The Brighton student who authorities say was sexually assaulted by his high school teacher appeared on national television Tuesday saying he at first offered to “take the fall” for the teacher when their relationship was discovered.
“She had a lot more to lose than I did. So I wanted to take the blame,” Tommy Clay said on NBC’s “Today” show.
Appearing with his parents, Mark and Sheree Clay, and a lawyer, Tommy Clay talked with host Matt Lauer about his alleged encounter last fall with Carrie McCandless, a former teacher at Brighton Charter High School.
McCandless took Clay, then 17, and other students to the Estes Park YMCA camp Oct. 28, during which she allegedly supplied alcohol to some students and kissed and groped with Clay.
The incident wasn’t reported to authorities until a 9News reporter contacted police.
McCandless, 30, whose husband is the principal of the school, was fired and charged with sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Clay, now 18, told Lauer that an affair with McCandless began after he met her in summer school.
“We started out as friends, and things just developed from there,” Clay said. “She was someone I could really talk to and relate to. Then we got into it a little more. We got more intimate.”
According to court documents, the relationship reached the point where the couple sent 76 text messages over their cellphones in one day. “We both said it’s over if it ever comes out,” Clay said.
As word of the situation spread among students, one boy likened the relationship to “climbing Mount Everest,” Clay’s mother said.
“At first it was all high- fives,” her son said. “A lot of guys showed me a lot more respect. But as we got further into it, I mean, I lost a lot of my friends.”
Clay said he “went back to school about a month after everything happened. The girls in my school kind of turned their shoulders. It was a lot harder to find dates. But the other teachers were very supportive.”
When the incident finally came out, school-board president David Mundy “continued to say to us that we have to protect a friendship here,” Sheree Clay said. “He didn’t call police. A crime was not reported. He wanted to protect a friend.”
Mundy eventually was fired as well and was charged with failing to report child abuse and tampering with witnesses or victims.
The attorney, Gary Fielder, said the Clay family went on the “Today” show as part of Tommy’s healing process.
“This isn’t what people think – the stereotype that this is every boy’s fantasy,” Fielder said. “This has been a really bad dream for him.”
The boy and his family, through Fielder, declined to be interviewed by The Denver Post.
