Editor’s note: This story includes details about alleged child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct.
Hannah Ross felt her body step up to the small wooden podium at the Shelby County Board of Education meeting in December 2025. Her hands held a stack of papers, and her mouth made the shapes of the words written on them, but it was like someone else speaking.
Ross, a 41-year-old elementary school principal, had typed up the words that morning. They conveyed a story that was shocking, and yet familiar. Something closely held, and yet known in some educator circles in this part of the state: The man she had been married to for 22 years — the father of her children — was also a well-liked former teacher in Shelby County Public Schools who allegedly groomed Ross from the age of 13 or 14, started sexually abusing her at 15 and married her on the day after her 18th birthday in 2002.
Telling her story publicly, Ross said, could jeopardize her relationship with her daughters. But it was a risk she was willing to take.
“I knew that I could stay silent no longer,” Ross told the crowd gathered in the board room.
She spoke of notes passed at school, whispered conversations in the office, and evenings wrapped in a blanket with her near-40-year-old teacher on a classroom floor.
Ross was one of several women who came to the meeting that night to speak out against what they say is a disturbing pattern in Shelby County Public Schools: that for decades male educators have been allowed to groom and sexually abuse teenage girls, that the school system knew about it, and that time and time again, school officials swept the abuse under the rug.
KyCIR interviewed Ross and two other women who attended the meeting. They each say they are victims of inappropriate attention, grooming or sexual abuse by Shelby County Public School personnel. Each said little was done to protect them or hold alleged abusers accountable. Shelby County Public Schools graduate Hayley Weddle told KyCIR that former high school basketball coach Chris Gaither groomed her and coerced her into unwanted sex in 2014. Laura Wills-Coppelman, a 2001 SCPS graduate, told KyCIR that her then-high school principal Jim Flynn paid her so much attention it fueled a county-wide rumor the two were in a sexual relationship.
Flynn denied any wrongdoing in an email to KyCIR, noting that in 2022 the state Education Profession Standards Board dismissed a complaint from Wills-Coppelman after a two-year investigation.
“You have inquired about the 25-year-old allegations from my time in Shelby County. These allegations were thoroughly investigated, including by the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board, finding no misconduct on my part, and the case was dismissed with prejudice,” Flynn wrote.
None of the other accused men responded to KyCIR’s request for interviews or comment.
Shelby County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Matthews declined an interview request, citing ongoing litigation.
The women’s allegations highlight an omnipresent problem in school districts across the state — sexual misconduct by school staff directed at their own students. The women say they’re using their stories to draw attention to legislation that would provide stronger frameworks for holding school personnel accountable when they cross the line. And they’re already having an impact.
In an emailed statement, Shelby County Public Schools spokesman Josh Rhodes said district leadership is “actively addressing the issues that have come to light.” He pointed to several initiatives proposed by Matthews in response to the women's concerns, including a new anonymous reporting system, a new third-party investigation process for allegations of sexual misconduct, and professional development.
The women are also backing several measures moving through the 2026 Kentucky General Assembly.
Senate Bill 181 clarifies new rules for electronic communication between school personnel and students.
House Bill 102 revives Taylorsville Republican Rep. James Tipton's years-long push to tighten reporting requirements and ban school districts from using non-disclosure agreements to hide allegations of sexual misconduct.
House Bill 4, filed by Boone County Republican Rep. Marianne Proctor, would create criminal penalties for grooming — tactics abusers use to isolate their victims, build trust and normalize sexual content and contact.
“I think grooming has to be against the law,” Ross told KyCIR. She also believes school staff should be barred from entering into relationships with students for a length of time after graduation, and that the state should do away with the statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases.
“Our current laws are heavily influenced by lobbying — protecting institutions like schools and churches, and silencing survivors like myself,” Ross said at the board meeting to applause from the crowd.
The December meeting was something of a watershed moment for Shelby County. The women were demanding a reckoning in this tight-knit community. And when the board told them their time was up, that they needed to “move on” to their agenda, the women refused to stay quiet.
“There’s no moving on from this!” one person shouted from the back.
‘A really impossible spot’
Hayley Weddle did not address the board during the December meeting. She was too overwhelmed. Instead, she sat in the front row, directly across from the board members on the dais so she could look them in the eye.
Weeks before, a district official investigating reports that Gaither had a history of inappropriate contact with high school girls online called Weddle to ask if the basketball coach ever sent her messages.
Weddle said it was true. The district suspended Gaither and promised to investigate. But days later, before Weddle had a chance to deliver a written statement officials had requested, Gaither was back on the basketball court. The district had reinstated him without explanation. KyCIR requested records related to the district's investigation, but officials did not provide records that detail the steps investigators took, or any discussion of evidence or conclusions. A district spokesperson said Gaither was reinstated after leaders consulted with the district’s attorneys.
Gaither did not respond to KyCIR for a request for comment for this report.
After his reinstatement, Gaither told The Courier-Journal that he had “an army of supporters.”
Weddle grew up in Shelbyville, population 50,000, and still lives there on a quiet street just off of the quaint historic downtown center. Today, Weddle is a 31-year-old mom who spends her days running around after her three young kids — often in an oversized Taylor Swift tour sweatshirt, her long blond hair whipped up into a hasty bun.
Shelby County has grown significantly since Weddle was a child. But despite the growth, the area still has a small-town, everybody-knows-everybody feel. People are connected by family, by the churches where they worship, by the schools they went to and the sports teams they played on as kids. Lots of people know Weddle. The soccer field in the local park is named after her father, Terry Murphy, a beloved coach who died after a long battle with colon cancer in 2018.
When Weddle was a junior at Martha Layne Collins High School, her friend asked her to help manage the boys’ basketball team. It made sense for Weddle, a dedicated member of the student section at any athletic event. As manager Weddle would answer to the boys’ basketball coach, a 28-year-old special education teacher named Chris Gaither.
During her senior year, Weddle said Gaither started calling her out of class frequently, sometimes to wash uniforms, but often just to sit in his classroom and talk. She remembered feeling special that someone older than her seemed interested — someone she and others looked up to. She said he shared things with her he wasn’t supposed to: teammates’ ACT scores, for example. Sometimes she shared what was going on at home; her father’s battle with cancer.
Later in her senior year, she said the conversations took a turn. Weddle said Gaither, then 30, started asking her a lot about her relationship with her boyfriend, another student, and what kinds of sexual activity they engaged in. Those questions made Weddle uncomfortable, she said, and confused. They didn’t fit with the idea she and many in the community had of Gaither as a devoted husband, father, coach and teacher, and a prominent figure in his church.
Towards the end of her senior year, she said, Gaither started texting her frequently.
Weddle said Gaither texted her a song lyric about female genitalia, and explained over text his theory about the power women held through sex. She said he also asked her what she thought about sex “with no strings attached.”
Once, when she and the team were staying in a hotel in Indianapolis for a tournament, she said Gaither texted her late into the night saying that he couldn’t sleep.
Weddle no longer has the texts. Today, Weddle struggles to explain how she felt about those messages as an 18-year-old high school senior. She didn’t think of them as sexual come-ons, but they made her uneasy.
“I thought if someone found out that I would get in trouble,” she said. “I just knew that it was wrong to be talking to an adult teacher who's married that late into the night.”
She also didn’t know how to make the messages stop, or the questions about her sexual history. A lot of it, Weddle said, came down to wanting to be polite, especially to someone in authority.
“I think with how I was raised — which I would never speak poorly on — I just think that I was raised to be polite,” she said.
One night, Weddle said, Gaither showed up at her home late. She had left a blanket on the bus during a trip, and had asked him to leave it in the locker room. But he appeared on her doorstep after dark. Weddle was alone — her older sister had gone to bed and her parents were at the hospital because her father was sick. She said he asked, repeatedly, if she had a boy with her.
Thirteen days after Weddle graduated, she babysat Gaither’s young children. At the end of the evening, as she was leaving, she said Gaither kissed her in the doorway. Weddle said it was awkward and surprising to her. She went home confused and devastated. She didn’t tell anyone, and she couldn’t sleep that night, or eat the next morning.
The next day, Weddle said Gaither asked her to come over to the house. Weddle thought he might explain his actions. Instead when she got there, she said, he brought her into the bedroom and started rubbing her back. Then, she said, he had sex with her on the bed. Weddle said she didn’t want to, but she didn’t know how to leave.
“It felt like a really impossible spot to be in,” she said. “I was too polite.”
For years after, Weddle carried immense shame and guilt about the encounter, believing it was her fault. Slowly she said she began to see Gaither’s actions as grooming, and the encounter as abuse, not an affair.
After she heard the district had reinstated the coach, she posted her story online.
The reaction to her post revealed cracks in the community. Some discounted her and questioned her motives. Some were shocked. And then there was a third group, Weddle said:
“There's another small part of the community that I feel like has witnessed this behavior and has done nothing about it,” she said. She knows this group exists because she said many have messaged her privately, apologizing for failing to take action when she was a teenager.
Despite some defenders of Gaither, Weddle said the vast majority of the comments she received were supportive. And that’s given her heart.
“For years, I feel like I was uncomfortable in Shelbyville. I avoided places, I avoided events,” Weddle said. She once missed a friend’s wedding because she knew Gaither would be there.
“So a part of this was kind of taking that back for myself,” she said.
About a month after she went public, the district terminated Gaither, according to a district spokesperson. Shelby County Public Schools officials refused to provide documentation related to that decision, saying “due process” procedures are “ongoing.”
Gaither is appealing his termination with the Kentucky Commissioner of Education, according to the district’s spokesperson.
A rumor upends a teenager’s life
Laura Wills-Coppelman made waves across the state when she posted online about being the target of “over-the-top” and damaging attention from a prominent Kentucky educator when she attended Shelby County High School in 2000 and 2001.
In that 2020 post, Wills-Coppelman described years of special attention from her then-principal, Jim Flynn: gifts, phone calls, notes, an invitation to dinner, and even a song she believed he wrote about her.
Flynn is a well-known and celebrated figure in Kentucky. After leaving Shelby County High School in 2003, he went on to become superintendent of Simpson County Schools for 16 years. He was named superintendent of the year in 2015, and in 2019 he was hired as the executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents. As leader of that influential organization, he is often tapped by state lawmakers for insight around education policy.
In 2024, Flynn was named as one of three candidates to become the Kentucky Commissioner of Education, the top education official in the state.
Wills-Coppelman told KyCIR that sexual contact never occurred between her and Flynn, but that during her high school years he paid her so much special attention that a virulent rumor developed among students and staff that she and Flynn, her principal, were in a sexual relationship.
Flynn denied any wrongdoing in an email to KyCIR, noting the EPSB dismissed Will-Coppelman’s complaint against him in 2022.
The board, which reviews complaints against educators for possible sanctions, concluded that the allegations against Flynn did not constitute violations for which it had the power to sanction. The EPSB did not turn over all materials in the case requested by KyCIR, and withheld records created by a third-party investigator the EPSB hired. Attorneys for the EPSB say the records are an “attorney work product” and are exempt under state open records laws.
Wills-Coppelman told KyCIR the attention started her sophomore year during a school play. Wills-Coppelman, a self-described “theater kid,” got a role as Rizzo in the school’s production of “Grease.” Flynn, the principal, was cast as the Teen Angel — the middle-aged male character who sings “Beauty School Dropout,” played by Frankie Avalon in the 1978 movie.
During rehearsals, Wills-Coppelman said she remembered finding Flynn near to her often. Some of her fellow students even teased her about it, she said.
Wills-Coppelman said the attention escalated as she got older. She was a member of the student council her junior and senior year, and she said Flynn frequently called down to her classes to ask her to come to his office on the premise of talking about student council business.
Flynn called her out so frequently, she said, that once the phone rang in her English class and before picking up, the teacher said “Oh, it must be Mr. Flynn for Laura.” She said the class snickered.
Flynn also talked to her outside of school. Over the summer between her junior and senior year, he took her to lunch in the town over to celebrate her acceptance into the state’s Governor’s Scholars Program. While she was at the six-week program in Danville, she said he called to ask her to dinner. She said no. Flynn denied that he asked her to dinner in his rebuttal to Wills-Coppelman’s 2020 complaint to the EPSB.
He gave her gifts — a Britney Spears CD, and a sculpted fish, wrapped in layers of newspaper. She said Flynn, a man in his mid-thirties, told her he had chosen each layer based on news articles that reminded him of a different part of her. He wrote her cards beaming with words of admiration and encouragement. Wills-Coppelman still has some of these items.
Once, she said, he called her at her home, and spoke to her for an hour. Wills-Coppelman said he was driving his kids to or from a camping trip. When they hung up she said she was left wondering why he had called — there didn’t seem to be a reason. Her best friend and her mother, Bobbie Hardin, both confirmed this story with KyCIR.
Hardin said other adults witnessed his attention to her daughter as well, and even brought it up with her and her husband.
“I thought, ‘My god he’s got a crush on her. He’s acting like a silly school boy,’” Hardin told KyCIR. “I didn’t really understand grooming at that time.”
Hardin said since there was never sexual contact, she didn’t know what she could report or who to report it to.
“I kept thinking, ‘If it doesn't go physical, she'll be okay’ — not realizing the damage it was doing to her,” Hardin told KyCIR.
Wills-Coppelman said she knew it was unusual — that Flynn treated her differently from other students; but at first it made her feel seen and special. As an ambitious student, Wills-Coppelman said she was also excited to have someone so powerful in her corner — someone who could write influential letters of recommendation when she applied to college.
Her senior year, Wills-Coppelman said Flynn requested that she be his office aide. It meant she spent an hour-long block with him in his office each day. At one point, the 17-year-old mentioned she’d like to learn the guitar. She said Flynn offered to teach her to play, and started bringing his guitar to school. She said he would play for her and sing throughout her office aide period, often behind a closed door. Once, she said, he played a song he wrote, the lyrics to which Wills-Coppelman remembers as “She’s out of reach…she’s a place I can’t go…I watch her every day.”
Wills-Coppelman said she asked if the song was about his wife. She said Flynn said “No. Every song has its inspiration. I can’t tell you now but maybe someday I can.”
Hardin remembers her daughter coming home to tell her about the song. They both agreed it seemed to be about her.
Flynn denied the song was about Wills-Coppelman in his rebuttal to her 2020 complaint.
While there was never sexual contact, Wills-Coppelman said her senior year the nature of their relationship was the subject of open speculation among staff and students. She said classmates bullied her, called her names and harassed her in the hallway. She often called her mother in tears, begging to be picked up early from school. The family received harassing anonymous phone calls that they reported to the police.
In February of Wills-Coppelman’s senior year, Hardin said Flynn called her to tell her there was a rumor about him being “obsessed” with her daughter, assuring her it wasn’t true. Flynn removed Wills-Coppelman as his aide and cut off contact with her. District and school administrators told Wills-Coppelman’s family to ignore the rumors. But they didn’t stop. Family friends told Hardin that they heard teachers talking about an “affair” between her daughter and Flynn.
It caused Wills-Coppelman extreme emotional distress, sleeplessness and headaches, she said, including one migraine so bad her parents called an ambulance.
“I was inconsolable,” Wills-Coppelman said.
Hardin, alarmed by the persistent rumor and her daughter’s health, started writing down what her daughter and others in the community reported to her about Flynn’s behavior.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.
Wills-Coppelman still has those notes, along with her own journal entries from the time. It’s one reason why she’s able to recount conversations that allegedly happened more than 25 years ago.
Finally, Wills-Coppelman’s parents demanded a meeting with Shelby County Public Schools Superintendent Leon Mooneyhan. They came to his office at the board of education building in downtown Shelbyville. Wills-Coppelman insisted on coming.
“I wanted to convey how difficult my life had become at school,” she said.
Her parents requested to file a written report about “unprofessional behavior” by teachers at the school who were still spreading rumors about a relationship between Flynn and their daughter.
According to Hardin’s notes, Mooneyhan refused to accept a written report or to investigate. Hardin and her husband threatened to go to the state board of education, the attorney general’s office, and the media. They threatened to sue. Mooneyhan was unmoved.
“Do what you have to do,” Mooneyhan said, according to Hardin’s notes from the time. “I’ve been sued 25 or 26 times.”
Mooneyhan could not be reached for comment.
His response devastated Wills-Coppelman’s family. In the car on the way home, Wills-Coppelman said tears fell down her father’s face. It was the first time she had ever seen him cry.
“I felt like such a failure as a parent,” Hardin said. “What do you do when everybody you go up against protects each other?”
Today Wills-Coppelman is a photographer. She spends her days behind the lens looking out at the world instead of letting the world look at her, and she thinks her experience at Shelby County High School is a big part of that.
But lately, she’s finding herself center stage again. After hearing Weddle’s story, Wills-Coppleman said she felt compelled to speak out. First, at the December meeting of the Shelby County school board. Then, at more public meetings, including a Kentucky State Senate committee, in support of legislation to curb educator sexual misconduct. In January, Wills-Coppelman founded an advocacy group called Institutional Complicity in Kentucky (ICKY) along with Weddle, Ross and several others.
The group supports House Bill 4, legislation that would criminalize grooming before it escalates to more serious kinds of sexual abuse. Under the measure, grooming is defined as a “course of conduct directed at a minor that is intended to…facilitate future acts of sexual conduct.”
Even the bill’s supporters acknowledge grooming cases, as defined in this legislation, would be very difficult to prove; intent is what separates good-natured behaviors from grooming.
“These cases aren't going to be a slam-dunk,” Danville Republican Rep. Daniel Elliot said while explaining his yes-vote.
Supporters say the requirement to prove intent would protect adults acting in good faith from being found guilty of grooming.
Still, the proposed provision makes some lawmakers uneasy. Rep. Lindsey Burke, a Lexington Democrat, said even with specific exemptions for sex education, she worried that the measure could be interpreted to criminalize conversations between adults and children about sex, even within families. Burke was among five lawmakers, four Democrats and one Republican, who did not cast a vote during the committee. Many said they supported the goals of the measure, but wanted some “technical” changes.
‘The system completely failed me’
For Hannah Ross, her teacher’s intent was less ambiguous.
One December evening, the 2002 Shelby County High School graduate met me in the parking lot of a giant athletic complex in Elizabethtown. We talked in her truck while she waited for her daughter to finish volleyball practice. Ross brought with her two boxes full of papers and photographs. They were letters she and her ex-husband had written each other more than 25 years ago when Ross was a student at Shelby County High School and he was her teacher.
Under the cabin light in her truck she read some aloud, in a quick monotone, as if trying to convey the evidence as quickly as possible without lingering.
“This is one of the hardest days of my life,” the letter from her teacher said. “Being so close yet so far away, we must look into each other's eyes and maintain our intimacy and keep our hearts lit like moldering lava.”
The letter is not dated, but Ross thinks it was written when she was 16 or 17 years old, and he was around 40. It’s one of dozens she has from the former teacher.
At Ross’ request, KyCIR is not naming her ex-husband in this story. Ross is concerned that naming him could worsen implications for the three daughters they have together. They still share custody of their youngest.
The man did not respond to KyCIR’s request for an interview. Records show he was fired from his most recent position as a bus driver in Nelson County Public Schools after Ross spoke about the allegations at the Dec. 11 Shelby County Board of Education meeting.
Ross said her decision to speak out wasn’t as much about holding her alleged abuser to account as it was to raise awareness about what grooming and sexual abuse looks like in schools, and how school systems are complicit in allowing it to continue.
“The system completely failed me, and I think the public has to see that,” Ross told KyCIR.
Ross met her ex-husband when she was about 13 years old and he was in his mid-thirties. She said she had a traumatic childhood and grew up in a home rife with alcoholism, abuse and neglect. When she was eight years old, Ross said her baby brother died. Ross was the one who found his body. Ross said her mother’s mental health spiraled after the boy’s death, leaving Ross and her siblings to fend for themselves while her father worked. That’s when she said Child Protective Services intervened, and Ross and her siblings started attending public school.
Ross said she was seen as distant by many of her peers and teachers, but her bus driver was an exception. He made an effort to talk to her. He held her gaze in the mirror. When she found out she wasn’t going to ride his bus anymore, she was devastated. She said he suggested she take his agriculture classes at the high school, and she leapt at the opportunity to stay in contact with one of the only people who made her feel safe and seen.
Ross became very involved in agriculture offerings at Shelby County Public Schools: welding, horticulture, small engine repair, equine science. She joined the Future Farmers of America chapter, which he sponsored. She said he relied on her. Ross said he would bring his lesson plans to her home so she could type them up for him. She said she graded tests for him and took charge of the greenhouse when he was out of town.
“At the time, I felt special, I felt important, I felt responsible. I felt like I mattered to someone … it felt good to just finally have a place,” Ross told KyCIR.
Ross said it’s hard to pinpoint when the relationship became sexual. It started with seemingly benign touching, she said: hugs, backrubs, then handholding and kissing in her sophomore year when she was around 15. He shared his grievances with her against district administration and secrets about his marriage and family problems. Ross said she felt it was her duty to help and support him. In one letter she still has, a teenage Ross promises her teacher she has cash for him — $40. She even bought him clothes.
The first time they had sexual intercourse, Ross said she was a 15-year-old sophomore. She said the teacher drove her to a hotel in Louisville in October of 2000.
After that, Ross said, they would have sex during basketball games on the floor of the paint room in the agriculture shop while the rest of the school was distracted.
Ross struggles to explain what her teacher was to her at that time.
“I have no idea what he was,” she said. “At the time, I would have said that he was safety, he was security.”
Coming from such a troubled home environment, Ross wanted nothing more than to create a happy family, and her teacher began promising her that. Ross said as his marriage dissolved he started talking about marrying her. They even picked out the names they would give their future children: Dylan and Anna. Their letters are full of these fantasies: his scribbled in black ink, and Ross’ sometimes in a pink metallic gel pen.
Most of the letters are undated and do not contain Ross’ or her alleged abuser’s name. Ross said that was intentional. She said he warned her that if anyone found out about their relationship it would “ruin his life.” But they didn’t always follow those rules. Several letters include their names. Ross even has an email printed out that she sent him at his district email address in 2002.
“I can't wait to marry you. I just wish it would come sooner,” the email said. “Five months seems like an eternity. We have the chapel, the chalet, the rings, all we need is some money, which you already have put away, and a license. Thank you for the cell phone. I love it. I can call you whenever. I love you, sweetheart. Am I going to see you tonight? I hope so. Love you.”
Ross said her teacher told her not to keep the letters and said he wasn’t keeping hers. But they both did anyway, and combined them for storage once they were married.
Her senior year, when Ross was 17, she said they began intentionally trying to conceive a child.
Ross said today as a 41-year-old woman, she “can’t fathom,” the decisions her ex-husband made at the time. But she knows that his own marriage was very troubled.
“I think he wanted to be taken care of,” she said. “I think that he wanted the security of being with someone that would be dependent on him for forever.”
Other students and school staff noticed Ross’ relationship with her teacher, and had concerns, she said. At either the end of her junior year or beginning of her senior year, she said the head principal called Ross into his office and told her he had heard rumors about her and the agriculture teacher. Ross said the principal did not ask her if the rumors were true, but he did remove her from all the teacher’s classes.
That principal was Jim Flynn, the same man who was suspected of having an inappropriate relationship with Wills-Coppelman, and is now executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents.
In an email, Flynn said he was never aware of a sexual relationship between Ross and the teacher while she was a student.
Many notes from the latter part of Ross’ senior year contain a countdown in days until Ross’ 18th birthday, when she and her teacher planned to elope. On that day, she said, he picked her up from her home and took her to a chalet in Gatlinburg, TN. The next day, she said, they married in a small ceremony attended by his son, his son’s girlfriend, Ross’ grandmother and her grandmother’s friend.
Ross said her teacher-turned-husband knew he couldn’t return to his job in Shelby County, so she said he asked a friend in Anderson County Schools to hire him — another educator who Ross said had married a student and was sympathetic to her husband’s situation.
Ross had her first child less than a year after she was married. She wanted to become a small-engine mechanic, but she said her husband didn’t want her to be in a field where she would be around so many other men. So Ross became a teacher and then an administrator. They often worked in the same school.
The first time Ross began to see that how she met her husband was not a love story, but child sex abuse, was when her oldest daughter, then 12 years old, got a text from a coach. Ross said she had an immediate negative reaction. While the text wasn’t sexual, she recognized it as a boundary violation.
“And it made me think, ‘Well, hang on — that's what happened to me’,” she said. She thought about it more and more, and decided she wanted a divorce, but didn’t want to break up her family. Her daughters, she said, loved their father and had a good relationship with him.
Ross waited 10 years, and began divorce proceedings in 2023. She said when she confronted her husband about how they met, and his alleged abuse, he told her he saw things differently.
“He says that he cannot help that he fell in love with me,” she said, “and that's really hurtful.”
Ross said her alleged abuse and the relationship that followed prevented her from healing from her childhood trauma and compounded it.
“It's honestly — it's like I've been living a lie my entire life,” Ross said. She’s in therapy and is writing a book about her life to process what’s happened to her.
Part of her healing is advocating for change. Ross, a founding member of ICKY, is pushing for criminal penalties for grooming, and for laws to close what she calls the “post-graduation loophole” by banning sexual relationships between recent graduates and school staff.
She’s also pushing to an end to the statute of limitations on child sex abuse allegations. Under Kentucky state law, plaintiffs have until their 28th birthday to sue for damages related to child sex abuse.
Ross said most victims don’t disclose their abuse until decades later, often when they’re in their 40s or older.
“So that needs to change, so that these victims can experience healing,” Ross said. “And I think unfortunately, when there's some financial motivation for schools and for churches, that creates a little bit more urgency to change in those organizations.”
Ross had been in touch with Wills-Coppelman since she published her allegations against Flynn in 2020. When Shelby County Public Schools basketball coach Gaither was reinstated in November, Wills-Coppelman suggested that it might be the right time for Ross to share her story. Ross stayed up the entire night before the board meeting and decided that morning to speak during public comment.
She was terrified. But once she started writing her statement, she felt something unlock.
“Talking at the board meeting felt like, you know, just a way to release a little bit of trauma, and regret, and sadness and shame that had been connected to this, to my whole relationship with this person,” she said.
But that release has come at a cost. She said her oldest two girls want to be supportive of her healing, but they are also worried about the impact the disclosure has had on their father. Ross said she thinks they may understand when they’re older.
“It would be devastating if I lost my relationship with my girls because of this,” Ross said. But, she said, she has to do what she believes is necessary to keep kids safe from sexual abuse. And that means continuing to share her story.
Reading stories like this one can bring up painful feelings and memories, especially if you're a trauma survivor yourself. If you need to talk, you can reach the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE, or visit RAINN.org and click get help now for free, 24/7 support. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988.
