She has wanted, for years, to be brave enough. Today she is.

It’s a Friday in October. A few weeks ago, she watched on TV as another woman, calm and clear, accused a man of assaulting her when they were young. The nation had listened to that other woman, and many had believed her.

It’s hard to say why the courage comes on this day. But her kids are at school, the house is quiet, and she has a rare day off work.

Still in her pajamas, she turns on the computer, looks up a phone number.

She calls a university in West Virginia and leaves a message.

I'm a pediatrician and a mother, she says into the phone, and I'm calling about one of your soccer coaches. I was his player, back in Texas.

Laura Anton and Tristan Longnecker in 1984. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

A measure of justice

Laura Anton was an All-America soccer player for Ursuline Academy of Dallas, leading the high school to three state titles and her club team to the brink of a national championship.

Now she wants you to know something about the man who coached both of those teams.

Anton, a pediatrician who lives outside Austin, is 51. Starting when she was 13, she said, her soccer coach sexually abused her. In hotel rooms. In his condo. In his car. In the bleachers, with his hand under a blanket.

She lived for decades with the terrible weight of the secret, suffering from anxiety, depression and loneliness. Understanding her own story took years, because he had scribbled on so many pages.

Anton knows it is too late, under the law, to go to the police. But not too late for another form of justice, a chance to shift her burden to him. A chance to warn others.

Encouraged by her therapist and emboldened by the #MeToo movement, she sent an email tip to The Dallas Morning News. "I suffered dearly at his hands," she wrote, "and will always have to cope with the emotional fallout of having my childhood and teenage years taken from me in such a way."

Dr. Laura Anton, pictured at her home, said her soccer coach sexually abused her for years in the 1980s. (Julia Robinson / Special Contributor)

Last October, she tracked down the man in West Virginia, where he was coaching two women's soccer squads. I have a significant history with him, she said in her message to his boss. And I have information that I think you need to know.

She also connected with a childhood teammate whom she suspected had been abused too.

That teammate — and then two others — told her the coach had assaulted or made sexual advances on them in the 1980s.

Like Anton, the other three women had stayed mostly silent for years.

“I’m glad somebody can say it out loud now,” said Traci Provence, who played on the same club team as Anton.

The coach, Tristan Longnecker, 60, did not respond to emails, texts and voice mails detailing the women's allegations. Soon after The News contacted him, his social media accounts began shutting down.

To piece together the women's stories, The News interviewed them and more than 25 other people, including teammates, relatives, coaches and a psychiatrist who treated Anton. We reviewed yearbooks, the coach's resumes, team rosters, social media reports and articles in magazines and newspapers.

Anton’s teammates also shared photographs of themselves with their old coach, posing after victories. To the women, the photos now feel like lies.

New era for girls' sports

Anton, the youngest of five children, grew up in North Dallas. After her dad died of a heart attack, her mom put her in soccer to keep her busy. This was the 1970s, and girls’ soccer was starting to flourish, giving them chances that only boys had had before.

1 / 2Laura Anton, shown in an undated photo, started playing soccer in first grade.(Courtesy of Mageors and Boudreaux) 2 / 2Laura Anton in a June 1977 family photo.(Courtesy of Laura Anton)

In sixth grade, Anton joined the D’Feeters Soccer Club. Her coach was Longnecker, then in his early 20s. His players say the former Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas player was enthusiastic and came prepared for practices and games. Over time, he would build national-quality teams.

Anton said she was a mix of outgoing and nervous at that age. She had plenty of friends, but dreaded leaving the house in the morning because school made her anxious. When she confided in her new coach, he told her he loved her and said she could talk to him.

“It was a man showing interest,” Anton said. “Father-like. Like you were his special person.”

They had a code: Longnecker would call her house, let the phone ring once, and then hang up. She knew she could call back.

Anton said she spent hours on the phone with him, became part of his life. He was married and the couple sometimes took the girls out for lunch.

Clean-cut with curly brown hair and trademark aviator sunglasses, he often flirted with his players, several former team members said. He was proud of his clothes, his physique and his Honda Prelude.

Tristan Longnecker (Courtesy of Nancy Eberle)

"He wanted us to tell him that he was good-looking," recalled Provence. He would ask, "What do you think of this outfit," or "What do you think of my car?"

Anton’s mother was busy with work and her other kids and didn’t pay much attention to Longnecker, she said.

“I didn’t think he was doing anything wrong,” said Selma Anton, now 90. At the time, she had a good impression of him — a nice man who went to church with his wife. “I was naive.”

The terrible secret

Anton said she was in the car alone with Longnecker when he first mentioned sex. It was a taboo topic at her Catholic school, the big unknown that scared her.

She was 13. She took piano lessons. She rode bikes with friends. Obsessed with horses, she spent hours drawing them with crayons and colored pencils.

Anton’s response to her coach: I’m never having sex. I don’t ever want to have sex.

Well, she remembers him saying, I can teach you. I can teach you how to kiss.

And he did, she said. By the time Anton was 14 and in eighth grade, she said, they were having intercourse. She didn’t think of it as abuse at the time. More often than not, it happened in the Honda he was so proud of.

Longnecker also coached at Ursuline, so when Anton started high school there, he was coach of both her teams, giving him even more access to her.

He planned ahead, she said, keeping a cloth under his driver’s seat. He would withdraw to avoid impregnating her and use the cloth to clean up. Later, Anton said, he paid for her birth control pills, and would drive her to a pharmacy to get them.

Longnecker often took Anton and her teammates to watch other girls’ teams play. Huddled on the bleachers under a blanket, he would rub his hand between her legs, or place her hand on his crotch.

Tristan Longnecker coached girls soccer at Ursuline Academy of Dallas in the 1980s. Laura Anton, who says Longnecker sexually abused her, was one of the team's star players. As a junior, she scored 50 goals, a feat so noteworthy it was featured in Sports Illustrated. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

Anton said he took nude photos of her in his Richardson condo. They watched porn together. She said she doesn’t know where his wife was at those times. The couple later divorced, and the ex-wife declined to comment for this story.

The D’Feeters traveled frequently, taking trips as far away as Las Vegas, Colorado and Florida. Old photos show that Longnecker’s wife sometimes came along, as would an assistant coach.

Even with chaperones nearby, Anton said, Longnecker would ask her to come to his room.

She figured she was in love with him.

“I remember when I wasn’t with him, it was dark,” she said. “You’re completely alone and miserable and lonely and depressed most of the time — except when he doles out your allotment of affection.”

She had to lie constantly to protect the secret. Fibs to her mom that she was going to the library to study. Forged notes to get her out of school so she could meet him.

“You were always sneaking,” she said, “and you felt like people knew you were sneaking.”

‘Like a big brother’

But what did people actually know? Not much.

Nancy Eberle, a former D’Feeters player, said Longnecker was always surrounded by players, so she never dreamed anything inappropriate could be happening with any one of them. “I would never go there,” she said.

Laura Anton poses with the team's trophy after the D'Feeters Soccer Club won a regional championship in North Carolina in June 1983. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

Annette Melton, whose daughter played for the club, noticed how much attention he gave Anton but didn’t suspect anything.

“I was hoping it was something like a big brother trying to help her out,” she said.

Anton said Longnecker often abused her when she was the last girl he dropped at home after practice, so she suspected the same happened when others were last. She had seen him place his hand under teammates’ blankets in the bleachers and stroke their legs in the car.

When she asked Longnecker about other girls, he would grow angry, saying, “Are you questioning me?”

Others were questioning him, too. A teammate’s father became concerned after overhearing a conversation between Longnecker and his daughter, many players and parents said. They remember that the father took legal action.

Still, when the D’Feeters played in an elite tournament in Denmark that summer of 1985, Longnecker made the trip, photos show. Gerry LaFountain, who had a daughter on the team, went along to keep an eye on him.

“People were starting to feel there was something wrong,” he said.

LaFountain said he told Ursuline about the controversy and soon Longnecker was no longer coach there. Longnecker also left the D’Feeters about that time. (The school and the club said they have no record of complaints against him or of his departure.)

A hearing in the case against Longnecker was held that fall, several players said.

“We were all in the courthouse in downtown Dallas,” said Karen Churchill, who played for the D’Feeters. “I don’t know if I was supposed to look like I supported him. I’m not sure why I ended up there.”

The details of the complaint and the testimony of witnesses at the hearing are unknown because the case is sealed. Neither the father who filed the case nor his daughter would speak to The News for this story. But Anton said Longnecker was ordered to stay away from the girl, and to get counseling.

She remembers the counseling requirement well, because Longnecker took her along and left her in the car during his appointments.

A chance to be normal

Ursuline won a state championship in Anton’s senior year. The Dallas All Sports Association honored her at a 1986 banquet that featured Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry and tennis star Chris Evert Lloyd.

Longnecker, out of coaching, still had a job in telecom. He asked Anton to meet for sex at his office, in his home, before class in her schoolgirl skirt. By now she was legally old enough to consent, but still told no one what they did together.

Laura Anton participated in the 1986 Olympic Festival in Houston. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

In the fall of 1986, Anton enrolled at George Mason University in Virginia, the nation’s reigning women’s soccer champion. She had a full scholarship and was one of the country’s top recruits.

But she wasn’t ready to be on her own. Over the years, Anton said, she had grown dependent on Longnecker. She’d had no close friends, no dates, no prom, no parties.

Now she was without him for the first time in years. She cried all the time. She listened to music tapes he made for her.

“And then,” she said, “he came.”

Longnecker transferred to Virginia. Finally, Anton thought, they would be a regular couple. She thought he loved her. Why else would he move across the country?

He was almost 30; she wasn’t yet 20. He took her on business trips and to office parties, where they mingled with couples who were married and had children.

Anton wanted to believe they were equals, but Longnecker continued to exploit her, she said. Longing to get back into coaching, he touted her as his star pupil, staging soccer clinics that showcased her skills. He told other girls' parents he'd coached her so well she'd earned a scholarship.

“I was his creation,” Anton said.

It all began to feel wrong. She saw classmates date guys their own age and wanted to fit in with them. Midway through college, she realized she might miss her chance to be normal.

She broke from Longnecker. He eventually remarried and got new jobs coaching high school girls.

Anton graduated and came back to Dallas. But she struggled to move on.

‘Nowhere was safe’

Always a strong student, she was accepted into the University of Texas Medical School at Houston a few years after finishing college.

The getting-to-know-you conversations were awkward. All the high school and college stories she could have told had to be avoided. Socially, Anton said, she was stuck in sixth grade, the last time she had friends without Longnecker in her life.

Like an adolescent, she felt everyone was watching her, noticing her flaws. In class, she sat in the back for fear she’d have a panic attack.

Anton said she wouldn’t have made it through med school without antidepressants and twice-a-week therapy sessions. She told her counselor about Longnecker but mostly worked to manage her anxiety. She still viewed herself as complicit in what happened.

In 1997, she graduated from medical school, married a classmate and moved to Arkansas. Soon she and her husband had two children. Finally doing normal things, she thought she would feel normal too.

The D'Feeters Soccer Club often practiced at Anderson Bonner Park in Dallas in the 1980s. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

But in 2003, a new job for her husband landed the family in Denton. Reminders of her old life were everywhere.

Her mom lived in the house where she’d grown up. Driving near the old practice fields felt “just gross.” When she turned on the TV news, she saw the same weatherman.

“Nowhere was safe,” Anton said. “I was on the verge of becoming immobilized.”

She found a new therapist.

The News spoke to psychiatrist Lisa Clayton with Anton's permission. Clayton remembers Anton recounting sex in Longnecker's car, and in hotel rooms on soccer trips.

“She felt guilty, like she had had an inappropriate relationship with her soccer coach when she was 14,” Clayton said. “And I said no, no, no. You were a child.”

Reporting her abuser

After three years of treatment, Anton came to view Longnecker as a predator. She wanted to talk to someone who might understand what she had been through. She hoped that she and a fellow victim could take the story public. She contacted a teammate she suspected had been abused, but the woman didn’t want to talk.

Then came Christine Blasey Ford. Last year, the California professor accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. During Kavanaugh’s confirmation process for the U.S. Supreme Court, Ford testified that he had pinned her on a bed and covered her mouth as she tried to call for help. Kavanaugh insisted it wasn’t true.

Though he was confirmed, Anton said, “I felt like what she did was not lost.” In the midst of a divorce and on her own, Anton took courage from Ford’s example.

She thought about an image her therapist had planted in her mind: a candle. Amid so much darkness, her therapist had said, someone has to light the first candle.

Finally brave enough, she picked up the phone and left her message with the athletics director at Shepherd University in West Virginia. When the man called back, Anton told him her story.

The same day, Anton left a message for another teammate she thought may have been a victim.

Traci Provence (left) and Laura Anton with soccer coach Tristan Longnecker during the 1986 Olympic Festival in Houston. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

Wary at first, her teammate replied in an email. Why hadn't Anton ever been in touch through the years? What did she want now?

"I come to you to reclaim my past," Anton wrote. "What he took from me."

Within two weeks, the teammate acknowledged she was a victim, too. She messaged other teammates, sharing Anton's story. Anton soon heard what had happened to two others.

Though scattered across the country, the women became a team again. They sent old photos, rosters and newspaper clippings to The News, telling a reporter what they remember. They saw how they missed the truth back then. They were angry at their coach and ached for each other.

Them too

Anton’s description of Longnecker fits the classic pattern of “grooming,” said Amy Jones, head of the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center. “They don’t just groom the victim. That would not work." Abusers also befriend many people in the victim’s social circle.

“They have to make sure they don’t look like the monster in the closet," she said.

It’s common for victims of sexual abuse to stay quiet for years, Jones said. Some fear no one will believe them or don’t understand that they themselves were abused.

All that was true for three other women from Ursuline or the D’Feeters who say Longnecker made sexual advances on them as girls.

Last fall, Laura Anton and Traci Provence divulged to each other that coach Tristan Longnecker had sexually abused them when they were his players in the 1980s. (Special to The Dallas Morning News)

They also worried they’d cause rifts among the players. The teams were hugely successful, each winning a series of state titles. In 1984, the D’Feeters finished third in a major national tournament.

Just like Anton, the other women said Longnecker would get close by sympathizing with problems or offering to teach sex.

One woman said she was in eighth grade when a goodbye hug turned into her first kiss. Longnecker called her later to offer more.

“Every time I would be in the car and we were alone, it would go further and further until we were having sex,” said the woman, who is not named in this article at her request. The two had intercourse until she went to college. She thought she was the only one — until Anton revealed what happened to her.

Another player, who also did not want to be named, told The News that on a trip to pick up an award, she and Longnecker were seated across from each other on hotel beds. Longnecker began to talk to her about a problem with her mother. Then he got up and kissed her on the lips. She quickly pulled away.

“I felt like it was this weird test,” she said. “When I reacted like that, he never tried anything again.”

Provence, who attended Richardson High School, lived near Longnecker. On rides home, she said, he would put his hand on her thigh as she recounted her teenage troubles.

Provence’s stepmother, who has since died, didn’t trust Longnecker and made her quit the D'Feeters when she was 16, she recalled.

After she told him, he invited her to his condo. They had intercourse. That was the only time, she said.

“I was probably one of the lucky ones,” she said. “He kicked me to the curb.”

Provence said she never told anyone, and didn’t know of any other victims, until she heard from Anton last fall.

No longer silent

A week after Anton’s first call to Shepherd University, a school official took her formal statement, which she later signed. Anton also reported the abuse to the EPIC soccer club where Longnecker was coaching girls in their late teens.

The school and a state soccer association confronted him. He resigned from the university, was released from the club, and is currently listed as "disqualified" by U.S. Youth Soccer. But the reason isn't noted.

After Shepherd University in West Virginia told women's soccer coach Tristan Longnecker of sexual abuse allegations against him, he resigned.

That’s why Anton still wants to tell her story publicly — to get Longnecker’s name out there, to show how abuse happens and why victims stay silent, to keep it from happening to others.

She said she’ll never be free of what happened to her, never be the person she would have been had Longnecker not hijacked her life.

But it feels better to move forward than stay stuck in the past, better to unload the burden than carry it alone. She recently had lunch with one of the other women who said Longnecker abused her.

And after not seeing her other teammates for more than 30 years, there’s a reunion planned for this summer.

Staff researchers Jen Graffunder and Chelsea Watkins contributed to this report.