There were the boys who pulled her hair as she walked down the hallways of Grant High. The guys who grabbed and grabbed no matter what she did. Yelling back only made it worse. She was asking to be raped, these classmates said. Some days she was so afraid she hid in the school bathroom.

The history teacher who admired how bright and generous she was, David Lickey, didn't see any of this.

He didn't notice her torment, even though it happened just outside his classroom door and to someone he cared about. She wasn't just his student, but also the babysitter for his daughters. Some of the boys, no doubt, must have been his students, too.

Still, he would remain ignorant about all of this for years — until his ignorance went viral.

"What exactly is 'rape culture'?" Lickey wrote in a three-page essay he handed out to students last week, for reasons that remain unclear. "I don't see it in my life or the lives of any of the men and women I have known."

He wrote that he found rape culture to be "dubious" and "a bit hysterical."

Lickey quickly learned that contrary to his assertion in his essay, he did know many people who had been victims of sexual assault and harassment. Emails flooded in.

The letter from his twins' former babysitter began by telling him he was a great dad and person. She had enjoyed his class "immensely."

"She had an experience at Grant that I didn't know. I wasn't asking her. She didn't share it. I didn't see it. I wasn't curious about it — and we did nothing to stop it. And I feel awful about that," Lickey told The Oregonian/OregonLive in his first interview since the controversy. "I did nothing to protect her from a pervasive and ongoing assault in the school."

Lickey says he was stunned to learn not only how many of his students experienced sexual harassment and violence, but how many hundreds at Grant High and elsewhere were traumatized by his essay.

"This is not an intellectual issue for people," Lickey said. "This is real — real raw feeling and pain, and I just didn't get that. I've learned from what people have shared with me and their stories.

One of the students he'd handed the essay to last week asked to talk about it after class.

"You say here you don't see rape culture," she said pointing to the essay.

"Yeah that's true," he replied.

"That's funny," she said. "Because I see it every day."

He was dumbstruck. Just outside his door, she faced frequent taunts, he learned.

"This person is a top, top, top, top student. She is probably going to go to a high-powered university, do important work and be an awesome citizen," he said. "And I didn't know that was going on."

Lickey is used to being appreciated. He is smart. He knows it, and other people do, too. Under his guidance, Grant's Constitution Team won the school's first national "We the People" competition. Having a place in a school and community that shares his liberal values is a point of pride. A hallmark of his 24-year career at the progressive Portland high school has been his drive to create tension to enliven an argument. That quality earned his students' esteem -- but now it threatens his reputation as an enlightened scholar and decent man.

He wonders about all his students, somewhere around 3,840 when he starts to do the math, whose experiences it's possible he failed to perceive.

"The pain and suffering is real in the lives of hundreds of my former students," Lickey said. "The story in my email is hundreds and hundreds of people in the Grant community are angry because I made a mistake, which I deeply regret."

He says he understands fury at an educator who says he refuses to see you, declares you invisible. He's lost trust, he said, and if he wants it back he'll have to earn it.

Principal Carol Campbell emailed families Friday night about Lickey's essay, assuring them it didn't reflect how the school approaches sexual assault and harassment. On Monday morning, students walked out as an act of defiance against Lickey's essay. Grant held healing and listening sessions.

Lickey says he wants to apologize, to own up to the mistake and find a way to act. He isn't sure how yet, but he's going to start by sharing the letter from the student who babysat his daughters with the school committee he's part of that focuses on school behavior issues.



There will be many apologies, he said, but those are easy. He wants to be held accountable, he said. He wants to do better. These student experiences shouldn't go unseen, he said, by him or anyone else.

"We can make this something people are seeing," Lickey said. "Everyone's thinking about it. We are all focused on it. It's an actionable moment."

— Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com