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.
Chapter 2: How did the Title IX office become involved in the allegations?
Thank you so much for listening.
Think you know me, you don't know me well at all You don't know anybody till you talk to someone
last time on Something Was Wrong. I call my theater ed advisor. She gets back to me and she tells me that this is something I need to bring to Title IX. And that's when I got introduced to UCO's Title IX office.
Chapter 3: What challenges did the guests face while navigating the Title IX process?
He essentially asked me to be a character witness for him since they had called me in. Right after that conversation, the Title IX office was right by where we were talking, and I walked there and met with the Title IX lady. I told her immediately that he had told me everything and that none of it was true.
She told me that regarding my allegations, that his initial response was that, quote, I can't say she's lying. So you'd think, oh, closed case, right? No.
I think the Title IX office really took advantage of a bunch of naive girls in a number of ways. And one of them was telling me that it would be anonymous, that Miranda wouldn't see any information that would clue in to the fact that it was me who said this.
It wasn't until winter break when I didn't see him for three weeks. I was really, for the first time that whole semester, given the time to reflect on the implications of her Title IX against him and what that meant for me.
Chapter 4: What was the emotional impact of the allegations on the survivors?
Towards the end of my second semester of junior year and between Scotland, our contact slowly dwindled. Here's Miranda. When I went into my senior year, I was so exhausted from hiding this secret, especially from all of my peers. I was just really uninterested in everything that was going on. I didn't really have fun at parties.
I hung out with Olivia less and was just really tired of being at school and having to be around him in any sort of capacity. He was still my acting teacher. So I was still taking classes of his and I was still seeking training from him on the side because I needed him to help me audition for graduate school and prepare for these big things that were coming up after my senior year.
And I needed him to write me letters of recommendation. So I was still like continuing to contact him in those ways. None of it was sexual or as if we were in a relationship anymore, but we never acknowledged it. He would still try at times, like he would text me and be like, I really miss you. Did you ever feel like there was any sort of retaliation by him as you were pulling away?
There was no giving me bad grades or withholding educational stuff. from me. He wrote me glowing letters of recommendation for graduate schools and gave me all of the training and support that I needed to perform at these graduate school auditions. The only real bit of retaliation is that my senior year He was directing a play and we did fall auditions for everything.
One of my good friends at the time was directing a play that I really wanted to be in and he knew that I wanted to be in, but they were happening at the same time. And so if I was in her play, I couldn't be cast in his play.
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Chapter 5: How did the university respond to the allegations?
I later found out from her when she found out about our relationship that he refused to let her cast me in her show. So he insisted that he cast me in his show and he purposefully didn't cast me in a lead role. It's like a Greek show. So he cast me as a part of the chorus, which is the opposite of what I was slated to be cast in my senior year of being in that department.
His play that year was an offshoot of Trojan Women, and the entire concept of the play was feminist theater, which is just so ironic. He turned it into Trojan Women 2.0, written by Charles Mee. And the way that this play was staged is that all of the members of the chorus were prisoners of this make-believe kingdom. Almost every single woman of color in the department was in this play.
He made us all be prisoners and all of the white girls that were in the department, a lot of them were the royalty members in this show. He would text me a lot throughout the rehearsal process about how beautiful the scenes that I was in were or how he needed me to be for the rest of the chorus because I was like the chorus leader.
I would email him instead of texting him because I wanted to be clear that I didn't want to speak to him in that way. But I also didn't really have the tools to tell him that. To your knowledge, did he target other women of color? No. The real truth is that there were not a ton of women of color at the university, just in general.
But he definitely paid the women of color, I would say, special attention in the vein of being an ally is, I think, how he would choose to describe it at the time. Giving women of color more opportunity for specific things like shows and making sure that they were more represented. Here's Rihanna.
Trojan Women was the last show I was in at UCO, and it was with Cato. I actually was planning on not coming back to UCO that semester.
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Chapter 6: What led to the decision to file a lawsuit against the university?
I didn't have the funds to enroll, and Cato offered, I really want to cast you in this role, so you need to be a student. Enroll in these classes, and I'll give you a scholarship of this much money, and we'll talk to the bursar and make sure you can stay in school, which I thought was so weird because he and I both knew that I had participated in this Title IX case against him.
And I think it was like a form of cleanup. I need to change Rihanna's mind about this. And she needs to know that I'm actually a good person or something, or I need to have a form of control over Rihanna again. It was a show about sexual assault. It was a show about women in a war-torn time and the terror that they face.
And then also there were pop musical numbers in between making light of this situation.
And what was that experience like being directed by him?
awful, anxiety-inducing, nightmarish, so confusing. I didn't know why I was there. He allowed me to pick a monologue from a different play that we then spliced into the play. The monologue that I did was very focused on sexual abuse. I have an experience of sexual abuse outside of Kato, and that was brought into the play.
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Chapter 7: What was the experience of going public with the allegations?
The monologue that I did was about sexual abuse. I am talking about my own sexual abuse experience, and a sexual abuser in front of me is directing me on how to make that performance better. I don't even think now I can process how fucked up that is. I was a 19 year old doing that. I had recently gotten out of a mental hospital.
I checked myself in because I was processing sexual abuse that had happened to me as a child. And immediately after getting out of that facility, I am then thrown into rehashing this sexual abuse trauma with someone that has contributed to that experience.
I think I'm just at a loss for words. I'm so sorry. It sounds very triggering. What was it like working with Miranda on that play after the conversation that you had about the Title IX?
We hadn't been in like a full-length play together at that point. I was really excited to work with her and I think that contributed to the confusion and awfulness that I was experiencing because I would get to hang out with my best friend and then it would be this incredibly triggering and traumatizing material that we're doing. It was so uncomfortable.
I remember just constantly being in fight or flight and so terrified of messing up or saying the wrong thing. Now, of course, that makes sense. I had acknowledged in my brain that Cato was an abuser, that he was engaging in this inappropriate behavior, and then had somehow backtracked that in my mind. Actually, he's a director that I want to work with, that I feel safe working with.
There was just like a disconnect there. It was terrifying and awful.
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Chapter 8: How can friends best support survivors of abuse?
And I would not relive that time for any amount of money.
And when did you leave the department and what ultimately made you decide to do so?
After Trojan Woman ended, I just stopped going. There was no like big implosion or big moment of decision. I think I was so burnt out from all that I had been through in the past two years. I just gave up. I was in a financial bind because I could not afford to continue enrolling anyway. And I never got those funds from Cato. I think I quit mid-semester after the play was over.
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Less steps, better skin. Here's Miranda.
Second semester of my senior year, we traveled again. We went to KCACTF in Texas. I was so ready to graduate. I was over being in school there. KCACTF should have been the most exciting trip for me because it was my last one. All of my peers were partying and hanging out and I chose to stay in our hotel room by myself. And I think that that was just an indication of
into how ready I was to move on and particularly to not have to have him be in my life anymore. And he knew that, but despite that, was still trying to text me a lot. It really, at that time, grossed me out in a lot of ways because it was so obvious that I didn't want to speak to him in that way. And he was still actively trying to press my boundaries.
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