"Past and present University of Northern Colorado students say theater professor Vance Fulkerson engaged in unwelcome sexual conduct with male students for nearly two decades and that while school officials were aware of complaints, they did nothing.
Christopher Johnson says he submitted to a sexual act with Fulkerson in 1991, when Johnson was a senior and Fulkerson was a first-year professor. Johnson says he filed a written sexual-harassment complaint with then-dean of music Howard Skinner but got no response. Johnson then quit the school for a year.
"I've been haunted by that monster for 18 years," said Johnson. "Just hearing his name still sends shudders down my spine.
"But while I am furious at him, the longer it went on, the more angry I became at UNC because they protected him."
Fulkerson, 63, was charged Tuesday with one felony count of sexual exploitation of children and one misdemeanor charge of unlawful sexual contact after a complaint that he had a video monitoring system set up in the bathroom at his home.
Then-musical theater department chair Jeannette Kolokoff, now executive director of the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra, encouraged Johnson to file his complaint after the 1991 incident. She resigned four years later, in part, she said, because of her inability to get Fulkerson out.
"When he got tenure in 1994, that was the last straw," she said Wednesday.
Skinner said he did meet with Johnson and heard his allegations. "I did follow up on the matter and took what I believed to be appropriate action," he said.
Asked what that action was, he responded: "I am not going to comment on the specifics at this time."
Johnson said he thinks that if action had been taken in 1991, it might have protected future students, as well as the university's nationally regarded theater program, which now faces a legal crisis.
"It saddens me that students there are still telling the same story 18 years later," Johnson said. "They weren't even born yet when this all started."
Outside investigation
Officials at the 12,000-student university have requested an outside investigation to determine whether they should have acted on prior complaints about Fulkerson. They declined to comment in depth while that review is underway.
Last week, Greeley police, responding to a complaint by a student staying at Fulkerson's house, found a wireless video camera hidden in an alarm clock on the back of the toilet in his bathroom. The camera, which captured guests urinating or showering, fed directly into a TV in Fulkerson's bedroom. Greeley police spokesman Sgt. Joe Tymkowych said many recorded tapes and DVDs were found in the bedroom.
Fulkerson initially told police he filmed only consenting, paid models and sold the tapes to raise money after having to file bankruptcy.
"And that's a crock of (bleep)," UNC senior Nick Izzo said. "That's just not true."
Two years ago, Izzo was taking a private voice lesson at Fulkerson's house. He was sent to the bathroom and told to try urinating while singing.
"He told me, 'You know the muscles you use to pee? Well, that's where you need to sing from, so why don't you go in and try using the bathroom and sing?' " said Izzo, who went into the bathroom but said he couldn't go through with it. "I thought it was weird, so I left, and I never came back."
Johnson, who teaches at a performing-arts camp in New Jersey, said Fulkerson's "pee exercise" is well known, "and there is no known vocal pedagogy for it whatsoever. It's completely absurd."
Fulkerson was to direct "Forever Plaid" for UNC's summer company, the Little Theatre of the Rockies, opening July 29. He has instead been placed on administrative leave and now faces up to 18 months in prison and $100,000 in fines if convicted. Fulkerson has been released from jail pending trial and did not respond to a request for comment.
The man who made the initial report to police, a May graduate and an actor in the school's repertory company, says on July 1, he exited Fulkerson's bathroom as Fulkerson was going in. He then noticed Fulkerson's usually locked bedroom door open and peeked in. He saw five TV sets, one of which showed a
Vance Fulkerson, a theater professor at UNC, had a video system set up in a bathroom at his home. (9 News)
live feed of Fulkerson urinating in the same bathroom he had just exited from.
He contacted police, who also found in a locked safe 29 images of nude boys as young as 5 in provocative poses.
In the past two days, The Denver Post has heard from five men who said Fulkerson initiated unwelcome sexual contact with them when they were students; four said they contacted a UNC official and nothing was done. Twelve additional men and women said they have witnessed what they believed to be inappropriate contact between Fulkerson and students.
None filed complaints with police, and even today none allege they were sexually assaulted by Fulkerson. Each, however, believes the professor took advantage of his position to seek sex.
UNC regularly produces actors who go on to Broadway, so it draws top high school students from around the country to its 320-student theater program. Former and current students said Fulkerson used his position to create sexual opportunities. Johnson said Fulkerson often used overnight trips, alcohol and marijuana, and promises of future jobs.
"I think he intentionally preyed on young men who weren't necessarily out (of the closet)," Kolokoff said. "They weren't going to say anything. Who were they going to say it to?"
That belief is shared by UNC alumnus Kelly Lardie, who said he has several friends who were involved with Fulkerson from 1989 to 1993, "and I have been kicking myself over and over again for not doing something about it," he said.
UNC spokesman Nate Haas said the university can't legally forbid sex between a teacher and a student when it is a consensual act between two adults. But "any conduct unreasonably interfering with an individual's work or academic performance, or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment" violates the school's sexual harassment policy.
"We hold ourselves to higher standards here, especially because we are in positions of trust," Haas said.
An overnight trip
Johnson says Fulkerson used his position inappropriately in 1991, when Fulkerson asked Johnson, then a senior, along for an overnight trip to Denver.
Fulkerson was to conduct a class at a high school thespian convention. Johnson said he was told there would be other students and separate hotel rooms. Instead, it was just the two of them, in a shared room.
"And once we got there, he said the class was canceled so our night was free," Johnson said. "He took me out to dinner, we both got very drunk and he said he wanted to go to a porn theater."
Back at the hotel, Johnson said, Fulkerson emerged from the bathroom, stripped and lay down on Johnson's back. A sexual act ensued.
"I pretty much pretended I was passed out so it would end," said Johnson. "I can't say I welcomed it. I had never been in that position before. He was my professor. I was of age, but I was a student, and obviously it was wildly inappropriate."
Johnson told Kolokoff, the department chair, who verified that a written complaint was filed. "I think it was a totally legitimate and warranted complaint, and it was always inferred that incidents like this were continuing to go on," she said.
Johnson said, "I always felt like the dean was embarrassed about it being a gay situation, and he didn't want to deal with that. I live my life as an out and proud gay man, so I bear no prejudice toward the man's sexuality at all. It's not about that. It's about the abuse of power — by him and the university."
Kolokoff said she was so repulsed about Fulkerson's dalliances with students that it led to a yelling match in a school hall.
If it is confirmed that the university has known of Fulkerson's indiscretions, the ramifications could be felt for years, from litigation to enrollment.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the incoming freshmen change their minds because of this," Izzo said. "I am definitely worried about whether the program is going to survive this."
But Haas said due diligence must come before judgment. Toward that end, the university has authorized an independent investigation to be conducted by the Mountain States Employers Council to determine what has happened, who knew about it and when it was known. "I'm sure those kinds of things will turn up if there has been any sort of documentation in the past," Haas said.
Skinner, who retired in 2007, is cooperating with the investigation. "I'm sure we will be reviewing all of the pertinent matter in detail," he said.
UNC president Kay Norton issued a statement saying, "I want to assure you that we absolutely do not tolerate or condone the behavior that has been alleged. . . . As members of the university community, we share the responsibility for creating a respectful, caring and inclusive climate on our campus."
As the shock and potential ramifications of the news settled over the UNC theater community, one alumnus commented, "Everyone who is a fan of this program is a victim." While another, Brad Ramsey, concluded, "They are all guilty."
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com

Anyway, that is my story of first hand experience. I have one more under my hat. I hope I was discreet in this post, as I do not wish to cause harm to my ex-girlfriend. Thanks for listening. If Jay wants the name of the minister, he can privately email me.
Thanks
Gary

I entirely agree. Elders have a duty to root out sexual abuse, especially within the eldership.

Early Alarm for Church on Abusers in the Clergy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: April 2, 2009
The founder of a Roman Catholic religious order that ran retreat centers for troubled priests warned American bishops in forceful letters dating back to 1952 that pedophiles should be removed from the priesthood because they could not be cured.
The Rev. Gerald M. C. Fitzgerald, founder of the order, Servants of the Paraclete, delivered the same advice in person to Vatican officials in Rome in 1962 and to Pope Paul VI a year later, according to the letters, which were unsealed by a judge in the course of litigation against the church.
The documents contradict the most consistent defense given by bishops about the sexual abuse scandal: that they were unaware until recently that offenders could not be rehabilitated and returned to the ministry.
Father Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, even made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island where he planned to build an isolated retreat to sequester priests who were sexual predators. His letters show he was driven by a desire to save the church from scandal, and to save laypeople from being victimized. He wrote to dozens of bishops, saying that he had learned through experience that most of the abusers were unrepentant, manipulative and dangerous. He called them “vipers.”
“We are amazed,” Father Fitzgerald wrote to a bishop in 1957, “to find how often a man who would be behind bars if he were not a priest is entrusted with the cura animarum,” meaning, the care of souls.
His collected letters and his story were reported this week by The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly. Father Fitzgerald’s papers were unsealed by a judge in New Mexico in 2007 and are now becoming public in litigation, although some letters were public before now, said Helen Zukin, a lawyer with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, a firm in Los Angeles. The letters were authenticated in depositions with Father Fitzgerald’s successors.
The scandals, which began in the 1980’s and reached a peak in 2002, revealed that for decades bishops had taken priests with histories of sexual abuse and reassigned them to parishes and schools where they abused new victims.
It was not until 2002 that the American bishops, meeting in Dallas, wrote a charter requiring bishops to remove from ministry priests with credible accusations against them.
Asked why Father Fitzgerald’s advice went largely unheeded for 50 years, Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City, S.D., chairman of the United States Bishops Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said in a telephone interview that in the first case, cases of sexually abusive priests were considered to be rare.
Second, Bishop Cupich said of Father Fitzgerald, “His views, by and large, were considered bizarre with regard to not treating people medically, but only spiritually, and also segregating a whole population with sexual problems on a deserted island.”
And finally, he said, “There was mounting evidence in the world of psychology that indicated that when medical treatment is given, these people can, in fact, go back to ministry.” This is a view, he said, that the bishops came to regret.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he could not comment because he did not have enough information.
Responding to Bishop Cupich’s comment about Father Fitzgerald, Ms. Zukin, who represents abuse victims, said: “If the bishops thought he was such a bizarre crackpot, they would have shut him down. In fact, they referred their priests to him and sent him financial contributions.”
She also said the psychiatrists who worked at the Servants of the Paraclete’s centers said in legal depositions that they had rarely recommended returning sexually abusive priests to ministry, and only if the priests were under strict supervision in settings where they were not working with children.
From the 1940’s through the 1960’s, bishops and superiors of religious orders sent their problem priests to Father Fitzgerald to be healed. He founded the Servants of the Paraclete in 1947 (“paraclete” means “Holy Spirit”), and set up a retreat house in Jemez Springs, N.M.
He took in priests who were struggling with alcoholism, drug abuse or pedophilia, or who had broken their vows of celibacy, whether with men or women. He called them “guests.” His prescription was prayer and spiritual devotion to the sacraments, which experts say was the church’s prevailing approach at that time.
At one point, he resolved not to accept pedophiles at his center, saying in a letter to the archbishop of New Mexico in 1957, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils, and the wrath of God is upon them, and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization.”
Laicization — or removing a priest from the priesthood — was what Father Fitzgerald recommended for many abusive priests to bishops and Pope Paul VI.
But that step was rarely taken, said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a whistle-blower who often serves as an expert witness in cases against the church, “because the priesthood was considered to be so sacred that taking it away from a man was something you simply did not do.”
The Paracletes did not return calls for an interview.
After Father Fitzgerald died, his order grew and established retreat centers around the country and overseas, which became regular way stations for priests with sexual disorders.
His successors added psychiatry and medical treatment to the prayer regimen. They sent priests back into ministry, at the request of bishops. The Paracletes later became the target of lawsuits, and had to close most of their centers.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF IGNORING THESE LESSONS ARE EASILY PREDICTABLE-WE IGNORE THEM AT OUR OWN PERIL!!!