Thirteen women walked into a room in Portland, Oregon on May 31, each holding a rock in one hand labeled “strength” and a rock in the other hand labeled “courage.”

The women, including Bonnie Rogers of Los Altos, had all been victims of a serial abuser when they were young students at the American School in Japan.

They had gathered in Oregon to meet with representatives of the school and their own lawyers to settle a case that stretched back 40 years.

“It was difficult to talk with them,” Rogers, 55, said during a phone interview Monday from Philadelphia, where she was helping her grown daughter move. “It was very difficult and emotional. …

“I came forth because I really wanted to protect future kids, and I … felt like it was time to not be secretive anymore.”

The women, and several others who did not attend the gathering, had all been victims of Jack Moyer, a well-liked teacher at the school, a published marine biologist, and as it turns out, a serial rapist and child abuser.

Rogers, the daughter of American missionaries, lived in Chofu on the outskirts of Tokyo, not far from Moyer.

“From a young age, I took care of his dog, pretty much from when I moved there when I was eight,” Rogers said. “When I was about 11, he gave me a kiss on the lips. After that, I went out to the island (Miyake-jima, where Moyer maintained a marine biology lab and took students on field trips), he fondled me in the evening and in the night, progressing to where he wanted sexual intercourse. I didn’t want it, I protested heavily, but was talked into — what do you call it, when you do things with your mouth? Oral sex.

“The fondling part went on a few years. When it got to in-depth sexuality, I didn’t want to continue, and broke off ties with him. I was never alone with him till the last incident — a long 24 hours — when he tried very hard to rape me. I had to fight hard. It was a horrifying time. The previous times, the fondling in the middle of night, I would roll on my stomach and pretend I was asleep. I was embarrassed, didn’t want people to know it was happening.”

Rogers, whose voice trembled some over the phone, said she sank into a “kind of dark period in my life. A lot of drinking, drugs, which led to promiscuity that I was sometimes not even aware of because I was under the influence of substances.”

Rogers wrestled with depression for years. She didn’t tell anyone, including her classmates, teachers or parents, about what had happened. “I thought many times of telling them, but … I didn’t see any good in them having that kind of anguish.”

Moyer had told her it was all her fault because when she returned to Chofu after summer vacation she had given him a hug.

“He said, ‘When you hugged me, you told me how much you liked me.’ … I’ve learned more about pedophiles and how they are so gifted at keeping you under their control, mentally and emotionally.”

She managed to move on with her life, having a good career at Hewlett-Packard, marrying a supportive man, and raising three children.

“Up until 2003, I really thought I was the only one he had done that do,” Rogers said. “I didn’t realize there were other people. Then I got a phone call from another girl who had been abused, Janet Calcote-Simmons. She said she wanted to make sure he wasn’t working with kids anymore.”

Calcote-Simmons put together a list of women who’d been abused by Moyer, shared it with officials at American School in Japan and began a blog detailing Moyer’s abuses. More and more alums started coming forward. In November 2003, Moyer wrote a letter to Calcote-Simmons confessing to having abused students. In 2004, he committed suicide.

After 10 years of increasing pressure from alums, the school in June 2014 commissioned an independent investigation into Moyer’s activities that “identified at least 19 specific women with whom Moyer is alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct while they were minors and ASIJ students.”

The report says the statements of the women “tell of a serial pedophile who victimized young girls in a systematic way.”

Thirteen of the victims got together to retain the law firm of Crew Janci LLP in Portland, which is known for bringing cases of sexual abuse against the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America and the Mormon Church. The law firm on Monday released the victims’ own investigative report, which reveals among other things that the school first learned of Moyer’s inappropriate behavior as early as 1967; that staff there received more than five dozen direct reports of Moyer’s ongoing sexual misconduct over the years; that school officials concealed Moyer’s sexual abuses; that the school never took steps to report or restrict Moyer’s access to children; and that from the time of Moyer’s suicide in 2004 until at least March 2014 the school continued to conceal the extent and scope of Moyer’s abuses.

A new board of directors at the school recently issued a public apology, saying that “teachers and administrators … failed to protect the students in their charge.”

On June 5, the board issued a letter to the ASIJ community “admitting to past wrongs and providing the survivors with a full and unconditional apology,” according to a statement from Crew Janci. “The board also agreed to reimburse all victims for past and future counseling costs, provide the 13 survivors with compensation for their injuries, release the results of the independent investigation commissioned by ASIJ in June 2014, and institute new and improved child safety policies.”

Email John Orr at jorr@dailynewsgroup.com.