#MeToo: Open Letter to Leticia Prieto Álvarez

Content Warning: Grooming of a minor

If you are reading this and under 18, please bring this to a trusted adult to read it together. 

Dear Leticia,

Remember me?

Of course you do.

It’s been 21 years. Can you believe it?

I’m not a kid anymore, Leticia. You’re just turning 47 now, which makes me 38… wow!

I’ll bet your heart is pounding right now, wondering just how bad this letter is going to get. Maybe it’s pounding as hard as mine was the morning I knocked on your door that fateful day—the day that changed everything for both of us.

“Is it bad?” you asked me.

At the time, I just shrugged. It was going to take me 21 years to answer you. But I’m back, with my answer.

You always told me to be more confident, so in a way, I’m still following your teachings by finally breaking 21 years of silence.

And I know how much you love being the center of attention, so now you’re getting exactly what you always wanted, too. What luck that the child you groomed founded a fashion magazine—and is now writing an entire piece just for you to inevitably find.

I’m done keeping your secret for you. And I have just a few things to say.

Leticia Prieto Álvarez, California Summer Music, 2005

So have a seat, Professor Álvarez.

Class is now in session.

Me, September 2026

Now Leticia, you know exactly what you did. But let me get everyone else caught up and then I’ll come back to you.

When I was 14, I was accepted as the only high school student by viola professor R at New England Conservatory. I’ll leave her name out of this, seeing as none of this is her fault, and she remains my true hero to this day. 

Every week on Thursday after school I went into Boston for my lesson. When I turned 16, my parents decided I was old enough to take the T there myself, and that’s when you discovered me, Leticia. You had just arrived in Boston with a Fulbright scholarship to NEC to do your Masters with R. You saw a little kid sitting on the bench outside of her studio and for some sick reason, you decided you just had to destroy me. Maybe you saw me as a prize to win: R’s only high school student. Maybe that would make you feel better about yourself. Maybe you’re just an ephebophile. Only you know the answer to that, Leticia.

While I was anxiously waiting for my lesson to begin, you must have seen me through the gaps in the window covering on R’s studio door, then somehow slipped past me unnoticed.

R invited us both to study at California Summer Music, a monthlong festival in Pebble Beach California, July 10 — August 2, 2005 for students aged 12 to 26.

There, when I was across the country and with no parents in sight, you would make your move. Of course, you weren’t sure exactly what your move would be. Given your preconceived notion that queer people are ugly—I do recall you telling me that I appeared “too pretty to be gay”—you thought I would be more of a challenge.

It was July 10, 2005. The first day of CSM. My parents had just left after dropping me off and returning to Boston, leaving a knot in my stomach. A knot that apparently knew exactly what was about to happen.

You spotted me at a welcome mixer with another viola student, 18-year-old Carlos Miguel San Isidro Álvarez (same last name as you, no relation that I’m aware of), introducing ourselves to people, and knew it was the perfect time. You stood up tall, put on a smile, and introduced yourself to me as a stranger. I introduced myself as a student of R’s with complete innocence.

My, how clueless this child is, you must have thought, to have not known that he was a topic of conversation amongst your classmates, to not have realized that his name was on R’s schedule and her students were asking about him, only to be denied any information. No, I was completely in my own world, completely unaware of my surroundings and how others saw me. The perfect target. 

There’s a reason I was so oblivious to what was happening around me, Leticia. It’s called autism. Well, as a Music Therapy Assistant Professor at Lesley University, surely, you know about autism, and how easy it is for people like yourself to get away with their crimes with children with this particular disability. I bet you could teach a class on it! (How adorable that you’ve listed your pronouns on your faculty bio! I’ll bet no one knows about all the girly clothing you told me I look better wearing before I transitioned.)

Carlos had already become friends with me. He barely spoke English, and he was from Madrid, just like you! So of course you would become best friends with him and speak your native language together. I’m sure you delighted in being his translator, getting to control what he believed people said, and what other people believed he had said. He was your ultimate decoy.

You went to dinner with Carlos on the second evening of the program, translating everything for him, so he could participate in the conversation. There, I said something that shook you to your core: I was gay. 

You couldn’t hide your shock. Your eyes bulged out of your head, your neck straightened, and you looked completely stunned, like a gazelle in the distance zeroing in on your prey.  

Should you say something? No, best not to say anything now. You knew you would have to be patient to wait for the right time. There were too many people around right now, too many witnesses.

You didn’t translate my statement to Carlos. You’d tell him about it later. 

Do you remember what you did after dinner, Leticia? I do!

You googled me. There were no smartphones back then and only one public computer on campus, but you found a way. Perhaps you had a laptop in your room. And you couldn’t believe what you found. An entire LiveJournal filled with my innermost thoughts. What luck — now you had all the information you needed to make your move.

By now you must be thinking, I did this in private — how could you possibly have figured this out? 

Let me explain. Being autistic, I also have excellent recall, akin to a surveillance camera in my brain. Memories remain disturbingly intact from age 5 onwards. All I have to do is sit down, meditate, and pull out the file.

I have the file of the summer of 2005 open now. When comparing my memory with contemporaneous journal entries, newspaper articles, and IM conversations I saved (Oh yes, I saved everything), my memory aligns perfectly with recorded events.

I can see the common room in our dorm right now: the high ceilings, the large glass-pane windows, the sunlight streaming in, the single computer monitor, the couches, the puzzle table, the dark-brown wooden windowsills that were wide enough to sit on. I can see the students walking by, their ages, their outfits, demographics, their faces, and the general flow of traffic between the wings of the dorm and the outside.

I can imagine myself sitting on one of those couches in the middle of the room and enjoying the sunlight streaming in on my face, watching passersby stroll through, with butterflies in my stomach knowing you could turn the corner at any second in your leather jacket and smile at me.

This footage includes most of the things you said, including references to things I never told you about, but that I had written about in my journal.

So, back to that day, July 11, 2005. After reading every LiveJournal post I’d ever written, learning about how my mother rejected me for being queer, how I couldn’t stop crying, and how isolated I was, you developed a strategy on how to capture me. Yes, it was quite a clever strategy, but Leticia, did you really think you could outsmart me? 

From left, Leticia, Carlos, other CSM student, in front of CSM sign on our dorm entrance, summer 2005

After developing your plan, you got all dressed up, put on your leather jacket and more perfume, made sure your hair looked perfect, touched up your makeup, and went outside on a walk, maybe to call your boyfriend. You re-entered the dorm (or at least appeared to do so) through the front entrance, which happens to be featured in the photo above. You spotted me sitting on a windowsill in the back of the room while a movie was playing, not interacting with any of my peers. You spoke to someone close to the doorway across from me, directly in my line of view, maybe to make me aware of your presence, maybe to appear to have a reason for coming into the common room at all. You spoke to them for a while, and then you came over to me and sat right next to me on that windowsill. 

You asked me if I’d seen the movie before. You stayed and chatted with me for five minutes, and then disappeared. Five minutes was all you needed to lay the groundwork.

Ting Chin, a beautiful 21-year-old cello student, came to sit with me after you left. She was grooming me too. She sat with me for the rest of the night, until my counselor made a homophobic remark before sending me to bed. Seeing Ting with me probably enraged you, didn’t it.

You knew you had your work cut out for you. You’d have to find a way to grab my attention before Ting got to me first.

I bet you went to bed that night determined that by the end of the next day, I would have forgotten all about Ting. Yes, because you would do something Ting was too shy to do: kiss my cheek on the third day after I met you. But how could you possibly find a way to do that? You knew from my LiveJournal that I cried a lot, so you were going to have to get me to cry. If I was crying, kissing my cheek would seem socially acceptable and could be explained away by Spanish friendliness.

The next day, during the mandatory practice block, you roamed the campus in that jacket, hoping you might see me. Then to your luck, you spotted me sitting at the computer in the common room, all alone, looking sad. This was your moment. This was your chance to make me forget about Ting before it was too late.

So you sat across from me and started talking. You quickly pivoted the subject to your own childhood and your alcoholic dad and how much you used to cry when you were my age. You told me about your boyfriend, D, noting that he looked young, but he was in fact your age. You knew I so desperately needed a maternal figure to comfort me, and you just kept talking about crying and crying, telling me it was OK to cry, until you finally summoned the tears down my cheek. Your genius plan had worked! The child of your desires was now finally crying, giving you the perfect chance to kiss his tears, and taste his sadness. I bet it tasted delicious, didn’t it?

And then, when I was in the most vulnerable state possible, you told me not to worry, that even though you’re nine years older than me, “we are friends — you can tell you anything.” You then told me exactly what you knew I needed to hear from my mom: that you were proud of me for coming out and proud of me for being myself and not trying to conform to a stereotype. 

You encouraged me to come out to R, empowering me to tell my mentor who I was.

You then gave me a hug and kiss goodbye, and slipped in that Spaniards hug and kiss a lot and you “hope you don’t mind — everyone always thinks you and Carlos are dating but he’s like a little brother to me.” 

Then you left me alone and vulnerable again, as if it had never happened.

I came out to R after my next lesson. I told her how much of an impact it had on my life and how you had encouraged me to tell her.

You had your lesson later that day and I saw you walking down the sidewalk talking to R through my bedroom window. You later told me you were talking about me. You told me R was proud of me as if you were part of my upbringing. I was smiling.

Everything so far was going according to plan.

Now, to deal with my clothing. My wardrobe needed help, didn’t it Leticia. I was too much of a tomboy. You like your nymphets to be feminine. How could you get me to change my appearance while not putting me down? Carlos would do your dirty work. When you told Carlos about my announcement at dinner, you discussed with him your belief that I needed to be more confident and dress more feminine, two things you both conflated as the same thing. 

Carlos came to me on his own one evening after a concert where I wore some ironic ugly socks and gave me a long lecture about how to dress and how to take up more space and be more confident. He told me you had discussed me, that you both thought I was pretty, talented, and just needed to believe it. He told me that if I dressed like the girls I liked, they would look back at me. Did you feed him that line? He told me to stop asking for permission when I sat with you in the cafeteria and to just sit down.

Then you pulled back to see if your plan had worked — that I would start developing an attachment to you and seek you out myself, so I would believe the whole thing was my idea. 

It worked. At the next meal, I came over to your table and sat right down without asking for permission, and I put up my hair the way you liked. You and Carlos cheered for me. Your little seedling was molding just as intended.

But now you just had one issue: you had lied to me and pretended you didn’t know me. For some reason, you felt the need to correct the record. So while we were walking back from lunch to the dorm together, during a moment of silence that you usually filled with chatter, you said: “are you after me?”

You saw me panic. I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps you wanted confirmation that I was attracted to you. Perhaps my stammering confirmed that for you then, allowing you to capitalize on a play on words, and make everything seem justified because your English syntax is different from mine. You then said, “are your lessons after me during the school year? I think I remember seeing you.” And that’s when I found out you had lied to me when we met and pretended you didn’t know who I was. Of course, at the time I didn’t know what to make of this so I just stored it in my brain so that when I was old enough and ready, I could pull the file back out and see the truth. 

Your next opportunity felt almost too perfect. The first violinist in my chamber group was sitting with me at the computer, and you could tell she was badgering me about something. You walked past us towards the children’s side of the dorm as though you’ve been queued from stage left, just as she was insisting that I couldn’t possibly be gay because I didn’t look gay to her.

I told the violinist that if she didn’t believe me, she could just ask you. She ran after you down the hall, and you told her that of course I’m gay, because being gay is cool and I’m cool. You told her that “I can’t exactly confirm it because I’m 25 and would get arrested.” That was when you gave yourself away, Leticia. 

The next day, I told you that the violinist started following me around, asking me question after question about my sexuality, starting to flirt with me herself, showing endless curiosity. I was attracted to her, but unsure what to do about it. 

You panicked. If I got together in an age-appropriate relationship, you would never have your chance with me. So, even though we’d already reached the destination of your room, you stood outside your door for several minutes, convincing me not to pursue anything with her. You went on and on, spewing meaningless nonsense, wondering if anything was landing. It wasn’t. Finally, you said, “just don’t kiss her.”

I looked confused.

“I know you want to have your first kiss, but it’s going to be special,” you added.

I told you I’d already had my first kiss. 

“You did?” You asked with a mixture of disappointment and frustration.

You stormed into your room, saying you had to practice, leaving me standing in the hallway, wondering what I did wrong.

I hadn’t written about my first kiss on my LiveJournal. You thought I wrote about everything. Some things, I keep to myself, Leticia. You thought you had me figured out, didn’t you.

With Ting sitting with me at every meal and every concert and giving me a copy of Lolita to read, you knew you had more than just that violinist to worry about. You were going to have to make me want you more than anyone else. So you wore sexy outfits. You wore floral perfume that lingered in the room after you left. You avoided me so that I would miss you and seek you out. You played me hot and cold to make me crave you like a drug.

You knew that it was too dangerous to have your way with me at the program. For one thing, kids under 18 had a roommate, so my room obviously woudln’t work. But your single room wouldn’t do either. People would see me coming out of your room, and there was too much chance that I might say something. So you devised a plan. You would invite me on a trip to San Francisco after the program ended. You would coach me on how to convince my parents to let me leave the program a day early. You would bring our mutual friend Carlos along to make it look like a group trip with friends of multiple ages. You would invite me under the guise of needing protection from the sketchy guy on the kitchen staff who offered you a ride. Clever! You got Carlos excited about the prospect of me coming so that he could coach me on how to convince my parents to let me go.

I still remember the way you asked me, because it was quite strange, don’t you think? You were flirting with the kitchen staff guy and then you came over to me in the cafeteria after most everyone else had left. You sat down at a table with me and told me about how badly you wanted to visit San Francisco, but that you didn’t have a way to get there, and this guy had offered to drive you, but you’re pretty sure he has a crush on you (through no fault of your own, of course) so you don’t want to go with him alone. “So I’m going to take Carlos with me… and… Sonny?”

Who, me? 

“Yes, have you ever been to San Francisco? It would be so fun!”

You explained you had a nonrefundable plane ticket back to Boston so the only way to go would be to hope they don’t schedule any of your concerts on the last day and skip it. 

I told you my family friend was picking me up from camp and you thought maybe she could drive us instead. You got me to go around my parents and ask her directly, using safety from the kitchen staff guy as the primary reason for asking. 

Over the weekend, the program had a field trip. You came onto the bus and saw me sitting with Ting, laughing, and lathering myself in sunscreen while she took a selfie of us. You were furious. I still have the selfie with you staring ahead looking angry.

From left, Leticia, Sonny, Ting

When we arrived at the destination, they instructed us to split into groups. Even though I was with Ting, I ran over to your group. Ting motioned for me to come back to her group and I motioned for her to come to ours instead. She declined. This enraged you. You decided you had to punish me for the entire trip and not speak to me the whole time, making me question the whole basis of our relationship, making me walk behind you for hours, watching you chattering to Carlos in Spanish. Every time Carlos stepped in line to talk to me, you went off to talk to someone else. That was the first time you broke my heart.

Soon after that fieldtrip, I became so distraught over your behavior that I burst out crying in Carlos‘ room, not having much of an explanation for why I was upset other than knowing it was something you had done. You knocked on Carlos‘ door to go to lunch together, not knowing I was in there. Carlos, wanting to keep me in his room, shushed me while I soaked his shirt with tears. You knocked and knocked and knocked until finally, you went away. Then Carlos came onto me, telling me I couldn’t possibly know that I wasn’t interested in men until I slept with one. I refused his advances. This, of course, was not part of your plan.

But luckily, you had successfully made yourself into the only adult I could trust and speak openly with.

So after lunch, I returned to you.

When I first arrived at your door, you panicked. You knew something was wrong. Not to mention that the optics of me showing up at your door, sitting in such a central place on the first floor, wasn’t great, was it. You brought me into your room and sat me on your bed, closed the door, and asked me what was wrong. I then told you that Carlos had pressured me to have sex with him.

Dammit Carlos!!

Now you were in quite a pickle. 

If you acknowledged that he had made an inappropriate pass at me, that might empower me to realize that you were grooming me too. So you denied it. You told me I misunderstood him. That if he was interested in me, he definitely would have told you. You told me not to worry, that “you know how Spaniards are, we are friendly and we like to ask a lot of questions.”

Just to give enough plausible deniability, you added at the end, “I suppose if you’re still concerned, you could ask him, but I don’t think he meant it like that.”

You didn’t even have to kick me out of your room at this point because I already felt like I was suffocating with all of your clothing and beauty supplies. I left voluntarily. Receiving this gaslighting from you was the second time you broke my heart. You, of course, don’t have a heart, so you were just relieved to have triaged the situation.

Now you knew I was 16 and had never had sex, and you were going to have to find a way to make it my idea, so that I would believe I was the one who had come onto you. Maybe you could even convince me that I was going to be the one who got in trouble if anyone found out about us — wouldn’t that be convenient!

So when I mentioned I was going swimming one afternoon, you knew this was your chance. You came to the pool after I already got there. You dove in and swam right over to me and then you introduced a game where you swim between the other person’s legs without touching. Now with you between my legs and me between yours, you would implant the idea of sexual activity into my brain. 

The plans for San Francisco continued to develop — I learned my family friend had a tiny car and we had to figure out how to fit Carlos‘s long legs and all of our violas and luggage. Oh, by the way, one final detail, your flight home wasn’t until the next morning so we would stay overnight in a hotel, you and me sharing a bed and Carlos having his own bed.

When my parents shut down the San Francisco trip plan because it would mean missing the last day, you told me not to worry, that we would go another time and you would bring your boyfriend and I would bring a friend or a girlfriend, me knowing full well this meant I lost my chance to share a bed with you.

You even told the press you were planning this trip — and though the newspaper article is no longer online, I saved it Leticia! Confirmation that you existed and were going on the trip, though you never told them you were taking a minor with you.

MONTEREY - Leticia Prieto Alvarez grew up in Madrid but lives in Boston, where, on a Fulbright scholarship, she is earning her master's degree in viola performance at the New England Conservatory of Music.

After describing some other students and the program itself, and delving into your childhood as a pianist, it continues,

Alvarez, whose teacher, [R], is an instructor at California Summer Music, was intent upon coming to California for the summer.

"I thought, 'Wow, California; I've never been here,'" she said. "I want to know San Francisco really badly. And this area is so beautiful, very different from how I thought California would be. I only had the 'Baywatch' idea. It's much more than I thought."

The night you found me curled up on the couch in the common room, you saw the perfect opportunity to neutralize our ages. You bounced over to me and invited me to come out with you and your string quartet, only to “remember” after the fact that minors weren’t allowed off campus. “I keep forgetting you’re only 16,” you said. (You never forgot. My being only 16 was the whole point.) “I can’t wait until you turn 21 so I can take you to all the bars,” you added, as if adulthood was just right around the corner for me. (It wasn’t.)

I then told you I wasn’t feeling well and I was going to bed early. Wow, what luck! In one fell swoop you could solidify yourself as my soul caretaker AND find another excuse to kiss me. You claimed to check my temperature by kissing my forehead — a thrilling experience for you, I’m sure, in front of so many other people in the common room.

You then told me to keep drinking water and eating plenty of food, and I would be fine. Since I’m on the subject, why were you and Carlos always trying to get me to eat more? Showing me how to pile more food on my plate at the cafeteria? Were you fattening me up for your big meal? Oh NOW I understand! The more I ate, the curvier I’d be. You weren’t just telling me what to wear. You were molding me from the inside out into your ideal prey.

Wow, Leticia, the more I review this footage, the sicker and sicker it becomes.

Maybe that’s why, as I’ve been writing this letter to you, I lost my appetite for three days, and had to go to the hospital and get put on an IV. My body was protesting what you did to me in preparation for this realization.

When I performed the first movement of the Brahms F minor Sonata at a student concert, I wore a dress and put my hair up the way you liked. You and Carlos found me backstage and circled me, admiring your handiwork. You went on about how beautiful I looked. Your little project, fully molded for your consumption.

One night you conveniently forgot to bring your leather jacket to the student concert. You wore a tight dress with a large hole in the back. Walking back to the dorm from the concert with me, you began to shiver, visibly. You shivered and shivered and shivered until I finally put my arm around you, as you had put yours around me many times before, but then you appeared uncomfortable with it, casting me as the instigator in our romance. You tricked me into touching your bare skin, didn’t you?

The night before you and Carlos left for San Francisco, you pulled out your final dress, a dress you had been saving all summer for the last night. A form-fitting black dress with a diamond cut out in the middle of your chest. 

I found you standing by the bar during a formal event. “Sonny, how can we possibly leave without you tomorrow?” you said while putting your arm around me and pulling me closer. “We’ll just have to kidnap you.” Once again, you blew your own cover. You really took the “bright” out of “Fulbright,” didn’t you.

I took Carlos’ wine glass out of his hand (he managed to fool the staff into believing he was 21) and took a sip. You then positioned your body to hide me from the staff to encourage me to drink more. Yes, you needed me to be drunk for the activity that was to come next. And being a small child who couldn’t metabolize alcohol, just half a glass of wine made me tipsy. 

We stumbled back to Carlos’ room where you made a phone call in Spanish, discussing the logistics of your trip the next day, saying my name over and over. Your final plot to get me to go with you? I sat on his bed and stared at you in that tight black dress with the diamond cut out in the chest and you stood right in front of me on that phone.

I got so bored listening to you go on and on that I took a picture of you, remember? 

Leticia Prieto Álvarez, California Summer Music, Carlos’ dorm room, 2005

When you finally hung up, I laid back on Carlos‘s bed, lamenting that the counselor would come to find me soon because it was my curfew, and there was your chance. You plopped right down next to me on the bed, cuddling with me, your body right against mine and your hand on my stomach.

When the counselor came to find me, I dashed into the closet, hoping you would cover for me, and I could stay up all night with you, but you didn’t. Or maybe Carlos gave me away. Who knows. When the counselor pulled me out of the closet and I gave you my final goodbye hug, you squeezed me tight and lay three kisses on my neck, right in front of her, giving yourself another thrill over what you could get away with. 

After she put me to bed, I stayed up all night. But I didn’t come find you. I decided I was going to put an end to this madness first thing in the morning.

When you heard my knock on your door at 7 AM, you opened the door and couldn’t hide the fear on your face. You had been caught. You quickly ushered me inside and closed the door and sat me down on your bed just as you had before.

Then I confessed my feelings for you. First you pretended to be surprised. You told me you had no idea. I tore apart your logic with just one simple question: “Really?” 

You backtracked, saying it occurred to you that I might have feelings for you yesterday. The day you cuddled with me and kissed my neck. I’m not sure this logic is holding up, Leticia.

That’s when you asked me: “is it bad?”

I shrugged.

Then you asked me if I wanted you to stop touching me so much. You told me about a friend who stopped talking to you because he had a crush on you and hoped I wouldn’t do the same thing. You asked me repeatedly if we could still be friends. 

This was clever. If I told you I wanted you to stop touching me, it would be an admission that I had enjoyed it, which would make me seem like the aggressor. So you forced me to say no, that everything was fine. 

Then you just needed me out of your room, because the longer I was in there, the more chance of someone noticing. So you told me you would meet me at breakfast.

You knew that I was far too conscious now. You immediately pivoted to damage control. Ghosting me now would be too obvious. So you played me hot and cold for months when we got back to Boston, making plans, then canceling them, breaking my heart over and over again. You got engaged to your boyfriend a few days after I confessed my feelings to solidify your heterosexuality in the court of social perception. 

Remember? I still have the email! (Of course, by this point I knew, Carlos had already told me weeks ago.)

Leticia Prieto <gaslesa@hotmail.com>

Wed, Aug 24, 2005, 1:02 PM

to me

Hey [Sonny]!

I'm back from my "tour of the Eastcoast" and I have good news. I got a part
time job in a private school to be a choir conductor!:O Lets see how I
handle those kids because I'm sure I'll feel like starting collecting kid's
heads on my shelves very soon.

The other good news is that...I'm engaged!Yep, now I got a diamond ring, but
I can't explain my grandmom what it really means being engaged because
people don't do that in Spain.

Are you already in the camp?

Un barazo!

L

Was this a subliminal warning message, Leticia? Expose the truth and risk having my head chopped off and stored on your shelf along with your students who didn’t practice?

I’m not afraid of you anymore, Leticia. At a certain point, one has to realize that silence is worse than death. And in a way, you already killed me. You killed the life I could’ve had without you in it.

Then in November, to your surprise, I showed up to R‘s studio class. I had a few days off from school and she invited me to come listen to her students perform. You were cold to me, sat as far away from me as possible, and left the class early. It was far too risky for you to sit with me in front of everybody.

I stopped contacting you after that.

You didn’t see me again until the spring. You were holding hands with D, and you walked right past me on the sidewalk, pretending you didn’t know me. You wanted me to think it was all my fault for confessing my feelings. And for 20 years, I believed you that I was the aggressor.

After you graduated from NEC, you went back to Europe. Then, believing you had gotten away with your crimes, you moved back to my city to pursue a degree at Lesley in music therapy, and you’ve been living in Boston ever since.

But Leticia, did you really think I would believe your version of our story forever? Did it not occur to you that I would one day grow up, learn about grooming, and have an awakening to who you really were?

You made me carry around your shame for 21 years. So now I’m handing it back to you. 

I reported you to all your places of employment. Lesley University. Hebrew SeniorLife. (Hebrew SeniorLife? Really? You just had to place yourself inside all of my communities, the music community and the Jewish community. Why does it still feel like you are still surveilling me? Why did you come back to Boston? Out of all the cities in the world you could’ve gone to?)

So, to answer your question, is it bad? Well, let’s look at the facts.

• You were 25. I was 16.

• You initiated contact by pretending not to already know who I was despite knowing exactly who I was

• You cultivated a close friendship with another student to create a "group" cover for spending time with me, and later used that friend as an intermediary to relay messages and social pressure (e.g., about how I dressed).

• When I formed connections with peers or people closer to my own age, you discouraged those relationships, monopolizing my attention, or withdrawing your own attention as a form of control when I spent time with others.

• You positioned yourself as my primary confidant, encouraging me to rely on you for my own safety.

• You engaged in repeated physical contact (hugging, kissing on the cheek/forehead/neck) framed as cultural norms, affection, or caretaking, often in front of others in ways that normalized it while providing plausible deniability.

• You disclosed personal, emotional material about your own life that elicited vulnerability and tears from me, then capitalized on that vulnerability.

• You engaged me in physical play and situations involving alcohol that increased physical closeness and impaired my judgment.

• When directly confronted about the dynamic, you reframed me, the child, as the predator

• You discouraged me from naming what was happening as inappropriate by asking me to affirm that things were "fine" and that we could "still be friends."

• You planned an overnight trip, including shared lodging, under a pretext (safety, group travel) that would have placed me alone with you in a new city.

• After I disclosed my feelings, you alternated between warmth and distance over time, and got engaged shortly afterward.

• You subsequently avoided acknowledging the relationship publicly, including pretending not to recognize me in a later encounter.

• You later moved into my professional and religious communities in my home city, and have continued holding positions (music therapy, senior care, education) that involve working with vulnerable populations.

So yeah, I’d say that’s bad. What you do about that now is up to you.

Adiós, 

Leticia!