The Tree No One Could See: How My Friend's Sexual Assault Changed Everything

I tried to put my prep school years behind me, but the Kavanaugh report brought it all back: My favorite teacher, the girl from my neighborhood, and the weight of silence.

The exterior of St. Albans School in Washington D.C.

Last October, in the midst of all the pre-election frenzy, a slim congressional paper slipped into the news cycle.

You might have missed it; most everyone else did. It was a report—issued by the junior senator of the nation’s smallest state—on the 2018 confirmation hearings of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Hardly breaking news, but it caught my eye.

The report confirmed what many of us already knew: That the probe into allegations of sexual violence against Kavanaugh was a sham. The FBI never followed up on the thousands—yes, thousands—of tips it received. Instead, the nation’s top law-enforcement agency forwarded them to the White House. In the words of the report:

“If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information.”

Nor did the FBI bother to interview Kavanaugh or his chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. It’s done. Move on.

But I couldn’t just move on. The report revived a memory, one I’d more or less buried for 40 years. Back then I was a teenager attending a prep school very similar to—in fact just a few miles from—the ones Kavanaugh and Ford went to. That’s when another act of sexual violence and institutional silence—involving a childhood friend and my favorite teacher—changed me forever. It was, I only see now, the moment that turned me away from the mainstream, towards a life as an outsider. A decision that, for better or worse, I’ve had to live with ever since.

Even in a city as wealthy as Washington, St. Albans School stands out.

When it opened in 1909, St. Albans’ mission was to educate the boy choristers of the Washington National Cathedral, the towering landmark on whose grounds the school sits. As its prestige grew, the school began to attract a tonier clientele; soon its graduates included future congressmen, astronauts, media figures, athletes, and a Vice President (Al Gore). Today, the students—all of them male—dine in a “refectory,” not a cafeteria. They’re grouped by “forms,” not grades. The dress code mandates English-style blazers and ties.

St. Albans is a classic prep school, though in hindsight I wonder exactly what it’s prepping its students for. I do know this much: I didn’t belong there. If I thought those starchy uniforms were supposed to make us all equal, I soon learned otherwise. Sensitive, unathletic, and Jewish, I quickly sank to the lowest rungs of the pecking order.

Given the pride placed on athletic as well as academic achievement, the halls of St. Albans were fairly awash in testosterone. The school faced the issue squarely, subjecting all boys in A Form (that’s sixth grade) to a laughably counterfactual sex ed supplement given by “Coach,” a terrifying, ramrod-straight man rumored to have been the Army’s first Black drill sergeant (he wasn’t). As he barked through his lecture, explaining that morning erections (“piss hards”) were instigated not by REM sleep but by an excess of urine, I struggled—and failed—to stifle my giggles. It’s safe to say that Coach loathed me.

The class, held in the school’s cramped, peak-roofed attic, was a literal apex of discomfort. But downstairs, in the basement of the Lower Form building, I found some relief: Mr. Wilmore’s class.

Ron Wilmore taught English. Like Coach he was Black, but otherwise the two couldn’t have been more different. Coach was rigorous and upright; Wilmore loose and personable. He was a big bear of a man, prone to broad ‘70s-style ties a full four years into the Reagan Era.

Sardonic, hip, and free-wheeling, Wilmore was one of the more popular teachers at St. Albans. And unlike his prudish colleagues, he wasn’t afraid to talk about sex. One day, as we read Robert Peck’s A Day No Pigs Would Die, he paused at the scene in which farmer Tanner slaps a handful of lard under a breeding sow’s tail.

“What’d he do that for?” said Wilmore. The room grew silent. I was 12 years old—the possibilities of sexual function just dawning on me—and I felt my face grow flushed. When one student gingerly raised his hand and suggested it was to ease the animal’s sexual congress, Wilmore nodded sagely. It felt like an initiation into something edgy. Mr. Wilmore was cool! He wasn’t afraid of the truth! I trusted him, and I wanted him to like me.

There was one other person who I wanted to like me: My neighbor, Marnie.

Marnie (not her real name) lived a couple of blocks away from me. While I doubt her family was as wealthy as some of our neighbors, trust me: You’d recognize their name. A slight, fair girl with a moon face and large eyes, Marnie was an intellectual in a family that prized cerebrality. She was also, I see now, almost unbearably sensitive. Those big eyes telegraphed what seemed like near-constant worry.

My feelings for Marnie weren’t exactly romantic, but I felt drawn to her. Like Wilmore, she seemed to at least tolerate my anxiety and awkwardness. I cherished the few moments I’d see her, walking home from the bus stop or around the neighborhood. She seemed to have a heart for tender animals such as myself.

Marnie and Wilmore knew each other, too. She attended National Cathedral School (NCS), St. Albans’ feminine counterpart; he was the faculty advisor to the Literary Club, one of few sanctioned activities in which boys and girls could mingle. Given her sensitivity and intelligence, I imagine she was one of Wilmore’s star pupils. I don’t know the nature of their relationship, whether he gave her rides home after club meetings—a not uncommon practice at the school. But I do know this: In 1983, when Marnie was preparing to enter ninth grade, she attended a Literary Club picnic with Wilmore. At some point in the festivities he drew her aside, away from all the other attendees, and then he raped her.

Here’s where it gets blurry.

In memory, around now something changes in Marnie. In my mind’s eye her face has gone mask-like, eyes even wider than usual. But I don’t know—I suspect it’s my brain struggling to make sense of what transpired. As I later learned, over a year passed between Marnie’s rape and when the story, or some version of it, finally emerged.

Here’s what I do know: One day Wilmore and Marnie simply weren’t there. It was if the earth had swallowed them up. No one explained what’d happened; there were no meetings or assemblies. Wilmore’s colleagues got a letter explaining he’d resigned “for personal reasons.” I stopped seeing Marnie around the neighborhood, too. What little information there was consisted of third-hand fragments: Picnic; rape; gone.

A single, perplexing image fixed in my mind: A sprawling athletic field with a single oak tree standing in the middle. Because I was ignorant of the exact mechanics of sex—or, for that matter, sexual assault—the image became a stand-in for everything I couldn’t actually picture. This is where he must have done it, I thought, though the details remained hazy.

Something changed in me now, too. I was already miserable at St. Albans, but as it became clear no one was even going to acknowledge what had happened, that misery ramped up into a firestorm. I seethed at the injustice of it all, the pompousness of the school, the hypocrisy of all the Cathedral’s wasted wealth. But mostly I turned my hatred on men. It was men who had done this, and it was their world that was built on violence, on privilege, and most of all on the power of silence.

Of course, being that I was essentially friendless, no one really noticed. And so I turned that rage inwards, on my own budding sense of sexual selfhood. If I couldn’t save my friend, at least I could condemn my own sex for what they’d done to her. Believing that even expressing sexual desire was tantamount to assault I tried, and inevitably failed, to quash my own wants: A self-destructive feedback loop that echoes still to this day.

I was already gravitating towards edgy music—you know, really hardcore stuff, like The Cars and The Police. Soon it’d be The Clash and Dead Boys ripping through my headphones—I wanted to blast everything to smithereens with my Sonic Reducer, too. I started smoking cigarettes, then weed, then anything I could find. I stole from my parents’ liquor cabinet, sneaking out at night to perform petty acts of vandalism.

Eventually I fell into the punk scene, where—thank Christ almighty—my slim ability to play the bass guitar lent me some credibility. And I began to play the kind of music that expressed what words couldn’t: How brutal and unfair it all felt. That a crime like Marnie’s rape could happen, and no one even seem to notice.

I only saw Marnie once after that.

She seemed distant; I don’t remember anything about our conversation, or if we even had one. As the years went by, my memories of her faded. But in October, when the Kavanaugh report was released, it all came back to me. But this time, at least I had corroboration. When I searched for Ron Wilmore’s name, I found another report: A 2019 survey of sexual misconduct at St. Albans. I downloaded it and searched for Wilmore’s name. There it was, on page 11; I began to read.

After the assault at the picnic, Marnie downplayed its severity. She told her parents that Wilmore had put his arm around her and French-kissed her. When her parents approached the Headmaster of the school with the allegations, he met with Wilmore:

“The Headmaster placed Wilmore on probation for one year; required that he undergo counseling; directed Wilmore to avoid situations that would lead to a similar incident, like being alone with a student; and demanded that Wilmore refrain from making sexualized comments to students.”

Marnie lived with this knowledge—and the knowledge that Wilmore was still teaching at St. Albans—a full year before she came forward with the whole story. At this point, Wilmore was finally forced to resign.

I found it hard enough to believe he’d been let off so easily for so long, but that wasn’t the end of the story. His boundary-crossing behavior had began shortly after he joined the faculty in 1975. Wilmore engaged in unwanted sexual innuendo with at least one male student, and he’d coerced another, a seventh-grader, to masturbate him—though this wasn’t reported to authorities at the time. There was one other thing: Before Coach taught sex ed, it was Wilmore’s job—that is, until a flurry of parent complaints about his unorthodox teaching style prompted the school to relieve him.

At the time of Wilmore’s departure, he was one of just three Black men on the school’s faculty.

There were other Black men on staff, but they were all custodians and kitchen crew. None held a position of real authority. I found it odd that of the dozens of faculty and staff, the two tasked with imparting the fundamentals of sex to the overwhelmingly white student body were both Black. I’ll never know how Wilmore related to the racial aspects of his job, but I have a clue.

During lunch one day, early in my seventh grade year—it must have been shortly before he was forced out—I stopped by Wilmore’s table. Though I was no longer in his class, I hoped to stay on his radar. I’d recently started playing bass, and when I wasn’t practicing, I’d scan the pages of music magazines for cues as to how to carry myself. I’d noticed something unusual about the racial makeup of many popular bands, and I wondered what Wilmore thought of it. As I passed his table that day, I said:

“Hey Mr. Wilmore! It seems like whenever there’s a Black guy in a band, he’s always the bass player.”

Believe me: I cringe remembering this moment. A comment so oblivious only a 13-year-old could’ve made it, it’s a classic trope: Black men have “rhythm” and “soul,” but they’re happy to lend it to white musicians—provided they’re “down.” But it’s Wilmore’s reaction that sticks with me now. In the past, he’d more or less tolerated my clumsy attempts to bond. Now he scowled, speaking in a low tone of barely contained fury. “Yeah,” he growled. “I wonder why that is.”

I turned and walked away, my stomach hardening into concrete. I’d never heard him express anything even approaching anger. But beyond the sheer stupidity of what I’d said, what I wonder now is what the school knew, and what Wilmore knew they knew. I don’t remember the two of us ever interacting again.

Which brings me back to the Kavanaugh report.

The paper may have brought some details to light, but it didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. Very powerful people wanted Brett Kavanaugh on the bench, and nothing—certainly not a couple of women—was going to prevent it from happening.

When Ron Wilmore did what he did to my friend, I suppose I was already on my life’s path. But I see now that it was an inflection point, the moment I turned my back on the world. Believing the straight world had nothing to offer me, I stopped trying to be any kind of a citizen.

I’m middle aged now, more at peace with my life. But it’s hard to fight the feeling that anything changed, or ever will. Brett Kavanaugh is secure in his job. So, too, is the man who nominated him, his felony and civil convictions for crimes—including sexual abuse—notwithstanding.

One thing being a punk taught me was to prioritize relationships over institutions. And so a few years ago, I thought to reconnect with Marnie. Thrilled to find she was on Facebook, I sent her a friend request. But as I started scrolling down her page and saw the messages of condolence, my elation turned to shock. She’d died just a few months before, killed in a freak accident. Soon even her photo was gone, replaced by a blank icon.

All that’s left now is the image that implanted after I learned of her rape: The field with the single oak tree in the middle. It’d always perplexed me: What is a tree doing in the middle of an athletic field? Now I think I know what it signifies: The thing everyone sees happening right before their eyes, but can’t bring themselves to name.