SHEBOYGAN – First, Marissa Mayer told friends and family that a teacher groomed her during high school and then sexually assaulted her months after she graduated and turned 18.
Then, she told her pastor, her school principal and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod school district.
Her principal told her Sheboygan Area Lutheran High School couldn’t investigate because she was no longer a student and that she should go to the police instead, according to a Sheboygan Police Department report of her complaint.
Mayer took that step after the teacher was named the district’s high school Teacher of the Year.
Coming forward with her story “is not a revenge thing,” said Mayer, now 23, in an interview with the Sheboygan Press.
“It’s because I know what it’s like to be 15 and vulnerable, 16 and vulnerable,” she said. “Those kids deserve better.”
Mayer thought the widely praised 36-year-old music teacher, Matthew Thiel, would be fired after she met with school leaders about his relationship with her, she said.
However, Thiel continued teaching after she reported he sexually assaulted her, despite screenshot evidence of inappropriate texts from the teacher that are undated but that Mayer told police occurred when she was a student. School leaders also knew Thiel had been cited for providing alcohol to Mayer when police found them together in a park at night. She was 18.
Multiple school and faith leaders failed to follow up with Mayer about whether they investigated her complaint, she said. It was a response enabled by school policies that, in contrast to those at public schools, do not mandate a clear response to sexual harassment complaints.
Sheboygan Lutheran leaders told Mayer to report her allegations to police, leaving accountability up to her and a legal system in which prosecutors say they sometimes cannot meet the high burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt needed to win a conviction on sexual assault charges.
Thiel has not been charged with sexual assault or any crime related to Mayer’s report to police.
More: She told Sheboygan Lutheran High School her former teacher sexually groomed her. The school named him Teacher of the Year.
In an email to the Sheboygan Press, Thiel denied Mayer’s allegation of sexual assault.
He resigned from Sheboygan Lutheran in June at the end of the 2021-2022 year to continue his education, he said.
According to school Executive Director Paul Gnan, Thiel announced his intentions to resign in February, which was before the Sheboygan Press contacted him and the school about Mayer’s allegations.
In the 2020-2021 school year, Sheboygan Lutheran had about 190 students enrolled, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
The Sheboygan Press is taking the unusual step of identifying someone who reported sexual assault because Mayer consented to being named for this story. The newspaper has identified Thiel, although he has not been charged with a crime in connection with Mayer’s allegations, after weighing the public’s interest in knowing about these accusations made against a Wisconsin-licensed teacher and the way the information was handled by Sheboygan Area Lutheran High School leadership.
Identifying the teacher involved was essential to readers’ full understanding of the circumstances and the school’s response, and it prevents anyone else being mistakenly identified as a subject of this story, the newspaper determined.
If you have thoughts about the reporting or news decision-making, you may contact Sheboygan Press Editor Brandon Reid at breid@gannett.com.
A friendly relationship between Thiel and Mayer began her sophomore year, when she was 15 years old, Mayer said.
She was close with Thiel partly because of her passion for music. She was in every musical group offered at the school, including two choirs and three bands, and wanted to become a music teacher, her father, Daniel Mayer, said.
She also felt she could talk to Thiel about things like depression, Marissa Mayer told Sheboygan police, according to a copy of her March 2021 complaint obtained by the newspaper.
In her senior year, when she was 17, Thiel began hugging her at school, and other students were starting to notice that Thiel showed favoritism toward her, such as buying coffee and bringing it to school for her, Mayer told police. Thiel and Mayer also texted a couple of times a week, she told police.
A friend of Mayer, who was in choir with her, told police she thought Thiel and Mayer’s relationship was “weird” at the time but assumed Thiel was trying to be a father figure to Mayer.
Both of Mayer’s parents told police they also felt Thiel’s relationship with Mayer was unusually close while she was a student.
“It seemed kind of weird. I didn’t think it was normal for a relationship,” Daniel Mayer said. “She kept saying, ‘We’re just friends, we’re just good friends, we’re just good friends.’
“I think honestly, she didn’t think it was (anything more),” Daniel Mayer said in an interview. “It’s easy to be naïve to that standpoint when you’re younger.”
Thiel told Mayer he loved her during her senior year, she said. At the time, she perceived it in a fatherly way and viewed Thiel as a friend and mentor, she said.
In a screenshot of text messages between her and Thiel that Mayer says occurred when she was a student, Mayer texted “Lol ily,” an abbreviation for “I love you,” at the top of the screenshot. A contact listed in Mayer’s phone as “Dad Thiel” later texted, “Random thought… Im thankful to have u in my life …luv u sam :).”
Sam was Mayer’s nickname in high school, she said.
Mayer also saved text messages she told police were from her senior year, from screenshots she sent to a high school friend, when Thiel became upset after asking if she had kissed her date to a prom.
“U find a way to avoid the after party? Lol,” Thiel texted her.
“Lol no I went. It was okay,” Mayer responded. “Papa T it’s all good. I was safe,” Mayer texted.
“U kiss him?” Thiel asked.
When Mayer said yes, Thiel responded, “I honestly dont even know wtf to say at this point so im just gonna go,” and, “U do whateve [sic] the hell u want anyway so who gives a shit what i think. Im done.”
Mayer texted back apologizing for being a “shitty kid.”
Thiel does not recall sending these messages, he said.
“During my tenure, I tried to keep any necessary text messages with students centered on school-related matters,” he said in an email.
In the summer after Mayer graduated in 2017, she and Thiel were still talking, which she felt was a “best friend kind of thing,” she told police.
For Mayer’s dad, their relationship took a concerning turn that August, just after she turned 18.
Plymouth police ticketed Thiel for giving alcohol to a minor after finding him and Mayer with alcohol along the edge of the woods at Meyer Park at 1 a.m., according to a police citation.
“I knew at that point right there something wasn’t right and (Thiel) had crossed over the line,” Daniel Mayer said.
Thiel said the incident occurred during a period when he struggled with severe mental health challenges.
In 2017, he was misdiagnosed for a mental health disorder and given medication that “severely exacerbated” his condition, he said in an email.
“During the summer months of 2017, I turned to alcohol to try and cope, and in the midst of my compromised condition made a grievous error in judgment to give alcohol to a former student,” he said.
After Thiel reported the incident to Sheboygan Lutheran administrators, he was placed on administrative leave, Thiel said. They told him not to contact Mayer, according to executive director Gnan’s statement to Sheboygan police, included in the report of Mayer’s assault complaint.
According to what Mayer told police, as described in the report:
Police confirmed Thiel reserved a room at the Super 8 motel one day in January 2018 for two guests, according to the police report.
Thiel told police investigating Mayer’s complaint he would not say anything without his lawyer, according to the police report. Thiel is married and has children.
In his email to the Sheboygan Press, Thiel did not comment on his relationship with Mayer after she graduated but wrote that he “unequivocally” denies Mayer’s allegation of sexual assault.
Mayer told police she continued seeing Thiel after meeting him at the Super 8 — until she started dating someone and “put her foot down” in mid-2019 — because she had been emotionally abused to the point that she did not understand what a healthy relationship should look like, according to the police report.
Mayer’s description of Thiel’s actions in the police report is consistent with grooming behaviors, including targeting a child, gaining their trust, looking for vulnerability and eventually sexualizing the relationship, said Ian Henderson, director of legal and systems services with the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
“Grooming is a deliberate process of erosion of boundaries over time,” Henderson told the Sheboygan Press. “It’s a process through which people will gradually initiate and maintain sexual relationships with victims that, at their root, are grounded in secrecy.”
Thiel told Mayer not to tell anyone about their relationship and she felt terrified of doing so, she told police.
In summer 2020, Mayer says, she told her parents and pastor, Nathan Meador, who worked in the school district, that Thiel had unwanted sexual relations with her two years earlier, eight months after she graduated.
She also left a voicemail for Sheboygan Lutheran’s executive director, Gnan, saying she had been groomed and sexually abused by Thiel. But she did not answer when Gnan called her back, she told Sheboygan Police Officer Jeremy Kegler, according to the police report.
Meador, her pastor, “really let Marissa down,” Daniel Mayer said. “She tried coming to him for help, and he kind of just blew her off. … He did not follow through and act like a true pastor should.”
Meador declined an interview with the Sheboygan Press because, he said, conversations between a pastor and parishioner are confidential.
Mayer later told another adult she was emotionally and sexually abused. That person, who spoke with the Sheboygan Press on the condition of anonymity, relayed the complaint to Sheboygan Lutheran Principal Derek Bult in early January 2021.
Later that month, in January 2021, Mayer sent an email to Bult with a timeline of Thiel’s alleged emotional grooming and sexual abuse.
“I’m still seeking some sort of peace and I think that perhaps meeting with you to discuss what happened as well as presenting evidence, I would feel better knowing that there are people to protect students from this man,” she wrote to Bult.
Bult — who became principal after Mayer graduated — met with Mayer, her father and Meador at a church a few weeks later.
At the meeting, Bult said the school could not investigate Mayer’s complaint because the incident occurred after she was no longer a student. Instead, he encouraged her to report it to law enforcement, according to his statement to Sheboygan police.
Daniel Mayer left the meeting feeling that school leaders were not listening and “nothing was going to happen,” he said.
Principal Bult “should have contacted me and said, ‘Hey, we checked into it, we didn’t see any kind of legitimacy (to Marissa’s complaint),’ or ‘We found something,’ or whatever,” Daniel Mayer said.
“But no, I never heard anything. Nobody contacted me, nothing was said about it.”
“They had made it sound like they were going to keep a tighter tab on (Thiel). That’s what Principal Bult told me at that meeting,” Marissa Mayer said. “That’s it. Everything else was done insider-wise.”
After the meeting, school administrators confronted Thiel, who denied having any relationship with Mayer beyond a teacher-student relationship, Bult and Gnan told Detective Rebecca Rupnick, according to the police report.
However, school leaders had previously told Thiel to stop contacting Mayer in 2017 after he was cited for giving her alcohol, according to the Sheboygan police report.
Mayer also had screenshot evidence she offered to show school leaders of a relationship between her and Thiel after they’d told him to end contact with her.
A Snapchat message from user name Matt Thiel in February 2019 said, in part, “Love you so so much BBY … I love you more than anything in the world.” Another message from May 2019 said, in part, “In case ur wondering – yes I’m snuggling my pillow wishing it was you and thinking about u til I fall asleep.”
Contacted for this story, Bult referred a reporter to Gnan, who told the Sheboygan Press he cannot comment on confidential student-staff matters.
According to Thiel, Sheboygan Lutheran investigated Mayer’s complaint, and he fully cooperated with the investigation.
In general, if Sheboygan Lutheran High School received a complaint of sexual harassment, the school would try to investigate, Gnan said.
“Depending on the allegations and the timing (how soon it was reported to the school), we would try to do some type of an investigation, but also, we would be limited in that, so we would refer persons to head to the proper authorities to do a proper investigation,” he said.
In February 2021, Mayer emailed the South Wisconsin District telling the same story.
The South Wisconsin District, which includes more than 80 schools in southern Wisconsin, is part of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which supports Lutheran schools and organizations nationwide.
Mayer attached a Facebook message from Thiel to her boyfriend in 2019, which said “All you had to do was stay in your lane and you just couldn’t do it,” and “Now, apparently, she’s telling you she wants nothing to do with me and that’s bullshit too.”
She also said in the email to the school district that, after she graduated, Thiel told her he had sexual fantasies about her and used to look down her shirt when she was a student, details she later told police as well.
The district was made aware of an allegation involving a teacher at Sheboygan Lutheran, district education executive Chris Cody told the Sheboygan Press.
The district “immediately notified the high school, and strongly encouraged the accuser to notify the local police department,” Cody said via email.
His daughter’s experience left Daniel Mayer disappointed in the school system, he said.
“They’re supposed to be protecting kids, and they should be doing a better job to make sure this stuff doesn’t happen,” he said. “Checks and balances, I think.”
The anti-harassment policies mandated for public schools in Wisconsin do not apply to private schools like Sheboygan Lutheran that do not receive federal financial assistance.
All policies, including harassment policies, are decided on a school-by-school basis in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s South Wisconsin District, Cody said. The synod has 139 schools in Wisconsin.
The Sheboygan Lutheran staff handbook, which Gnan said is confidential, states that the school executive director will thoroughly investigate complaints of harassment and “decide upon the appropriate discipline which the situation warrants,” according to a copy of the handbook obtained by the Sheboygan Press.
“Those guilty of harassment … will meet with appropriate sanctions which may include termination or prosecution by proper authorities or both,” the handbook states.
Public school districts, under federal Title IX regulations and Wisconsin pupil nondiscrimination laws, are required to have much more expansive policies on preventing and responding to sexual harassment and assault.
According to Sheboygan Area School District policies, for example, a designated compliance officer in the district responds to harassment complaints.
Under the formal complaint process, the compliance officer investigates through interviews with the student, respondent and any other witnesses who may have relevant information, considers any evidence presented and keeps the people involved “reasonably informed” of the status of the investigation.
The compliance officer summarizes the evidence gathered and recommends whether it is more likely than not that the respondent engaged in harassment. This “preponderance of evidence” standard is notably lower than the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt considered by criminal prosecutors.
The district administrator will then consider disciplinary action up to and including the discharge of an employee, with a written decision given to both the complainant and respondent, the public school policy states.
Investigations by law enforcement do not relieve schools of their duty to investigate and resolve complaints under the policy.
The Sheboygan public schools’ policy also mandates annual anti-harassment training for staff members.
While Sheboygan Lutheran has had anti-harassment training for employees before, Gnan said he did not know how often staff members receive such training.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which is not hierarchical in structure but organized around congregations, does not establish policies for Lutheran schools, Chief Administrative Officer Frank Simek said in an email to the Sheboygan Press.
The Rev. John Wille, the South Wisconsin District president, said the district has a “zero-tolerance policy” for complaints about sexual misconduct but did not provide the policy upon request.
“If there is sexual misconduct, the person either resigns immediately or is removed immediately,” Wille said. “They will not be a pastor or a teacher in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, period.
“Sexual harassment probably would initiate some kind of investigation to establish the facts,” Wille said. “When there’s an accusation made, then we look into it.”
More: Wisconsin launched a clergy sex abuse investigation. Here’s why, and what it means for victims, church officials.
The responsibility for preventing sexual harassment and violence in schools should be on school administrators and staff, not on students, said Ian Henderson with the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
Mayer said her experience has been the opposite.
“I definitely feel like the responsibility in taking care of this has been all me,” she said. “I think it’s taken a lot of personal strength to come forward and talk about things that were secrets, things that I kept locked up in a secret part of my brain, I guess, for too long, things I didn’t feel comfortable telling family or friends.”
Months after Mayer told Pastor Meador that Thiel groomed and sexually abused her, a few weeks after another adult relayed her complaint to Bult, and one day after she emailed Bult herself, Thiel was awarded the district’s 2021 high school Teacher of the Year award. Teachers are nominated by a fellow staff member for the award, Gnan said.
“That was a breaking point for me,” Mayer said. “It felt like a huge slap in the face.”
She had disclosed the grooming to school leaders because she didn’t want Thiel teaching anymore, she and her father said.
“Looking back, I wish Marissa didn’t have to keep rehashing this,” Daniel Mayer said. “She should have went to the authorities right away, I think. But that wasn’t what her intention was. Her intention was, basically, she didn’t want him teaching anymore and didn’t want him to do this to anybody else.
“It’s severely affected her,” her father said. “It’s going to continue to affect her for the rest of her life.”
“I think when you believe someone, you want to take action,” Marissa Mayer said. “The most they said was ‘feel free to file a police report.’
“I didn’t receive the help that I needed from the school,” she said.
After Thiel received the Teacher of the Year award, Mayer reported to Sheboygan Police that, three years before, Thiel gave her vodka then had sex with her the first time without her consent.
Under Wisconsin law, consent means words or overt actions indicating freely given agreement to have sex.
Mayer’s description of what happened to police matches the legal definition of sex without consent, or third-degree sexual assault: She told police she was quiet, did not say anything and never gave consent for sex. She told police she didn’t know what to say or do to get out of the situation. She told Thiel they shouldn’t be doing this when he kissed her; she asked Thiel what was going on when he took her clothes off; and she felt her body language made it clear she did not want to have sex, according to the police report.
Mayer also said she felt intoxicated after drinking vodka provided by Thiel. She was 18 at the time, under the legal drinking age. The hotel incident, according to Mayer’s report, happened five months after Thiel was cited for giving her alcohol in the Plymouth park.
“The victim does not have the obligation to kick, yell, say no, whatever,” Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski told the Sheboygan Press. “But can I show clearly to the jury that on this instance, she (Mayer) didn’t give consent for this behavior?
“The outcome from our perspective would have been a ‘not guilty’ with the evidence we have,” he said.
Prosecutors review cases knowing that proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the level of evidence they must meet in a jury trial, Urmanski said.
That means there are times when prosecutors believe a crime occurred but do not issue charges in a case, he said.
In 2021, the Sheboygan County District Attorney’s Office received 62 referrals from law enforcement for sexual assaults perpetrated by adults. Prosecutors decided not to issue charges in approximately 33% of cases, according to data from the office.
Research suggests the rate of false reporting for sexual assaults ranges from 2% to 8% of cases, according to the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women.
But cultural stereotypes lead many people to wrongly think that false claims in sexual assault cases are common, a significant barrier to successfully prosecuting sexual assault, according to research by the National Center.
If Mayer’s case were to go to trial, the defense would likely question Marissa’s statement that their first sexual encounter was nonconsensual when Mayer also said she continued going to Thiel’s house to see him, Urmanski said.
In general, there are many reasons a victim might stay in an abusive relationship, said Britta West, a sexual assault specialist at Safe Harbor, a support and advocacy center for people affected by domestic violence or sexual assault.
They may want to preserve good things about the relationship, or they could be second-guessing or judging themselves, or abusers sometimes use threats or emotional manipulation to keep a victim from leaving, West said.
Mayer understood the charging decision in her case after meeting with the district attorney’s office, she said.
“Despite the outcome that I had with the district attorney, I would still say that I appreciate all their support, because there wasn’t a moment that I talked to them that I (felt) like they didn’t believe me,” she said.
Safe Harbor of Sheboygan County serves people and families affected by domestic and sexual violence.
Call Safe Harbor’s 24-hour helpline at 920-452-7640 or visit sheboygansafeharbor.org for more information.
People going to Safe Harbor do not have to report to police unless they want to, West said.
Reach Maya Hilty at 920-400-7485 or MHilty@sheboygan.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maya_hilty.