After retiring from baseball in 2001, Curtis found himself bouncing around Michigan high schools as a substitute teacher, coach, and trainer. Two of those jobs ended quickly and for unknown reasons, though Curtis claims was dismissed from one after fighting with the administration over the school’s dress code—specifically, one female student’s cleavage-showing top, to which Curtis objected.
Curtis ended up at Lakewood High in 2010, where he became varsity football coach and spent his days volunteering in the weight room. That’s where he would find his victims, and the story of each is remarkably similar. He would fixate on one female student, invariably athletic and attractive. He would invite them down to his windowless basement trainer’s room for special care, including athletic massage. He would gradually test his boundaries as massage sessions progressed, his hands moving up a girl’s leg or under her sports bra. With one victim, he went so far as to penetrate her vagina with his finger before she told him to stop, and broke down crying.
Kayla* [real names have been changed] asked Curtis what he was going to do, and he said he was going to talk to God, and keep it between himself and God. Then, just as Kayla was getting ready to leave and ponder the most difficult decision in her life, a decision with nothing but horrible outcomes on both sides, Curtis asked her to pray with him. “I didn’t want to say no,” she said. “Prayer is always good.”