When Gov. Chris Sununu indicated that it was Ana Goble’s turn to remove her face mask and step up to the State House podium, she kept her words about one of New Hampshire’s newest laws brief and to the point.
“It ensures the safety of my classmates, and that’s all I ever wanted,” Goble said. “For my classmates to be safe, no matter how old they are and no matter what the relationship looks like.”
Goble, 18, was invited to attend the signing of House Bill 1240 on a hot Monday morning in late July. The bill expanded the state’s criminal laws to make sexual contact between school employees and students a crime, closing New Hampshire’s loophole that allowed such behavior if it was perceived to be consensual. She stood to the left of the governor and watched while he signed it.
The legislation came as a direct result of the misconduct allegations against former Concord teacher Howie Leung that has embroiled the Concord School District in controversy for the past year and a half, sparking outrage in the community and prompting the resignations of superintendent Terri Forsten and principal Tom Sica.
For Goble, the former Rundlett Middle School student who Sica suspended for speaking out about the Leung’s relationship with some of her classmates in 2014, the recent release of a 115-page report on the district’s response has brought the difficult events of her middle school years rushing back to prominence.
“A lot of things I tried to forget about were on that report,” Goble told the Monitor . “It’s kind of scary to have something so personal out there, but I feel like it is good to have it out there for people to have a full picture.”
Goble, who isn’t named in the report, went public with the story of her suspension last summer. Now, the report shows it was more than just an isolated incident. Goble experienced strong retaliation from Leung her entire seventh-grade year, accompanied by months of targeted harassment and harsh discipline measures, that other teachers did little to prevent.
She felt the adults around her were out to get her, the deck stacked against her. The report by investigator Djuna Perkins confirmed her fears.
“They made her question her reality at a very formative age,” said Kate Frey, Goble’s mother.
At the State House, Sununu and several other lawmakers publicly commended Goble’s decision to come forward, calling her a “whistleblower” and a “hero.”
“When Ana was in school, she did the absolute right thing,” Sununu said. “She was brave and she raised concerns about a teacher and she was punished for it. It was a terrible response from a school. And from that story came a lot of action.”
“The one thing I would say about Ana is that she is way too humble in describing her role,” said Sen. Jeb Bradley. “At a time when our nation is looking for role models and heroes, we have one.”
Goble says hearing herself described as a hero is an odd feeling, and she isn’t sure if she identifies with the title.
“It’s definitely really weird to experience,” Goble said. “For the longest time, when I was in middle school, a lot of my teachers and a lot of my peers thought of me as the girl who cried wolf. Going from that to being someone that people view as a hero is … very different.”
After the event, as the executive council chamber slowly emptied, Sununu paused to make small talk with Goble. He asked her how she felt about returning to school.
“Actually, I’m going to University of Oregon in the fall,” Ana told him, and added with a laugh, “I’m getting out of here.”
The report, which was drafted by Perkins in September 2019, provides a stark view of the barriers that were crossed during Goble’s middle school years, and indicates Leung may have lashed out when he felt he was under scrutiny. It is heavily redacted to conceal the names of students and employees who were interviewed.
The report shows that in the fall of 2014, Goble began speaking up and questioning the consistent favoritism Leung showed toward a select group of female students, including the student who would later become his victim. A chosen few ate lunch in his center classroom every day and were frequently selected for special opportunities and projects. Goble said that is when Leung’s negative treatment toward her began.
“I would say things like, ‘why are the same people always getting called for this field trip?’ or ‘why is he always eating lunch with these same girls?’ I did that throughout the fall. I think he was like, ‘oh no, she knows. People notice this,’ ” she said. She also said she challenged Leung on an incident where she felt he was being racist toward a Black student, an event that was outlined in the report.
The report says Leung became “rude” to Goble, and did not seem to like her. He told her she needed to show more “P.R.I.D.E.,” a school acronym that stands for perseverance, respect, integrity, discipline and excellence.
The school’s assistant principal at the time said in the report that she responded more than once to Leung’s requests for help with Goble, because Leung “could not handle her.” She said Leung sometimes had an “over heightened” response to disciplining students.
“I think he suspected she had an intuition,” said Frey. “He was always on Ana. He was obsessed with her. He kept saying, ‘she needs testing.’ ”
In December, things came to a head when word reached Leung that Ana had texted the soon-to-be victim to express concern about the close relationship with Leung.
On Dec. 19, Leung and one of the other teachers in his cluster went to Sica’s office and told him Goble was spreading a rumor that Leung was “having an affair” with a student, a phrase Goble had not used. Sica did not follow up and investigate the question of the “affair.” Instead, he suspended Goble on for spreading gossip. Sica contacted parents of other students to tell them that a rumor was floating around, but never contacted the parents of the victim.
When Goble returned to school on Jan. 5, things got worse.
In November, Leung had convinced Goble’s parents that she needed to undergo special education testing. They had complied, Frey said, because they were sick of receiving phone calls from him in the middle of the school week, saying their daughter was unmanageable. In January, the results came back – Goble did not need special education. But a learning plan was developed, with a list of what Goble needed in order to be successful in school. At the top of the list: never call her out in public, never humiliate her.
For the next six months, Leung did the opposite.
Between January and May, the report says, Leung targeted Goble, humiliating her to the point where she was in tears “over and over again.”
“He just kept moving the goalposts,” Frey said. “He would say ‘she needs to participate in math, she is just reading all the time.’ And then she would participate and he would yell at her for over-participating. She just couldn’t get it right.”
One day, while standing in the hallway with other students all using their cell phones, the report says Leung singled Goble out and confiscated her phone, and when she protested, Goble said he called a “code red,” a designation used only in extreme safety circumstances, that brought the assistant principal running to the room. The assistant principal did not punish Goble for the incident, and told Perkins in the report that she thought Leung had “overreacted.”
In May, Goble said she was almost suspended by Tom Sica a second time, after she complained of being bullied by two girls in her class, and Leung and the other teacher in their section told him Goble was being disrespectful.
Goble said in re-reading the report, one of the hardest parts to see was the way the two other teachers in her cluster, as well as her guidance counselor, frequently took Leung’s side against her, and did nothing about his casual behavior toward the select group of girls.
“When I first saw the report, I would rehearse what I would say if I ever ran into this teacher or that teacher. Now I think all I want to say is, ‘I hope you do better,’ ” Goble said. ” ‘I hope you learn from this.’ ”
For a while, Goble said she was torn about whether to write her college application essay on her the events of her middle school years. On one hand, the events didn’t define her. She had other, separate interests and experiences, and was trying to move forward.
But on the other hand, “I feel like how my school got put into this situation is they were too scared to talk about this issue,” Goble said. “I feel if I were to stay silent about this, that would just be a bad and awkward situation.”
In the last 12 months since taking the story of her suspension public, Ana has received high praise from the community for her role as a whistleblower.
In October, she was invited to give the keynote address at the annual celebration for the N.H. Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. In February, at another event hosted by the coalition, she met actress Ashley Judd, who also praised her for speaking up. Judd was the first actress to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.
In May, she received a scholarship from the Women’s Club of Concord for writing about her story of overcoming a challenge.
Her dream of attending college on the west coast, which started during sophomore year, is now panning out. In the fall, pandemic-willing, Goble is headed to University of Oregon, where she will be doing a communications program in public relations and journalism, a field she gravitated toward because of a love of English classes and writing. She says she’s met many people in that field who she feels inspired by.
“Those are the people who helped me get my story out,” Goble said.
Although she described leaving home as “bittersweet,” Goble said she is grateful for the opportunity to start over in a new environment, and is glad to be finally moving on from the events that have embroiled Concord School District in controversy for the past several years.
“Everyone who experienced it is graduating, we all have time to heal in our own ways,” Goble said. “We all can just go wherever we want to go.”
She did not apply to any schools in New Hampshire.
“I feel like getting as far away from New Hampshire as I can is best,” Goble said. “I can bring the whole story about my suspension with me, or I can leave it behind. It will be a good fresh start, and a new experience.”
Over the past year, the Concord School District has also been moving forward, though at a slower pace. A safety compliance officer/Title IX coordinator was hired in April, employees received some extra sexual harassment training and school board members say they are continuing to review policies around student-staff relationships, student safety and sexual harassment.
Concerned parents and community activists are continuing to push for accountability of currently-employed staff members who noticed Leung’s behavior but did not act.
“When Mr. Leung was arrested, I just felt really guilty because I felt like I wish I did more and I should have done more. Lately, I have stopped feeling that way, and realized I can’t go back in time and fix that,” Goble said.
Both she and Frey have said that the only thing they’ve wanted from this process is to make sure the system is fixed so this never happens again.
“I hope everyone really tries to learn from their mistake and realize ‘I really messed up here. I need to make sure I don’t do that for my students or my future students,’ ” Goble said.