Chapter 1: What content warnings should listeners be aware of?
Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. Please consume the following episodes with care. This season discusses sexual, physical and psychological violence. For a full content warning, sources and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.
Opinions shared by guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. We reached out to Professor Cato Buss and the University of Central Oklahoma for comment in response to allegations in the weeks prior to this episode's release.
We have not received a response. Thank you so much for listening.
I think you know me, you don't know me well at all You don't know anybody till you talk to someone
previously on Something Was Wrong.
I had decided to study theater. Kato, who's the person that abused me, was the first person in the department that I met at all. I've never been in an environment where people adored a person more than the general population of students adored this person.
Kato and I met winter of my senior year of high school at a recruiting event in North Texas. He was very paternal to me in a lot of ways whenever we first met. I was at his absolute beck and call in college. Later on, whenever shit kind of hit the fan, he relied on that loyalty a lot.
The summer in between my freshman and sophomore year is when I really started to notice he is really focusing on Miranda.
He cast me to be the lead, Eurydice. He would call me into his office once rehearsal had started almost every day before rehearsal. The hours before and after rehearsal looked very different after my confession of feelings towards him.
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Chapter 2: What allegations have been made against Professor Cato Buss?
Within a month, my life was the same. His life was, as far as I know, pretty much the same. Nothing changed. That's when we agreed to do the lawsuit. She had told us that the media might pick it up because the media picks up things like this. I was not in any way prepared for it to be picked up so quickly.
About a year after we filed the lawsuit, she let us know about a Supreme Court decision that came out that affected Title IX cases. And then I found a blog article talking about how one of UCO's Title IX lawsuits had been dismissed.
The publication that released that, the last words were from UCO. They didn't reach out to any of us.
So I felt powerless and voiceless. We knew that the case would be dropped, but to actually find it out and not find it out directly from this attorney that had really made it seem like she cared was pretty awful.
All right. It is Monday, February 23rd, 9.51 a.m. Pacific time. And I'm here with survivor Amy. We met through some random circumstances here. Amy, do you want to tell listeners how we became connected?
Yeah, my name is Amy and I've been a listener of the show since COVID times, a regular listener. And I just happened to be catching up on podcasts last week, it being Something Was Wrong. I was listening to the current season, the beginning of it, talking about the survivors from University of Central Oklahoma. And the name Kato came in and the name was familiar to me because I know Kato best.
Do you mind if I see if I can patch in our other Amy ABC to see if she could talk to us for a second? Because she's the one who called me and told me about your submission. One sec. Amy, I wanted to pause really quick and get ABC on the line because ABC, Amy B. Chesler, who is a co-producer on the show, she's the one who came across your submission and she called me.
ABC, will you tell Amy what that was like for you?
Well, this whole season is very hard hitting. But when I heard the story, you know, about Kato, the very beginning of hearing about this, we've heard about all these places he's lived. And I was literally just waiting for some submission to come through, thinking there's no way we won't hear from someone in his past. I woke up really early one morning.
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Chapter 3: How did the guests first encounter Kato Smith?
You got a What Came Next recording. Girl is booked and busy. We love you. Well, I'm so glad Amy got to meet ABC, too, because she works so hard on the show and she's been working so much on this season with me. I know she's extremely emotionally invested the way the whole team is, and she'll be happy that she got to meet you. Likewise. Going back to 1998, I believe it was around early springtime.
Can you walk listeners through how you came to meet Kato Smith?
Yeah. So when I was in high school, we did a musical every two years. In the late 90s and 98s, I was a senior in high school, and it was the year for our musical to happen. Our theater teacher was out from a medical injury, I guess she sustained. So we had brought in some ringers to direct the musical.
So there were three people, Cato and his partner, that did the blocking and the lines aspect of it. And then another gentleman that was brought in to direct the musical parts of it with the pit and the singers and all of that. Cato and his partner were new to me, but not new to many of the other students who had worked with them in other capacities, playhouses and other productions.
The vibe from the students was that they were very excited and really liked Cato and his partner. There was a lot of respect there and they were young and had a lot of great energy to them. It seemed like they were on the road to big things. So there was a lot of excitement to have these people directing us. So that was the first time I met Cato and his partner.
to your understanding, this is the same partner that he currently had that the survivors from UCO referenced because they share a child.
Yes, that is absolutely true. At that point, I think that it was a two-year-old daughter, like a toddler age, that they shared together. And so they share a child together. It was framed pretty early on in whatever conversations I had with Kato, that they were not together, really. They're not romantic and that they're just raising a child together.
That old story. What was your impression of Kato? I know it's been a long time. It's been 28 years. But what do you recall about initially meeting him, if anything?
I recall that he had charisma, very smart and seems like someone you should listen to. I remember he had dark rimmed glasses that were really cool, kind of hipster glasses before hipsters became a thing. He just seemed like a friendly, funny guy who commanded the space.
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Chapter 4: What experiences did survivors share about their interactions with Kato?
one-on-one or small coachings together.
Other survivors have described a gradual increase in special attention. Did you experience that same type of behavior from Kato?
I did, even though it's been a long time and I can't recall the specific details. There would be musical practice after school. And so I'm assuming that I probably saw him at the beginning of rehearsal or after rehearsal, we were having a conversation and maybe at that point we ended up going on drives.
My best friend had said that she remembers me saying something about dropping him off at his house or going to his house. But I do not remember that. We'd have days where we focused on the music or other days that we did blocking. And so in those days, there would be opportunities to have the one-on-one sessions or smaller groups for one. The one-on-one personal attention started to grow.
Soon we were going on rides together around town and I would be the one driving. I'd pick him up because I think he was sharing a car with his partner. So I would pick him up and we would go on drives around town. I don't know how many times that happened, but there were multiple drives. It would just be talking and conversation and probably some leg rubbing or hand holding.
One in particular, we ended up going to Dinosaur Hill, which is a hill in the middle of the town that I was from that kind of separated the east and west side of town. I just remember sitting on, I think, like a cement dinosaur and having a conversation with him about who knows what. Those felt very meaningful, those rides. Like, I don't know what we were talking about, but it felt important.
And he did make me a mixtape of Leonard Cohen songs, which I had a tape player in my car at the time. And so that was probably on constant play. That made me feel like, oh, wow, he really took the time to make this special tape. But... Then before I knew it, there was definitely a flirtatious dynamic that began. I know that I wasn't getting calls at home at the beginning.
It was towards the end or after the production that I was getting calls. So it definitely escalated. I don't remember all of them, but I do remember probably one of the last calls I ever got from him. And it was the day of high school prom. I was getting ready for prom and he called me.
the phone was handed to me and I'm sure I was totally giddy and excited and talking about going to prom with my group of friends and then he said that he wished he was taking me to prom which made me feel gross even about that I thought that was a really lame thing for a 28 year old to tell an 18 year old that they wanted to go to prom even I didn't really want to go to prom that bad
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