tiny.cc/susanmystoryy

(I would really appreciate it if you guys are comfortable with this, could share and spread awareness about this issue!!)

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Pedophilia, Self Harm and Suicide

So recently I’ve seen a lot of posts and stories of people sharing and coming forward about their experiences with sexual assault. I debated for a long time whether or not I should step out as well because I was worried about the consequences this could lead to for me and those around me. I’m afraid of the backlash, damage it would do to my family, and possible retaliation from the assaulter; however, at the same time, I wanted to put this out there and stop more people from falling prey to this guy. I want to be able to spread awareness about these issues and how common they are, as well as why many people don’t end up speaking up about them. I realize that once I put this out on social media, it will end up staying on the internet forever and everyone, including my friends and family, will be able to see this. Before you guys ask, I have already brought this issue to the police but sadly it ended with no consequences being brought onto this guy. This is going to be a long read and I hope you can just take some of your time to read this and spread awareness about this issue.

My name is Susan and I am currently 17 years old. While this experience happened to me in 2017 when I was in 8th grade or when I was 13-14 years old, it still impacts me to this day. I met this guy, by the name of Stewart Russell, who is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers at CCNY, the City College of New York. He was over 50+ years old, additionally marking him as a pedophile . I met him through my younger sister (who is a year younger than me), who I am now estranged from due to this issue as well. My younger sister, I’m going to call her V, met this guy because he was offering some sort of “modeling job”. Soon, my sister became really close to him, or the professor as I call him. He was opening her up to opportunities and introduced her to an internship at the lab in CCNY.  I met him by coincidence near the house I live at right now; this is one of the reasons I am fearful of posting this online because he still has my address and could pose a threat for me and my family members.

During our first meeting, I should’ve known that this guy was dangerous but I wasn’t very familiar with sexual education and I thought that it was okay to talk about it with this guy. It was mostly a lot of sexual jokes and I thought that they didn’t mean anything serious. Over the course of the year, he helped me with a lot of school work. There were a lot of group chats between him, me, and my sister. He talked about sexual stuff a lot but I ignored it thinking it was normal for adults to do so. Thinking back, that was naive and stupid of me to believe, but I didn’t know differently

Time quickly passed by, and please pardon me for being a little confusing. It’s been a while since these events happened and I might be getting the timeline jumbled up. I remember the first incident to be in Prospect Park. That day, he had invited me, my sister, my younger brother, to the park with his younger son, who was around 3 or so at the time. (Yes, this is a married 50-60 years old guy with two little kids). When we settled down for a picnic or so I believed, he took my sister behind a dense area full of trees, hidden from public view, flipped up her skirt and started taking pictures of her. He claimed this was for “modeling” and I shrugged it off thinking it was okay. On the road back to the train station, he suddenly groped my breasts over my shirt. It hurt. I didn’t know what to do and he was hurting me so I tried to stop him from groping further by pressing my arms to my side really strongly and stopped him from moving his hands further. I commented that he was hurting me and he told me that my sister had never commented that it hurt before. I brushed it off as nothing that day and as we were leaving to get on the trains, he tried to stuff money in my back pocket to “pay me” for the day when we hadn’t done anything but accompany him to the park in which he had paid for the zoo ticket and etc. I felt really bad about accepting the money so I had agreed to babysit next time for him.

Once again, my timeline is a bit messed up but another incident I remember happening was near my birthday. This was around May 13, 2017. It was a really stormy and rainy day. I still remember clearly because of the shock that was embedded in my head. That morning, he had asked us if we needed anything because he was doing a supermarket run and my sister and I agreed because we wanted to grab snacks as well. He drove his car and came to pick us up from our house. In the car, my sister sat in the front passenger seat while I sat in the back. I can’t forget how shocked I was that day. He sat in the driver’s seat and out of nowhere, unzipped his pants and started showing us his dick and started masturbating. It was my first time seeing a male’s genitals and I was shocked. He tried to reach for me and I tried to avoid his touch, shrinking myself into the backseat. I can’t forget the horror on my face that day. I remember this incident really clearly because of how silent my sister was at what happened.

There was one more incident before I tried to cut him from my life and remained silent for two years. On May 20, 2017, my dad dropped me off in the morning near a Dunkin Donuts at 5th Ave in Brooklyn. We walked back to his house because I was there for the day to help him babysit his two kids, who were 1 and 4 at the time, although I’m not exactly sure about the kids’ ages While he put his kids to sleep, I was just playing tetris on his laptop. Suddenly, he started to put on a film which was something along the lines of a female massaging a naked male. He started to take off my jeans. I tried to stop him and told him no several times. I was terrified and really confused. I truly thought that something terrible was going to happen to me. While I was really dense at the time and thought that joking about sexual things was okay with an adult, I knew what rape was and I seriously thought he was going to rape me. He started touching me and then masturbating. It was disgusting. He came all over the blankets. Thinking back at this I want to throw up. Thankfully he received a call and left and I quickly put my pants back on. He came back and asked me why I didn’t eat his cum. (Note: I won’t be including any more about this incident because of how hard it was to write for me, and I don’t think I can bring myself to write more.)

I left soon after at around 1pm. When leaving, I realized that I had lost my things, such as my metrocard and any cash I had on me. I went back to his apartment to look for them. He started touching me again. I remember constantly saying no and saying that no, I didn’t feel pleasure from this and it was really awkward. He made lewd and disgusting comments like, “but you’re so wet.” I didn’t know what to do. I’m just so so glad he didn’t stick a finger inside. He gave me change for my metro fare and continued touching me. Honestly, if it weren’t for the coincidental call from my dad that day who came to pick me up, things likely would have gotten worse and escalated from just him touching me. That exact day, I also remember asking him, “did you do this to my sister as well?” And he told me “no.” With that answer, I left being thankful that he didn’t expose my younger sister to these disgusting acts as well. Only after almost 2 years did I realize how manipulative he was and that he had lied to me.

When I got home that day, I commented in the group chat that I was sexually assaulted and both my sister and the professor laughed at me. I quit all the group chats but they kept constantly adding me back. On the exact same day, I spoke to my sister about what happened and she told me that he was the father of two kids and that he couldn’t go to jail. I broke down that day in the bathroom and finally decided that if nothing happened to my sister, I would stay silent as well. It wasn’t convenient for me to talk to my parents about what happened and I was really ashamed of myself. This led to my silence for almost two full years.

The years quickly passed by and I reached the summer before my sophomore year of high school started. My relationship with my sister was going really smoothly and we were really close. I was super curious one day because my sister kept hiding her phone from me and I was wondering if she had gotten herself a boyfriend or something. Instead of finding text messages from a boyfriend, I found not just text conversations, but images of the professor and my sister naked. They were sending nudes to each other. It was at this point that I realized how manipulative and how wrong the whole situation was. (I’m really upset still at myself because I was so shocked I didn’t think to screenshot and save evidence of all of these chat convos. If I did, he probably could have ended up in jail or with a sex offender label). I debated for the longest time whether or not to tell my parents. This was because sex is not a commonly discussed topic in asian families, and I never really received sexual education from my parents. When I did ask about these issues, they would tell me, “you’ll understand when you are older.”

It took weeks to debate about whether or not to tell my parents and I finally broke down to my dad about a week before school started. That weekend, our family went out for dinner and I remember this being the last time I had an actual conversation with my sister. I brought up my sexual assault experience I went through and she responded with the same response, he couldn’t go to jail. Later, she would claim she never said this.

That week, everything started going downhill. I regret a lot of my reactions and rash decisions back then. I wasn’t really sure how to react back then and instead of supporting and talking with my sister like I should have, I reacted in anger and disappointment. I ended up ignoring her during the majority of the week because she kept saying nothing happened when I was sure something had happened. She was a victim too and I ignored this. During that week, I reached out to her old middle school friend, E, who told me what she had seen and witnessed as well. She told me about how the first time my sister had met the professor, he had fingered V. I was shocked. I didn’t learn about this until years after it happened. (My sister was barely in 7th grade then, and was around 12-13). E also told me about and shared with me some of the conversations and chats the professor had with her. He would show off naked pictures of girls he had sex with, and brag about it. Many of them started having sex with him before they were of age as well. I’m also not sure about this claim but in the conversations, it seemed that he said his wife knew of the situation but was okay with everything happening. If this is true, I find this really sickening.

In September of 2018, my sister ran away from home and I remember the panic my parents and I went through at 3am in the morning as my mom searched all the train stations possible for signs of V. We had called the police as well and finally found her the next day at school. She was sent to the hospital for the weekend and returned home after 2 days. It seemed like everything was going fine for a while until a week later. My parents were out and as the oldest, I was in charge of my siblings so when my sister wanted to suddenly leave the house all of a sudden without her phone, I panicked. I followed her to the library where she typed up papers of allegations that I was trying to kill her and etc...I didn’t know what to do and tried to calm her down and stop her from going to the hospital because I was really confused and scared. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation. It finally ended when a passerby decided to call 911 and my sister was escorted to the hospital. That was the last I saw my sister in a long long time. She was transferred to a larger hospital in which she stayed from November of 2018 to February of 2019 because she threatened to harm herself if she returned home. Later I found out that she had called the professor on her own (I wanted to include this part to show how manipulative he was to my sister).

        While in the hospital, my family and I visited many times and we brought up the direction and choice of family therapy, but no matter what, my sister refused and she became selectively mute (choosing not to speak). When she was discharged in February, she went to live in the community residence and has been there since. Due to this experience, I grew very estranged from my sister and lost contact with her. While I have tried to reach out to her many times through social media, she ended up blocking me. In the beginning of 2019, she also filed an order of protection against me and my parents which was recently denied and closed in the beginning of 2020. She or the professor has also filed a lot of ACS complaints against my family, claiming that my parents were abusing the children, etc. This has happened for more than 3 times now...All of the allegations turned out to be false and I wanted to put this here to emphasize how much damage this one guy did to my family and life.

Throughout this time period, a lot happened regarding the case I opened after calling the police, along with other stuff at home. I opened up the case in September 2018 (my sophomore year of high school) and it closed in September 2019 (my junior year of high school). I started off with high hopes of him getting convicted but reality slapped me in the face as time went on. My family couldn’t afford a lawyer so we had a public attorney on my case. The case closed in September of 2019 with one phone call to me. I was updated that he had gotten away free without a felony charge and instead, my assault was listed as a misdemeanor. This was because I was apparently too “old” when the sexual assault happened. Not only did he get away free, he did not get labeled as a sex offender label and is still working around students and kids to this day. I was shocked at the outcome and especially so when the public attorney told me he had a previous incident like this before in the 2000s. In my research, I found an article which I will include below. I am not completely sure if this is him but I just wanted to put this here to emphasize that it isn’t right to say, “we don’t want to assume that he will do this again just because he has an history of it”. I’m sure the public attorney didn’t mean any wrong when he said this but it hurt me really badly. I had also volunteered to testify in court but the lawyers said that it might hurt my mental health if I did that. Because my sister also had also filed claims against me and my family, it would end up impacting the case as well. Moreover, there was a lack of evidence because the professor and my sister had both deleted their social media accounts, leading me to not be able to retrieve all of the group chat conversations.

Article: https://www.ourherald.com/articles/sexual-contact-with-girl-admitted-by-bethel-man/

A lot has happened since then. This experience not only broke apart my family but also my mental health as well. I became sexually traumatized and I’m still trying to heal myself. I turned to self harm and have almost turned to suicide as well because I constantly blamed myself for not understanding that the whole situation wasn’t acceptable at the time, not taking screenshots of the evidence when it was right in front of me, being too rash in reporting to the police, and being cold to and unsupportive of my sister during the week I opened up to my parents about my sexual assault when she was a victim as well. The stress and financial problems, as well as school and this issue got to me and I became really depressed. Recently, I have been trying to heal and pick myself back up. This experience does not define who I am. I realized that it wasn’t my fault for the sexual assault and it was right to call the police as well even if it was rash. I’m writing this for myself because I wanted to speak out about what I experienced as well as trying to spread awareness about how common sexual assault is in our society. While I recognize that it will be difficult for me to open up another case against him, I wanted to share my story and I really encourage you to speak up if you have been assaulted as well.

For more information about him, see below:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2jFKgCQAAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewart-russell-1484856?trk=people-guest_people_search-card

Honestly, writing this scares me. I reached out to my dad about posting this online and he told me not because of the fear that this guy will sue me for defamation since there is a lack of evidence and because of retaliation. However, I felt that me staying silent and accepting everything that was done to me was even more wrong. This is why I took up my courage and I’m sharing this story. I can swear on my life that everything I have spoken of was true. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

I forgot to address this in my post or this document before but I was not the only person who was assaulted by this guy. I am not sure about who these other people are but I’m 100% sure he has a past history with sexual assault (the district attorney who I was working with before brought this up with me.)

Below, on the next page I want to share with you guys an experience from another girl who reached out to me today who was also sexually assaulted by this guy. She hopes to remain anonymous so I will not be including any names.

So I have seen a lot of people coming forward and speaking out about their sexual abuse in the past. I’ve been debating if I should come forward because this was a really embarrassing experience for me. But I want to speak out now because a lot of female experience this daily and is too scared to speak up. His name was Stewart Russell and he teaches at City College.

I remember I was around 9-10 when this happened to me. My mother and I was in the train station on 53rd Street Brooklyn, we sat on the benches in the station when a white man and his kid sat next to us on the benches. He started to exchange a conversation with my mother, and asking us where we were from. My mom back then didn’t understand much english but thought it was okay to exchange WeChat with each other. He then asked my mom how old I was, and asked if I wanted to babysit his kid, and the reasoning he gave was “ his wife worked at the hospital, and can’t take care of the kid often.”

After a few more words, we both got on the train and part away.

I don’t remember much details since it was so many years ago, but I remember him giving the address of his house to my mom on WeChat a few days later. My family walked me over to his house and they exchanged a short conversation in basic english and then they left. At first, it was all fine as we were having a basic conversation and I was playing with the kid. But then he started touching me on the shoulder and it got really weird because I didn’t know if he would just playing around.  He then proceeded to pulling out a laptop and saying really disgusting things to me and showing me images of his penis and naked girls. He also showed me videos of girls giving blowjobs. I remembered this one image especially of this one naked asian girl on the floor crying in the corner of a bathroom.

Then he tried touching me in places that was inappropriate and every time he tried, I would dodge it and start laughing to hide the fact that I was scared. He also asked if I wanted to touch his private area and I said no.

After showing me those pictures, he brought his kid into the bedroom and told me to go in as well. He put the kid on the bed and started telling me about the policy he had. I remember him saying “ if you want to play with the kid, you have to change into clean clothes” and he put out a pair of shorts onto the bed. He told me to change into those, and I said no. He said I had to and he picked me up ( mind you I was around 9-10 so I was really small) and he dropped me onto the bed and he tried to take off my pants by force. I kicked him as he did it, and I slide off the bed. I ran toward the living room, and I was really paranoid and scared. I used his phone to call my mom and I told her I needed to come home NOW.

By the way I said that, she knew something was wrong because I wouldn’t do that unless I was in danger. I told Stewart that I needed to go home because my mom was sick and he offered to walk me so I said yes. Before I left, he offered to give me money for the “babysitting” and I said I didn’t want to take the money and that it was fine. He walked me to the end of my block and I ran home immediately. I got home and my mom started asking me questions but all I could do is go into the shower and wash myself because I felt disgusted. I know many people faced Russell’s sexual assaults and one of this girl I know, Susan spoke out about the incident.

I hope my experience could make other girls come forward with their story and know that it’s okay to speak up for what’s right.

Thank you Susan, I'm thankful of you for coming out with your story. I know this was hard for you and if you never put out your story, I would've never spoke up for what's right and what's wrong.

J, currently 15 years old, shared anonymously

Stewart has targeted my sister and I as well. I was only 10. My sister was 14 turning 15. She took me to the park and there we met him. He came to us with his kid and asked if we wanted to help babysit. Of course seeing this “job” opportunity, my sister said yes. As we walked, he asked if I’ve ever seen a penis, I said no and he proceeded to google it and showed me. Then, the first time we went to his place, there was Japanese porn on the tv. At the time, his wife was still pregnant. I also remember her working in the hospital. When she returned, my sister greeted her as she was also chinese. His wife saw the porn on the tv and asked him what he was watching. She said it as if it wasn’t a big deal having kids here and porn on the screen. So then the next time we came over, he asked us to do a “check up”. He made us strip down to our undergarments and started MEASURING my sister. We thought that was normal as he used his pregnant wife as an excuse, saying they needed everyone healthy so the kids don’t get sick. But we felt really uncomfortable. And he slipped us $20 before we left. Thankfully that was the last day we went there. We started ignoring his messages. And he used his son, saying he was sick and we needed to be there. I don’t get how his wife is okay with him having so many teens and kids over to “babysit”. I never got to tell my mom. My sister and I were too scared. It’s hard telling asian parents. It was the end of 2014.

O-hopes to remain anonymous for now

Hey! Thank you for sharing your story and I’m so so so sorry you had to experience that. I actually encountered this guy before. I have him on my we chat too BC I had met him on the train ride home from high school after an AP year back in 2015. I had fallen asleep and his kid ( I think his name was like Malcolm or something) kicked me and woke me up. I thought it was really weird but he kept having a convo with me and asked me to baby sit for him. I had a feeling he was not safe though from the way he talked to me on we chat. He even sent pictures of a girl he used to date and it was clearly a cropped picture of him having sex with her and that is when I cut off ties with him because I was no longer comfortable. I honestly think he has an asian fetish because he always talks about all the asian women he has dated. He seriously uses his kids to lure young girls in.

N-hopes to remain anonymous for now

This is my story:

I was in his ME 145 class which is a freshman engineering class. I was already intimidated by being the only girl in the class and being in a male dominated field. He assigned a hw and like everyone else, I submitted mine. When he was handing them back to the students, he didn’t give mine back and told me to meet him in his office after class. I was worried because I thought I messed up the hw or something. After class, when I went to his office, and he had porn on his computer. He turned it off when I came in and asked me to sit down next to him, and I did. And then he proceeded to tell me how he is doing research evolving male ejaculation and wants someone who is “serious and mature” to help him with his research. I was so disturbed and I said I wasn’t comfortable with this and he put his hand on my thigh and said how good this research would be for me. That’s when I got up and left. I went to the elevators and as I was getting in, he followed me and said the Reason he didn’t give me my hw back was because he cummed on it. And that was the exact word he used too. I felt so sick and I dropped the class right after. When I registered for the class again in the summer, the professor showed as staff and I prayed I didn’t get him again. Unfortunately for me, on the first day of class lo and behold it was him. He saw me and gave me such a creepy smile. And of course asked me to go to his office after class. I told him I had another class right after and then my friends would escort me to the class and out of the class, not giving him an opportunity to ask me to see him in his office.

U- hopes to remain anonymous for now

This is the same man who approached me at sunset when I was a sophomore. He asked me how old I was and if I can babysit his kids, gave me his name “John” and said he was a professor at CCNY City College. I said no I couldn’t because I didn’t have time after school. He kept insisting that I didn’t have to babysit everyday and I said no sorry. He kept on trying and eventually gave up and asked for my email. I said no and walked away. He is a pedophile. This is not an isolated incident.

M- hopes to remain anonymous for now

He was the first professor I ever did research with as an undergrad. I took his solidworks class over the summer going into sophomore year (I think at least; it was around 2013-2014). I was the only biomedical engineer in the class and he did biomedical-type research so he asked me if I wanted to join his “research group.” I was excited because it’s difficult to get research experience as an undergrad and I wanted to get into a lab so badly. My first day in “lab” was in an empty lab room in steinmann hall that had no lab equipment, or even any other people in it; like it looked abandoned and that no one had occupied it in a long time. There was just a desk with his computer and it was just me and him and I also remember he never turned on the lights and just used a small table lamp; as most people who went to ccny know, Steinmann doesn’t get any natural light so the room was always very dark. I thought it was weird, but I had no idea what a research lab was supposed to look like and I was young and excited to get the opportunity to do research. I met with him for “lab” once or twice a week after his solidworks class and the two of us just sat there in that empty lab and he would try to explain his paper to me and show me data on his computer and I remember he would drag my chair while I was sitting in it to be literally as close to him as possible. Uncomfortable is understatement, especially being 19 year old girl and a 50+ man. He would also try and hype up his credentials like he some kind of bigshot researcher (which he’s not); he made it feel like it was a huge opportunity for me to work with him. And I didn't know anything about research so I believed him and I knew that I wanted to go to grad school and that I would need research experience to do so. Every time I saw him around campus he would come and hug me and kiss me on the cheek and put his hand on my back. It was creepy, uncomfortable and I hated it. I would see him out of the corner of my eye around campus and then I would literally turn around and go the opposite direction because I did not want to come close to him or interact with him. I eventually just stopped going to “lab” with him and thought that I just wasn’t going to do research. But I eventually joined a new lab and found out what a real research lab is; where they actually do science and the PI doesn’t make women uncomfortable.

I remember people used to always joke and it was almost common knowledge at CCNY about how Russell was a creep. I had no idea he went further and sexually assaulted and harassed women like this, and I wish I would’ve said something then. And looking back on this and reading your story Susan and the other girls’ stories, he was 100% a predator and was grooming me like he did these other girls. He would make inappropriate jokes that a 50+ year old man should not be making to a 19-20 year old girl, especially a student of his. He told me that his wife was a doctor and worked a lot and that he had a toddler and asked if I could babysit him. He also offered me a ride home several times, but I never accepted because lived close by campus and could walk home. And he also was apparently a visiting scientist at Dartmouth and even told me that he could take me to Dartmouth over the summer to do research and use their facilities. And as an undergrad, who literally knows nothing about research but wanted to go into a research career, hearing about the opportunity to go to Dartmouth seemed like an incredible opportunity. I am honestly so lucky that I didn’t go with him to Dartmouth or babysit or get a ride from him, and I feel incredibly guilty that these things happened to these other girls. But none of it is these girls’ fault. Stewart Russell knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how to attract young, vulnerable girls and he took advantage of his stature. His actions and him as a person is truly disgusting and deserves to face the consequences.

K- hopes to remain anonymous for now

Hi Susan. I graduated from CCNY engineering in 2017 - I read all your stories and I'm so sicked by what Russell did to you and your sister. I didn't go through anything nearly as horrifying, but you have my heart and support. I was in contact with Russell in the early years of my time at CCNY. I did "research" with him for a semester - I was enthusiastic to get research experience - but one time, I remember I had worn a loose sweater with a tiger on the back and he looked at it and said it was nice, and kind of brushed my sides from the back. I was really weirded out so I kind of just froze and when he noticed that change in atmosphere, he said "I'm sorry, I thought 'this' was for sexual reasons... I'm really sorry if that wasn't the case" (referring to the fact that I was showing up for research). I straight up told him no, and he kept apologizing and then I kind of avoided him after. Obviously this isn't about sexual assault in my case, but I wanted to share this with you to show you that he was fully capable of pretending to be a normal human being, maybe even gaslighting me. I was about 20 years old and was able to avoid being roped further into his manipulations, but things could have been very different if i were much younger and we were not on campus.