MARSHALL, Mich. – As unbelievable as it may seem, there are some people who refuse to blame teachers when they engage in sexual relationships with teenage students.

Michael Hagedorn’s attorney is apparently one of them.

At Hagedorn’s sentencing earlier this week, following his conviction for third degree sexual conduct with his 17-year-old student, attorney James Mequio noted that the victim was nearly 18 at the time.

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“If it weren’t for the teacher relationship this would not be a criminal issue at all,” the lawyer told the court, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

But the fact that Hagedorn was a teacher is a very big deal, not the minor technicality that Mequio seemed to suggest.

He had a legal and moral responsibility to deal with students in a mature, responsible and professional manner. Kids go to school to learn, not to provide sexual entertainment for the adults who are paid to teach them.

The breach of that trust, the abuse of the teacher-student relationship, is unforgivable. It doesn’t matter if the student is seven or 17.

Matt Davis, the stepfather of the girl who was abused by Hagedorn, summed it up best when he spoke at the sentencing:

“It was a use of power and an abuse of power in a sacred relationship we have in this country between teachers and kids. We send them to school and trust that teachers care about their education and care about them as human beings.”

All Hagedorn cared about was getting a few cheap thrills with a naïve student in and around the campus, while his wife (the mother of his three children) taught students at the very same school. He was even willing to tell the girl that he would leave his wife and marry her when she graduated.

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“This guy in the scum of the earth,” Davis told EAGnews.

‘I know how to handle it’

It was in the fall of 2012 when Davis became suspicious of his stepdaughter’s relationship with Hagedorn, who taught her math class at Marshall Academy, a charter school.

He started noticing small clues, like Facebook messages on his stepdaughter’s account referring to the teacher as being “hot.”

So in November, at parent-teacher conferences, Davis approached another teacher about the situation, and didn’t like what he heard.

“(The other teacher) said he was concerned about it,” Davis said. “He said he was very uncomfortable about the things he was seeing and hearing. He said there was something not right.”

So Davis approached Hagedorn and made the classic mistake of placing the responsibility on his stepdaughter.

“I said ‘I understand she has a crush on you’ and he smiled and said ‘I’ve heard that,’” Davis said. “I said, ‘Okay, well, what do we need to do to protect you? Move her out of the class? Put her on notice?’

“He looked me in the eye and said ‘No big deal, I know how to handle it.’ I gave him the keys to open the door. Instead of looking at him as the problem, I looked at her.”

Davis said the sexual relationship lasted about four months, and took place on school grounds.

“She wasn’t good at hiding her feelings and he reciprocated by giving her some attention and that allowed him to move in and it was repeated, probably from the early weeks of school in September,” he said. “They call his behavior grooming. He groomed her over a couple of months, to get her to have a relationship with her.

“She used hall passes and claims of needing ‘help with her math’ to visit him during her other classes. She would visit him during school and after school. His classroom had to be empty for this behavior to work. Usually it was on his ‘planning’ period.”

In February 2013 Davis got a call from the headmaster of the school, who reported that some students had told him about disturbing messages they had seen on his stepdaughter’s iPod regarding her relationship with Hagedorn.

“They had been messaging each other and she put a bunch of stuff down, he’d reply and give it back to her,” Davis said. “There was sexting, love letters, inappropriate pictures – there were 500 pages of this stuff that the police recovered from the iPod.”

Davis went to the school and had his stepdaughter’s locker searched, but her iPod was not there. Shortly after he and his wife sat down with the girl and asked her to tell the truth.

“She was steadfast – there was no relationship, and she wanted us to leave her alone,” Davis said. “So I called my brother who’s an attorney who works for school districts and he’s very familiar with these situations and how to handle them.

“He came over and played the heavy and scared the heck out of her. She just collapsed into an extremely distressed emotional state. To me there was no longer any question about the truth. The next day we called the sheriff’s department and the process started.”

Hagedorn initially entered a plea of not guilty, but the overwhelming evidence from the iPod, along with the accounts of several witnesses, obviously convinced him to change his plea to “no contest.”

He was finally sentenced earlier this week to between 28 months and 15 years in prison by Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge Conrad Sindt.

At the sentencing the judge noted that Hagedorn had been confronted by Davis and the headmaster of the school regarding their concerns, but went ahead and pursued a sexual relationship anyway.

“There is no question that this defendant had a superior status and used that to accomplish the end results,” Sindt said. “He had a dramatic impact on the young lady.”

Stigma attached to victims

While Hagedorn went through the legal process, his victim sunk into a deep emotional funk, according to Davis.

“She did a death spiral after that,” he said. “She was devastated, for a lot of reasons. She couldn’t be with him anymore, she had hurt his family, and because she started to get bullied and made fun of at school, by her peers and teachers.

“She started feeling lower and lower and lower. We made her see a counselor but she refused to talk. She stopped going to school, and finally moved out of the house around May (of 2013).

“She never drank or took drugs before, but she started drinking and smoking pot. She started having relationships with people she didn’t really know. She really started to deteriorate. She wasn’t taking care of herself, wasn’t keeping herself or her clothes very clean.”

It was painful for Davis, his wife and their other children to watch their daughter and sister struggle emotionally.

“I can’t even explain the range of feelings you have … from anger to sadness to anxiety for her, for her mom, for our kids,” Davis said. “We knew where she was most of the time, the people she stayed with were not great people.

“We began to see pictures on social media, hear from our network of friends with kids her age about her partying, being drunk, high, passed out – we were very fearful of her life, but at that time she was 18 and there was little we could do. Last summer was one of the toughest times we ever experienced.

“She wasn’t like this at all prior to the discovery of the relationship, so it was clear her tailspin was related to her depression over losing the relationship and her feelings that she somehow was responsible for it and was a home wrecker.”

After staying with various friends, the girl started running out of options, and eventually came home in August, 2013, the day before the start of her senior year.

“There was a strong effort to get her back in the house to go to school,” Davis said. “She hit bottom, we welcomed her back, but established boundaries. She has done a very good job, with slip ups here and there, handling the responsibility of living with her family and following our family expectations.

“It was a big relief, but it also was a big challenge for her and for us. The work doesn’t stop with moving home. We still have to work on our issues today.”

Davis said his stepdaughter has been doing quite well lately, and is set to graduate from an alternative high school next week.

But he also said she has been hurt, and some old wounds have been reopened, by some of the comments posted by people following Hagedorn’s recent sentencing.

“That girl was a tramp,” one person commented online. “He was a teacher. His life is ruined, and doing a minimum two years prison … and she is still a skank. Good job people!”

“Who cares who made the first advance?” another wrote. “It happened consensual (sic). Only issue is that he was her teacher. Only issue at all. Our youth are far more mature and far more rational than they were back in the day.”

Davis said attitudes like that – blaming the victimized teen while excusing the adult professional who was supposed to be responsible – are the main reason he and his wife have been talking to the media and using their real names. The names of sexual assault victims and their families are typically kept out of news stories.

“About 40 percent (of online comments) said she deserved it because she seduced him,” Davis said. “We feel strongly that there is a real stigma attached to victims. We want to put ourselves out there. If there are other people dealing with a situation like this, we hope they contact us so we can try to help them.

“When you’ve been through it, you know it’s very unfair. It’s awful.”