Dear Fellow Educators and Leaders of Kentucky Schools:

I want to offer a truth I’ve learned: trauma is not just what happens to you—it’s what happens inside of you. It is, at its core, a loss of self. Recovery is the long process of finding your way back to who you are. And that recovery can only start once you acknowledge what happened and how it shaped you.

And I want to say this clearly: as an educator of twenty years and now a school principal, I know the weight of the moral and ethical duty we carry to protect our students. It is not optional. It is not symbolic. It is the core of our work and the measure of our integrity. I live that responsibility every single day. Because I understand that duty so deeply, I can no longer stay quiet about a system that failed to uphold the very responsibility I now work so hard to honor.

I am here today to speak for a little girl who grew up in a volatile home and found her brother’s lifeless body when she was eight years old. She didn’t ask to be placed in Shelby County, KY Public Schools after those early traumas, but she showed up anyway. She was responsible, respectful, and caring above everything else. She showed up every day looking for safety, predictability, and love. She didn’t know then that the things she’d lived through set her apart, disconnecting her from her peers and even from herself. She wouldn’t understand that for another thirty years. The same things that pushed others away were the very things that made her vulnerable to a predator.

Fast forward to her early teenage years—eighth and ninth grade—when a bus driver started paying attention to her. He held eye contact with her through the mirror. For a girl who had grown up without stability or affection, that attention felt like love, safety, and security. The common denominator and the experience of humanity is being seen and heard. But when you’re disconnected from yourself, you can’t even see yourself much less figure out how to be seen by other people.

Over the months she rode his bus, she felt more seen than she ever had. So when this bus-driver turned teacher encouraged her to take his agriculture classes, she changed her schedule and suddenly developed an interest she’d never had before. That was the beginning of losing the last broken pieces of herself in the effort to become whatever he needed her to be.

He was a popular, well-loved teacher. He shared his faith in God, which aligned with hers. He saw her pain, acknowledged her trauma, and claimed he wanted to protect her and save her. He told her he loved her. He expressed outrage about the things she endured growing up and used that to deepen the divide between her and her family

Even though he talked about knowing it was wrong and illegal, he insisted he “couldn’t help it”—that he had fallen in love with her. She became jealous of other female students and protective of his attention. She imagined a future with him where she would finally feel safe.

Teachers and students began to notice, but it continued.  While she was still a high school student, there were love letters, overnight school trips, whispered conversations in his office, nights wrapped in a blanket on the floor of a room off the ag shop during or after basketball games, visits to his home, a secret cell phone he bought her, hotel rooms, and pregnancy scares.

In their love letters, they talked about getting married and even named their future children—Dylan and Anna. That would be innocent daydreaming for two teenagers, but when they met, he was 36 and she was 14.

On June 28, 2002, the day she turned 18, he picked her up from her family’s home and took her out of state to marry her.

That girl is me.

Letter with a reference to the imagined names of our future children

Throughout our time together, he told me repeatedly that if I ever told anyone, it would ruin his life. I held this secret for 26 years, a silence that came at the cost of shame and guilt.  I was married for 22 years to the man who groomed me starting at 14 years old. We have three daughters—now 22, 19, and 15. Speaking up has always felt like it would come at a tremendous personal cost.  

Do the artifacts of our relationship exist? The letters, the photos, the phone records, the emails—even those sent on his school computer? Yes. They exist. The worst part of this story is that almost everyone connected to the school system at that time watched this unfold and did almost nothing to protect me from him.  There were many people in positions of authority who failed in their duty to report, who failed to protect a child in their care.

Administrators only spoke to me once the rumors grew too loud to ignore. They shamed me and treated me as if I was the problem. The Principal at the time, Jim Flynn, removed me from the AG class my senior year as the solution and filed no official report.

Letter referencing my frustration over no longer being in his class

As an adult woman and mother, I now know the community saw it and knew that it was wrong. I know that any of the players involved would have protected their own child if it happened to them. And yet every adult in my situation chose to instead shield a colleague, a family member, a friend, a reputation, a job, an employee over a child they were tasked to protect. They told themselves, “He’s not forcing her.”

This wasn’t an isolated failure. It followed a pattern in this district. The principal at the time, Jim Flynn, now the Executive Director of the KY Association of Superintendents, had been at the center of similar accusations the previous year with a girl who was a year older than me.  I saw firsthand how the community treated her—calling her disgusting names and blaming her for the downfall of a grown man. He went on to become the superintendent of Simpson County Schools and even had the audacity to run for Kentucky Commissioner of Education. How was I to trust authority after watching that unfold?

I want to take a moment to honor one staff member from the time —Jennifer Goode Franklin—who reported the relationship to the Administration at the time, trying to protect me, but she was promptly fired - seemingly for doing so.

I am asking for the public’s support in examining past practices and systems within Shelby County Schools to understand how concerns were handled and where safeguards failed. All allegations of sexual abuse and grooming should be reviewed by unbiased authorities——the police, not internal school investigations—so that gaps can be identified, safeguards strengthened, and future students better protected.

I am also asking for your support in changing the statute of limitations that shields school systems and leaders from accountability. Understanding the truth of what happened to you doesn’t usually come in your twenties.  Research supports this. It often hits you when your own children reach the age you were when you were victimized—in your thirties or forties. Our current laws, heavily influenced by lobbying, protect institutions like schools and churches and silence survivors.

As an educator of twenty years and a current school principal, my intent in speaking out is rooted in my commitment to student and staff safety. This statement is not an attack on public education, but a call to strengthen how we protect children and respond to concerns. My goal moving forward is to be a safe, trusted person that students and staff can report to, and to help build a school and district culture where concerns are taken seriously, acted on appropriately, and used to create meaningful, lasting change—so that what happened in the past is not repeated.

Signed,

Dr. Hannah Ross