie grew up in upstate New York, near Albany with her parents and siblings.

My parents had a very tumultuous relationship. I don't think I coped with the chaos well. I spent a lot of time in my room.

In her room, it was quiet, looking out her window at the woods of upstate New York. Stephanie dreamed of a sunny and bright, faraway place, Los Angeles.

I just had this obsession with the glitz and the glamour and how exciting it was, and especially for a little girl in upstate New York, where it snows and its gray and its gross. LA always just had this sunshine to it and always looked like it would be a very happy place.

She hoped she could live there one day. As Stephanie got older, her parents started arguing more and more. Home was an exhausting place to be. Her parents split up and got back together often.

That coincided with really difficult middle school years. Friends would come and go, and it was really difficult dealing with that in tandem with things that were going on with my parents.

When Stephanie was in seventh grade, her parents announced that their family would be moving across the country to Tucson, Arizona.

I absolutely did not want to move to Arizona. I was quite literally kicking and screaming, you can't even stay together for a year. Why the hell are we moving across the country.

But Tucson did have one major perk. It was closer to la.

They're like, look, we can drive from Tucson Hollywood anytime you want. If you stop, we'll take you to Hollywood on a trip. So that kind of softened the blow a little bit.

But when she arrived at her new middle school, she struggled to make friends. The girls in her grade were not welcoming.

Girls are just mean. If anyone has been a middle school girl. You know that they can be very unkind.

She spent most of her time at school alone, and life at home was not much of a comfort. Her parents were still arguing all the time.

It was lonely.

When I was in eighth grade, I started drinking and smoking weed and started hanging out with girls that were a little bit older than I was. And that whole summer in between eighth grade and ninth grade was just a lot of drinking in the desert.

The desert stretched fast and shapeless around her. She couldn't figure out where she belonged in this landscape.

There were signs that I was unraveling. I had withdrawn a lot.

Stephanie's mom noticed a change in her and was concerned, so she took her to see a doctor.

I remember being hunched over, looking down, and I remember thinking, this is how he's going to know that I'm depressed, because I can't even sit up straight. That's when I was diagnosed with depression.

Described her antidepressants.

Just a few weeks later, Stephanie started her freshman year of high school.

I went into my freshman year very much alone, feeling very much isolated, very much broken. I felt like I didn't really have anybody. On the first day.

Of school, Stephanie went from class to class, meeting her teachers and new classmates.

I go into my Spanish class and the teacher, Mark Lindrew is standing there. It was very evident right away that he was trying to come off as that young, cool, hip teacher, like I want to relate to you guys.

While his life sounded exotic.

He would say I went to Spain and I ran with the bulls.

He was still relatable.

He was very into sports. He was one of the JV coaches on the football team and loved Star Wars. He used to teach in La, so that parked years of Oh cool, like this teacher used to live in La, Like awesome, I love La.

Some kids thought mister Lyndrud was kind of cheesy, but he always made class fun. And he was only twenty six years old.

And so I'm like, okay, he's not that much older with us. He is kind of the young hip teacher.

Stephanie's high school had a period in the mornings before classes started called zero hour.

If you needed to do homework or you needed extra help, you could go in. At that point, I didn't really want to be home at all, So I started going to the zero hour.

One day, during zero Hour, Stephanie was walking through the hallways trying to find a place to do her homework.

I walked by mister Lyndrud's room and there was no one in there, or maybe one or two people, and I said, Okay, this looks like a safe place for me to go to.

She stepped into his classroom.

His room felt safe because it was quiet. There wasn't arguing, there weren't people yelling.

She sat down and did her homework. The next day she came back to his classroom in the morning. Mister Lyndrud was always welcoming.

It was just sometimes me and him, sometimes other people.

Soon she was going to mister Lyndrud's room during zero hour most days. There she didn't have to worry about the mean girls in her grade or her parents' arguments.

I'd had so many friends at different schools hurt me, and I really didn't trust other students.

Mister Lyndrud was easier to talk to. He asked her lots of questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life.

Where are you're from? How long have you lived here, and then he started opening up a little bit about I came from Texas, I have an ex fiancee. He trusted me with personal information, and it filled this void that I wasn't feeling with friends or with my family. He was really the only person who would sit down and listen to me and hear me, and I just didn't have anyone else like that in my life at that time.

One day, Stephanie asked to use his computer for a homework assignment, and.

I'm on his computer and he had his AOL instant Messenger up, and that, in a way almost added to him being that cool, relatable teacher because it's like, Oh, we're on instant Messenger as students. Oh you're on instant Messenger. That's cool.

A message popped up from a woman named Amanda.

He's like, Oh, that's just my friend Amanda from LA. Just tell her you know, you're student using my computer. And then another one popped up and he's like, Oh, that's my ex girlfriend. Just tell her am busy or that you're a student or whatever. I'm thinking, Oh, he trusts me to respond to all of these people in his life.

And Stephanie was starting to trust him too.

It became sort of a friendship, and it started to feel like a very safe place for me to be in his room.

Eventually, mister Lyndrud told her that she could ditch the formal way of addressing him, so he stopped being mister Lyndrude, her Spanish teacher and became Mark, her friend.

There was one day that I had left school and I had a question about my Spanish homework, and because I had been responding through his aim to people, obviously I knew what his screen name was.

So she sent him a message on AIM asking how to conjugate a verb in Spanish.

Mark responded, he was.

Very professional and he explained it to me, and I apologized sorry reaching out to you here. I just wanted to make sure I got the homework done and he said it's okay.

Soon, Stephanie started messaging Mark with homework questions. More often he would help her, and then their messages moved to other topics.

He would say what are you doing, or what are you up to or what are your plans this week? And he made me feel like I could just talk to him about anything that was going on in my life and that I could trust him. There was part of me that kept thinking like, is this weird? Is this appropriate? Like should we be having this conversation? But also he is just being nice and friendly and maybe he does recognize that I just need a friend.

If he was offering friendship, she would take it, even if it was a little unusual. Then one day, a few weeks later, Mark suggested that they hang out outside of school.

He asked me, is there a park by your house? Is there anywhere we could meet? And I happened to live across the street from this giant park.

He told her to meet him there on Friday night. When Friday night came, Stephanie told her parents she was meeting a friend and started walking to the park.

This is when I started to feel nervous. What are we meeting at the park? For fifty percent of me thought it was weird, But fifty percent of me also said, well, this feels safe because he's meeting me in a very public place. All my neighbors are there, a lot of people from our school are going to be there, so this must be okay because it's a very, very public park.

When she got to the park, a green ASUV pulled into the parking lot and Mark stepped out.

He looked different than he did at school.

He had a hat on. He has this very distinct bald head, so I remember thinking, Okay, that's kind of a disguise, so maybe this isn't okay that we're meeting up, and I started to feel really uneasy. He starts walking toward me very aggressively, and he just picks me up and kisses me, and I just froze. It never occurred to me that that's what was going to happen.

As a fourteen year old, Stephanie was overwhelmed and confused.

I didn't know what to do. My brain couldn't process what was happening.

Stephanie walked home from the park that night, desperately trying to make sense of this. Mark was her teacher and she thought he was her friend.

What just happened to risk being in this park, to risk his teaching, And I'm like, he must really like me to be willing to do that.

After that night, Mark began messaging Stephanie more and more and then he started driving over to her house and parking his car outside on the street.

It would be later at night, and so I would just go outside and sit in his car with him. He would have me in the backseat and make out, and then I would have to go to school the next week like nothing had ever happened.

It was disorienting.

He's coming over to make out with me. He's also my teacher when I'm sitting in his class and nobody knows and was It's a very very confusing spot to be in, feeling uncomfortable, but just feeling like someone cared, that someone cared about me enough to listen to me and want to be around me.

Mark was grooming her.

Grooming is a term used to describe the process perpetrators use to control their victims. They start by gaining their victims trust, then isolating them from their community, labeling their own abuse as a shared secret, and finally controlling and coercing their victim into staying silent.

He started telling me, you can never say a word to anybody. You can never say anything because it's my dream to be a big football coach, and if you tell anyone, my dream is ruined. My life is ruined. I will be blacklisted in everything that I want to do if you tell anyone? And what are people going to say about you if they know this is happening.

Stephanie did what he asked. She didn't tell.

Any I couldn't process what was actually happening.

So Mark processed it for her.

He told her, now we've taken this relationship a little bit of a step further, and we trust each other more to do this. In a weird way, I think this secrecy made me feel like we had this special, trusting relationship.

But keeping the secret meant Mark quickly became the only person she could talk to. She couldn't talk to anyone else about what was really happening, so Mark became Stephanie's closest connection and her only one.

I went into the school year isolated, and now I'm even more isolated because I can't tell anyone what's going on. I can't tell everyone who I'm hanging out with at night. I was rewarded for my silence with attention, with the attention that I wasn't getting anywhere else.

In early January, Stephanie went to Mark's house to watch a football game that was the first night he raped her, I was.

Just very confused. I think I froze. I couldn't make sense of it happening. And then as soon as he was done and was like getting dressed, he said, I guess this makes you my girlfriend now.

Every time Stephanie was uncomfortable or confused or frozen, Mark jumped in.

To explain her own feelings to her. He told her, this is what trust felt like.

Maybe he does really care about me and love me because he was risking everything and he was risking that for me.

Mark told Stephanie he was in love with her.

He made it seem like it was an actual relationship. For Valentine's Day, he took me to the drive in and we saw how to lose a guy in ten days. I'll never forget.

Stephanie saved the ticket stub. She put it in a box with other mementos from her time with Mark. Mark started inviting Stephanie over to his house. She told her parents she was at a friends and when she was over at Mark's house, he told her it was only fair for her to pitch in with household chores.

It wasn't uncommon for me to clean his house in fact, it was an expectation he would have me fold his shirts a very specific way.

He explained to Stephanie that this is what being in a relationship was like.

She believed him.

As he was getting closer to me and making me feel special, he started somewhat flirting with this other girl that I was friends with, and I started to feel jealous because I'm like, oh, I'm losing his attention.

One day, that girl mentioned something about co which is what a lot of students called Mark. Hearing her talk about Mark, Stephanie couldn't keep their secret in any longer.

I just snapped and I was like, Coach is the one who's been texting me. We're like hanging out, and she just went silent.

A few days later, Stephanie was at school when she was asked to see the guidance counselor.

He looked at me and he said, are you having a relationship with mister Lyndrud? And I said no. I denied it because he had put the fear of God in me that if I told anyone my life was over, let alone my life his life. So of course I was going to be silent because I didn't want to be the person who crushed his dreams and ruined his life.

After Stephanie told a classmate that she was hanging out with their Spanish teacher, the guidance counselor called Stephanie into his office. He asked her if anything inappropriate was going on with mister Lyndrud. Stephanie denied it.

Of course, I was going to be silent because I didn't want to be the person who crushed his dreams and ruined his life.

School administrators questioned mister Lyndrude as well.

He said nothing happened. The school was like, well, they say nothing's going on, and they didn't do any investigation. There's nothing further.

But rumors had already started spreading through the school.

As a heads up. These comments are cruel and hard to hear.

People were calling me teacher fucker, and people were like, oh, I saw her under his desk, and that just further isolated me more and more. I already didn't have friends, and now I'm being labeled a slut a whore.

She was shamed.

The few people she was friendly with at school started avoiding eye contact.

When she walked down the hallway.

She could hear the girls in her grade, whispering about her as she passed. One day, someone said something really horrible straight to her face.

And the principle was in the hallway, and I went up to him sobbing, and I said, I'm the student that these rumors are about. Make it stop, Please make it stop. And he said, well, I can't just get on the loud speaker and tell everyone that it's not true.

I want to pause here for a moment. When I heard this part of Stephanie's story, I was shocked by how many adults knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it. Think about how alone she must have felt. Stephanie was trying to protect Mark, but nobody was protecting her. Now the idea of telling the truth felt even more impossible.

I was just in so much pain and withdrawal from everything because the worst possible thing was happening to me, and.

Through it all, the only person she could talk about this with was Mark.

That brought me closer to him because I didn't have anybody, so the rumors and the hurt made me turn to him.

For her entire freshman year, Mark was the only person Stephanie really felt was in her corner. Then at the end of the school year, Mark took a job teaching elsewhere.

I think he got spooked and he left.

But leaving wasn't an option for Stephanie. That summer, Mark introduced her to his parents.

He lied to them and said I was nineteen. I was fifteen. But it made me feel so mature and so much older. And that's what everyone when you're a teenager wants to feel.

Mark's parents welcome Stephanie in.

They would have me over for dinner, and his mom was giving me books to read. His mom was giving us restaurant recommendations. They're like, oh, next time before you guys, go to the drive and you should go to this pizza place and get the calzone.

Mark and Stephanie spent nearly every day together.

We went to the beach and I have photos of us at the beach together. Having him act that way, it was like, Okay, this is real. This is a relationship. I had nothing to compare it to, but it felt real.

Mark told everyone they met that Stephanie was nineteen, and he asked her to lie about her age. If people asked, he said age was just a number.

At some point I really started to believe that I was older. That's how much he had me lying to people that I truly, in some weird way, was like, oh no, I'm nineteen.

Stephanie got a fake ID for Mark's birthday. That year, they went out to a bar to celebrate.

We went to those New Orleans themed bar and if you flash your breasts, you get beads. And the whole time we were there, he just kept encouraging me to flash, the bartenders, to get more drinks, just sexualizing me. This whole entire bar saw me topless.

For almost two years. Mark had been her gateway to the rest of the world.

I couldn't drive, I couldn't go anywhere. If I wanted to do anything, he would pick me up, he would drive me. I had to be completely completely dependent on him.

Relying on Mark was beginning to feel suffocating. A few weeks after his birthday, Stephanie's sister came to town.

So I went out with my big sister and her friend, and I was feeling so much freer because I did not have to depend on him for attention or something to do.

That year, Stephanie turned sixteen and got her driver's license.

And that is definitely where things started to change for me. Gradually, I started being able to go outside his bubble a lot more. I'm seeing healthy relationships. My world opened up to so much because I had been so sheltered by him.

She was still going.

Over to Mark's house a lot, and he was still asking her to clean up and do laundry for him. One day, she was at his house by herself.

I just remember there being a lot of papers everywhere, and I'm like, I need to organize this. I can't stare at these papers anymore.

She went to put them in a filing cabinet. That's when a document caught her eye.

And that's when I found his birth certificate. I pulled it out and I looked at it. I'm not good at math, but I'm doing the math in my head. When I'm sitting there as a sixteen year old, I'm like, holy shit, he's thirty two.

Mark had told her he was twenty eight, four years younger than he actually was. As she stood there staring at his birth certificate, she had a moment of clarity.

Clearly, you know you're doing something wrong if you're lying to tell me that you're younger. And that's when everything started clicking for me of he's twice my age. This isn't right.

When Mark came home, Stephanie confronted him.

I said, I found your birth certificate, so I know you're thirty two, and his response was well, I was already feeling like Chester the molester. I didn't want to make it worse.

Stephanie glared at him, disgusted.

What the hell's wrong with you? You were thirty when you met a fourteen year old. You want me to trust you with everything, and I don't even know how old you really are. I want to be on a break.

Mark's face dropped what.

I said, Yeah, we're on a break.

Something between them had shifted. Mark could sense it to He looked scared.

I think that he realized he was losing control of me, and he spiraled. He said, I'm going to marry you. I'm looking for rings.

Stephanie almost laughed at him.

I am sixteen years old and a thirty two year old man is asking me to marry him.

She left his house.

Mark called and texted her NonStop, begging her not to walk away.

He wanted to talk, he wanted to try to work things out, and I went to his house. And I said, we're done. This is gross. I can't believe what you've done to me. He just starts crying and then he's like, please don't leave, stay with me. And I looked at him and I said, you are pathetic. This has been going on for two years. Do you even realize what

It would take over a decade for her to see the situation for what it really was. No matter how hard Mark tried to regain control, he couldn't.

I just started distancing myself more and more from him because I knew that I was going to be okay.

She graduated early and finally left her high school behind.

In the fall.

She started college at the University of Arizona, but her time at college was challenging.

I was way into the party scene and I would not go to class. I would just drink. My life really really spiraled from there. I was just drinking so much and I ended up dropping out of view of a.

Stephanie never told her parents about Mark's abuse.

She didn't have the words for it.

There was so much pain just under the surface, but she didn't want to feel it.

I was just stuck in this depressive, drunk cycle.

What happened with Mark followed her wherever she went.

I was just hiding that pain constantly, never making sense of what I had been through, just masking it and masking it and masking it.

Until one night I went out.

And got extremely intoxicated and got behind the wheel of my car, and thank god, I was pulled over and I blew a point two four and I got a DUI. I was relieved. This is what needed to happen. This cycle is going to break.

She knew that she couldn't keep masking her pain.

I had to start facing it, and I hadn't faced it until then.

She tried to tell a few friends about Mark. She still didn't have the words to label the experience. She told people she had dated one of her teachers.

People didn't know what to make of it.

So many people were so dismissive of it and minimized it. There were never any follow up questions. Not a single person ever told me that was wrong or made it seem like it was something I should have reported I was like, Okay, maybe I'm crazy, Maybe maybe I did something wrong.

It had been over ten years since she had seen Mark, and she learned that he wasn't teaching anymore. He'd joined the military. So she kept the truth about what happened to herself and she focused on moving forward. She enrolled in school again. In her late twenties, she became pregnant after a brief relationship. She decided to keep the baby and be a single mom. When her son was born, he became the center of Stephanie's world. She created a loving home for him and filled their days with joy

We're moving to La. I'm going as a single mom with a two year old in tow I don't know anybody there, but I just saw an opportunity to just completely start over and go to La.

La was just as exciting as she always thought. It would.

Be my first job there was one of my dream jobs. I was working for a celebrity, and I thought that was amazing.

For the first time in a long time, Stephanie felt connected to the younger virsion of herself, the little girl who dreamt of building a new life in California. She got a master's degree in communications and began a career in marketing and PR That.

Really built my confidence a lot. And everything that I kept doing just kept bringing me more and more comfortable myself, giving me more and more perspective.

On occasion, she would hike after work.

She loved climbing the hills dotted with chaparral and sage scrub. Her favorite trail led to the Hollywood sign.

You look out and you see all of LA. I was starting to feel a shift in myself of feeling stronger and feeling like I can do things that I didn't think that I could. And it started to really click for me that I can handle things and that I can make things happen.

She had found the strength to face the hardest parts of her life, raising her son, moving across the country, and going back to school. She had reclaimed the different pieces of her identity one by one, and she recognized herself again. Then Stephanie turned thirty, the same age as Mark had been when she first stepped into his classroom at age fourteen. That birthday brought a sense of clarity and conviction. What Mark had done was deeply wrong and it wasn't her fault.

I'm feeling ready to do something about this. One night, I went online and I looked up Mark and said he was teaching at a school in Colorado.

The last she heard Mark was in the military, but now she was staring at his LinkedIn profile.

He was back teaching high school students.

My hand started shaking, and I'm like, holy shit, he's around kids again. He's teaching again. What do I do.

That's when she was overcome by a new feeling rage.

So many people didn't show up for me. I can't be that person if he is doing this to anybody else, I cannot let this happen and just stand by and do nothing.

So that same night, she sent an email to the principal of the school where Mark was now teaching.

I just said, you don't know me. I saw online that Mark Lyndreud may be a teacher at your school. I was a student. I had an inappropriate sexual relationship with him as a fourteen year old student. I just wanted to let you know.

The principal responded to her email.

And he said thank you for letting me know. Did you ever report this? And I said no, but I think I'm ready to.

The principal called the local police department and reported what Mark had done to Stephanie.

That was the first time someone took my claim seriously.

A detective reached out to Stephanie. They got on the phone and Detective Durbin asked her to start from the beginning.

And it was like, okay, he performed oral sex on me, and she would say, okay, what does that mean. It's going to be uncomfortable, but I need you to tell me these things. I had to go into very explicit detail about things that he would do to me. I had to tell them every time that I could remember any sort of a detail, because that was going to be a charge.

Detective Durbin began making no of the charges against Mark.

She started saying sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's an offense, that's sexual assault. When I started talking to Detective durban and she started using those words, I was like, oh my god, that's exactly what this was. This was never a relationship. He saw me vulnerable, he saw me isolated, and that made me perfect prey for a pedophile.

For years, Stephanie knew that what she endured in high school was wrong, but she never knew how to talk about it. When she turned thirty, she was ready to report what happened to her and was connected with the detective named Detective Dirty. Stephanie told her what happened, and the detective started making note of the charges against Mark.

She started saying, sexual abuse of a minor. Okay, that's an offense, that's sexual assault. When Detective Durban started using those words, I was like, oh my god, that's exactly what this was. This was never a relationship. This was a pedophile grooming me and manipulating me, and it was abuse.

Stephanie was angrier than she had ever been, and she was ready to do whatever was necessary to keep Mark from abusing another child. Detective Durban asked Stephanie if she had any other evidence that could corroborate her claims against Mark. She didn't expect Stephanie to have much. It had been over a decade.

Clearly, we know that I was being sexually abused the entire time, but in my fourteen and fifteen year old mind, it was a relationship. And what do you do as a fourteen, fifteen year old girl, and you're in a relationship, you keep little men to so I saved like movie tickets, drive in tickets, receipts from lingerie he'd make me buy, and photos and that was perfect for the criminal investigation and the trial.

Stephanie dug up that old box.

All the things that Mark had used to gain power over her were now.

Going to help her take it back. She brought the.

Evidence to the police and they put together a timeline of Mark's abuse, corroborated by ticket stubs, receipts, and photos.

We went to the drive in and saw how to lose a guy in ten days. And that was on Valentine's Day. And here's a ticket stub, and here's the date that he asked me to get this lingerie. I had these photos with the dates on them, and it would be like him shirtless in his house or me laying on the floor with his dog us on the beach in California with like his arms wrapped around me.

Detective Durban told Stephanie about one last thing they could do to build a case against Mark. They refer to it as a confrontation call. She explained how it would work.

I call him and it's basically to try to get him to admit to what he did. The detectives are in the room unbeknownst to him, and so there's a record of that, so that then they can go in and without a doubt arrest him. She said, you don't have to do this. Sometimes it is healing for people. Sometimes it's the opposite. And I said, yeah, let's call that motherfucker. He is teaching and I want to make sure he's never teaching again.

Stephanie flew from LA to Phoenix to meet Detective Durbin and another detective who would be present for the call. Together, they made a game plan.

It was super nerve racking because I don't want to hear his voice, but if I can get him to admit this, there's no going back.

Then, with the two detectives by her side, she dialed Mark's number.

I called him and he answered, and I just started saying, I need closure. I was fourteen and I was your student. Why did you do that? And he's like, I was immature, and he admitted to knowing I was fourteen, admitted to knowing I was a student. I hope you have a really great day is how he ended it.

Stephanie felt quiet.

And Detective Durbin was like, how are you doing it okay? And I said that was so weird because that man controlled so much of my life for the last twenty years. And she looked at me and she said, just so you know, you had full control of that conversation. He was fumbling over himself because you had full control.

Two days later, Mark was arrested. The story was picked up by the local news.

And a Rooral Public School teacher, Husbanen arrested accused of sexual abuse of a minor in Arizona. Police say Mark Linderd is a teacher at Vista Peak Preparatory School. He's been placed on administrative leave.

Stephanie and her team prepared for trial. Stephanie started having calls with the DA and Tucson. She was also assigned to victim advocate. A few weeks after Mark's arrest, she was sent his indictment and.

It says my name on it, and it says his name, and it says the core, and it says the charges, and each charge is explained in explicit detail.

All in all, Mark Lyndrude was facing twenty one charges twenty counts of sexual contact with a minor and one count of sexual abuse of a minor.

To read those words and then put it together with that was me. I'm sl that's named in all of these things. That was me. This is real and what was done to me was really bad.

The one thing she'd spent so long trying to hide was now headline news.

I kind of just sat with myself in it and I said, I can do one of two things. I can become smaller and I can feel ashamed, or I can say no, I'm taking back my power.

After years of keeping Mark's secret, Stephanie was done staying quiet.

A trial was set.

For January of twenty twenty two, but Mark and his legal team delayed it, and then delayed it again and again.

Mark was always.

Having some kind of emergency or new evidence was being entered into discovery that caused the trial to be postponed.

It was exhausting.

After a while, the prosecution started to talk about giving Mark a plea deal.

If we give the plea deal, at least I know he goes to jail, offer him the plea deal. So they did, and he declined the plea deal.

This meant there would be a trial after all, and Stephanie would have to face Mark in court.

The reality was setting in of I have to talk about these charges and their explicit details in a room full of strangers.

Stephanie had spent years keeping this secret and many more years pushing this trauma down, but now she had to face it head on. Not only would Stephanie have to say what Mark had done to her out loud, but she would have to testify to her trauma an intimate detail, to a full room of strangers, and then those strangers would have to decide if she was credible, if they believed her. She remembered her high school principal who wrote her off, and the girls who started rumors about her.

Day, said, I just want you to know that, no matter what happens, I believe you the validation in that of maybe he won't be found guilty of anything, but I am this team of people who support me In that way.

She knew whatever came next, she wouldn't be alone. Stephanie flew from la back to Arizona for court. The night before the trial, she had a panic attack.

I thought I was dying, and it was just the biggest panic attack that I've had ever in my life.

The walls felt like they were caving in on her. She went to bed feeling shaky.

I don't know what happened in my sleep that night, but I woke up in the morning and I was like, let's fucking go, Let's do this. The only way I can describe it is like an athlete going into a game. You just put your head in the game and there's nothing else you're thinking of. Laser focused.

The trial began with jury selection.

The saddest part about jury's selection. One of the questions they asked was have you or anyone you know been raped or sexual assaulted? And the amount of adjurors who had to be excused because they had, in one way or another been affected bi sexual assault further fueled me of being like, let's go. This idiot is not getting away with this.

Stephanie took the stand.

The prosecutor asked her questions about what she had endured and she answered them.

Her voice was strong and she was in control.

Then it was time for Stephanie to be cross examined by Mark's attorney.

She clearly did not have a defense because he already admitted.

Gil so if the facts couldn't be debated, Mark's attorney had one last plan of attack.

She opened up her entire thing, saying, Stephanie Langletz is a liar. I was like, that is your defense, let's go, let's go.

The cross examination began.

She would ask me questions like you're saying he met you at a public park. That's crazy, and I'm like, yes, it is crazy. There was nothing she could have said that rattled me.

When the prosecutor was wrapping up, he asked if there was anything else Stephanie wanted to share, and.

I said, yeah, I do. As many times as I saw that number pop up on my phone, I could tell you what his phone number was right now. And so the diegoes, what was it? And I said five two nine oh four, And I looked directly in the eyes of Mark when I said it. I said five to nine oh four. I remember everything. You will not get away with this, and his face dropped. You could just see the defeat.

The next day, it was timed with the jury to decide whether Mark was innocent or guilty of the twenty one charges against him. Stephanie was hopeful that he would be found guilty on at least a few counts, but she didn't want to set her hopes too high.

Because each one they have to find me credible for.

Finally, the jury reached a verdict. Everyone filed back into the courtroom and found their seats.

He was found guilty on every single count, every single count. They found him guilty on all twenty one counts. I did not expect that, and that was so powerful. These people who are total strangers, they believe me.

A month later, Stephanie traveled back to Tucson for marked sentencing hearing. She shared a victim impact statement.

You stole my teenage years for me. I didn't get to go to prom, I didn't get to do anything like a teenager does, and instead I found myself at the bottom of a bottle for many years. And you have affected every relationship of my life. And I said, your attorney had no defense, so her defense was to paint me as a liar. This is why so many victims don't come forward is because they're afraid people aren't gonna believe them.

Later that day, the judge read mark sentence allowed. They went through all twenty one counts and for each count he was found guilty of, there was time added to a sentence. Mark Lyndrude was sentenced to sixty six years in prison.

This man, at this point is in his fifties, so he is going to die in jail.

After the trial, a few students who attended the high school where Mark had been teaching reached out to Stephanie.

They thanked me for what I did, and they're like, he creeped us out. He was my sister's teacher, and he was saying he was excited for me to be in his class, and we just want to tell you, thank you for protecting us. That's why I did it. I know that they're safe and he will never do this to someone ever again.

It didn't have to take this song to stop Mark's abuse. Stephanie's high school heard about it while it was happening and failed to properly investigate.

The school did nothing to protect me. I do think that they are culpable. Signs were there and they missed a lot.

After ten years in Los Angeles, Stephanie moved back to Arizona with her son. They live in Phoenix now, where she runs her own creative marketing studio, and in the last few years, Stephanie has formed some close friendships.

I all of a sudden had this amazing group of women around me, and it was the first time in my entire life that I had girlfriends like a good supportive group of girlfriends. We all support each other, we all want the best, and that is so genuine.

When Stephanie walked into Mark Lyndard's classroom all those years ago, she was alone. She struggled to make friends and it felt like nobody understood her. But she's not alone anymore. At Stephanie's birthday party this year, one of her friends made a toast.

There's a recording of it.

Her friend raises the glass and talks about all the things she loves and cherishes about Stephanie, and then the rest of her friends jump in to sing Happy Birthday. Stephanie is beaming while tears well in her eyes.

They don't see me as a victim or survivor of sexual abuse. They see me as who I am. Today, I am truly happy for the first time.

We end every weekly episode with the same question, why do you want to share your story?

Unfortunately, twenty something years after this happened to me, it still happens. No kid should have to go through this. It wasn't you. You didn't invite this, you didn't open yourself up to this. You were manipulated, you were groomed. You did nothing wrong. There's no shame, there's no guilt, and there really is a lot of power and validation on the other side.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly.

I saw this figure standing in the doorway. It was an all black and a batman mask and just covered head to toe in black clothing. I kept closing opening my eyes, like am I really seeing this?

If you'd like to share your story on Betrayal, please email Betrayal.

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Our associate producer is Leah Jablo.

Production management by Kristin Melcurie, Booking support by Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Tessica Crincheck. Audio editing by Tanner Robbins, with additional editing and mixing by Matt Albecchio. Betrayal's theme composed.

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