And following the revelation that Whitney College president Reginald Carruthers was both a member and participated in the cover-up of abuse allegations against Kurt Johnson eight years ago, the college’s Board of Trustees has voted to virtually gut the current administration. The school’s larger fate remains uncertain, however, as students have taken to campus-wide protests following a disturbing 60 Minutes interview with Katie Harris, a Whitney College student who was preyed upon and lured into the Pater Society by Carruthers himself.
An unexpected silver lining of exposing the Paters has been the number of missing women, suspected Pater victims, who have come out of hiding now that they’re no longer at risk. I’m sure many of you watched the moving Today show special in which several women and their families were interviewed. They explained how they feared for their lives when they decided to leave the Pater Society and thought disappearing was the only safe option. The FBI issued a statement saying they hope more women feel safe enough to come forward. They’re also continuing to excavate known Pater properties across the state in search of bodies.
So far, a total of twenty-eight current and former male members of the Pater Society have been identified and charged with everything from sex trafficking, kidnapping, and conspiracy to insider trading and destruction of evidence. The startling reach of the Paters has prompted a wave of investigative reporting that continues to uncover former members. In a bizarre twist, reporters from ProPublica discovered that a few early known associates of Kurt Johnson, the Pater Society leader known as the Philosopher, went on to become high-ranking members of Nxivm, another so-called “sex cult” operating in upstate New York. While conspiracies continue to run wild as to how the two groups were connected, the discovery has prompted renewed questions about the ubiquity of groups like this, particularly among communities of wealthy, privileged people. In my opinion, the New York Times piece “What We Refuse to See,” written by friend of the podcast Carmen Grant, is among the best of the recent reflections.
I’m recounting this history for two reasons. One, to tell you that no matter how much coverage the Pater Society has gotten in the four months since our podcast broke the news—no matter how much you may think you know—no one has the inside story we’re about to share. The second and most important reason is to tell you that everything we’ve done to bring down the Paters will be for nothing if, in the end, we don’t save Shay Evans.
Shay is facing a sentence of twenty years to life in prison for the murder of Kurt Johnson. You’ve heard from the news that she killed him while he was on his knees, in plain sight of FBI agents. You’ve flooded my inbox, wanting to know: What drove her to it? Isn’t what Shay did as bad as what the Paters did? How could I have asked you to support a murderer? And I understand where you’re coming from. Trust me, I do. It took me a long time to recover from what I witnessed that day. But reading your emails and DMs, I realized how badly you needed the whole story, because as Shay herself once told me, the story is everything. She knew from the beginning that it was her best defense, the thing that could stitch her together, show us her humanity. In the weeks I spent interviewing her, I’ll confess I never realized she was testifying. She was always a step ahead.
So Shay and I are going to lay it out for you, and after we do, I hope you’ll understand what she did was, in a larger sense, an act of self-defense. I hope you’ll join me in campaigning for her charges to be dropped. Because the worst possible way this story could end would be if Kurt Johnson or the State of New York took away Shay’s life after she finally freed herself.
This story is hers to tell, not mine, so in a Transgressions first, she and I are going to host together. We’re editing and recording this three-part Pater series while Shay is on house arrest, bound by an ankle monitor, awaiting trial. Shay’s going to start by reading from the beginning of her book manuscript, a work in progress called The Last Housewife. We’ll continue to incorporate passages from her book throughout the series. To set the scene, she’s written her manuscript in this Day-Glo purple notebook, which she’s opening now. Every time I see it, it reminds me of a notebook she had when we were kids. And despite everything, it makes me feel hopeful. Okay. Shay?