Stephanie Langlitz | Betrayal Weekly

Betrayal Weekly

Stephanie Langlitz shares her harrowing experience of being groomed by her high school Spanish teacher, Mark Lindrude, during adolescence in Arizona. Her story reveals the emotional manipulation, isolation, and trauma th

Key takeaways

• Grooming began with trust-building through attention and secrecy

Transcript preview

This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human. There was no anything inside those eyes. They turned black. It scared the hell out of me. Evil, wake up. I'm the woman, saw the murder, take place by Krievac and DiPippo. Anthony de Pippo showed no signs of remorse. I said I'm not guilty I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the Devil's Quar in the Bone Valley Feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcast hosted by me how to copy if you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy tune into these candid uplifting and moving on air chats open your free I heart radio app search Joy 101 and listen now Joy 101 with hoda kotpy is presented by cVS. My first guest is Paris Hilton chakita Luke and Y Yerin have surprises where the group tech comes to life. You're the only person I know that loves a yellow starburst. This is Sweet305. Here, oversharing is encouraged. Listen to Sweet305 with Leipons on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi listeners, I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the Betrayal Weekly podcast, and I'm excited to share this riveting story with you. I'm also excited to tell you. I'm excited to tell you. You can now stream every episode of Betrayal Seasons 1 through 5, as well as Betrayal Weekly, seasons 1 and 2, completely add free. Plus, get exclusive one week early access to all Betrayal Weekly Season 3 episodes, with an I-hard True Crime Plus subscription available only on Apple Podcasts. Plus, you'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows you love. Like Creating a Con, The Story of Bitcon. Paper Ghosts, Piedn, Piedm. Piedm. Unrestorable, the Godmother, the girlfriends, and more. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for I-Heart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. 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'm Andrea Gunning, 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. 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. 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 a glitz and the glamour and how exciting it was. And especially for a little girl in upstate New York where it snows and it's gray and it's 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, 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. 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 were 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. Her doctor prescribed 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 Lindruh, 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. 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 perked my ears of, oh cool, like this teacher used to live in LA, like awesome, I love LA. Some kids thought Mr. Lindhruid was kind of cheesy, but he always made class fun and he was only 26 years old. And so I'm like, okay, okay, he's not that 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 Mr. Linjrud's room and there was 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. Mr. Lindrude was always welcoming. It was just sometimes me and him. Sometimes other people. Soon, she was going to Mr. Lindred'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. Mr. Lindrud was easier to talk to. He asked her lots of questions and seemed genuinely interested in her life. Where are you 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-fiancé, 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. 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. 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 a student using my computer. That's cool. A message popped up from a woman named Amanda. He's like oh, he's like oh that's just my friend Amanda from LA. Just tell her you know you're a student using my computer. and he's like, oh, that's my ex-girlfriend. Just tell her I'm busier that you're a student or whatever. I'm thinking, oh, he trusts me to respond to all 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, Mr. Lindrewd told her that she could ditch the formal way of addressing him. So he stopped being Mr. Lindrewdrewed, her, 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 apologize. Sorry to 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 weekend? 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? 50% of me thought it was weird, but 50% of me also said, well, this feels safe because he's meeting 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 public park. He made me feel like we were friends at that point and I really didn't have anyone else to hang out with, especially on a Friday night. When she got to the park, a green SUV 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. And I started to me, 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 14 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. 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. in his car with him. He would have me get in the back seat 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 but I'm sitting his class and nobody knows and it was 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