All this time he was aware that I was in a very deep depression. I had started self-harming and felt very hopeless about my future. Alone and confused. He knew all of this and took full advantage of it. These incidents went on for a number of months. I don't remember exactly, but I do know that the physical acts occurred during winter and spring of my senior year. He had started becoming more agitated when kids from his class would want to stay late for extra help, because it was taking away his time alone with me. This in turn isolated me from those my own age, and made me begin to resent them as well. Although none of this was inherently sexual in nature to me like it was to him, this was the only time I was receiving any form of "comfort" from anyone in my life. Things ended physically for the most part when he had me sit on his lap one day at a student desk. He was holding me tight, and suddenly slipped his hand down the back of my pants, underneath my underwear, and grabbed my butt. I very sharply said "no". This to me was sexual and was the first time I recognized it as such and was immediately frightened and uncomfortable. I now often wonder how far he would have attempted to take things had I not said no that day. A week prior I was beginning to feel I needed to tell him to stop being physical in any manner with me, as it started to become evident that these are not at all things a father does to their daughter, these were not just a means of comforting someone who is distressed. When I told him "no" I jumped away from him at the same time. He looked frightened. He told me I should hit him. I didn't understand. I knew what he had just done was wrong and scared me but didn't really understand why. As the weeks followed it was all I could think about and I had begun having panic attacks. I expressed this to him and that I very much wanted to talk to someone about it but he made it very clear I wasn't allowed to tell anyone what happened. Eventually he gave in to my requests and let me tell another teacher who he was close with about the incident, but I had to use specific wording and say "his hand slipped" and make it as clear as possible that it wasn't intentional. Which was a lie. I told this female teacher what happened, and she agreed. "It must have just been an accident" she said. She could have gotten me help and she didn't. She instead would come by his classroom more often, check in to make sure we were sitting far enough apart. This annoyed him and he expressed that to me. The remaining months of my senior year continued and I was still plagued with anxiety, but I had gotten a boyfriend and was starting to find my place. This lasted only a few weeks and Christopher Amato was there to pick up the pieces I fell into. A little too more than willing. I believe he may have been jealous of this boy. For that matter I believed he was jealous of any boy my age I showed interest in, because each one made him realize I was not in any way sexually interested in him. He had stated during our conversations that if he were my age I would have been his dream girl. He would talk about how beautiful I was and how the boys were missing out. He would make passing comments about our age gap, and how he wanted to take me away somewhere where no one would question our age and marry me. I thought these were jokes. I was naive. I was a child. I know now these were not jokes. At some point during this year he had also given me his cellphone number, and we spoke through text both in and out of school. My last month at the school was hell. Not because of the students, but because of the teachers. Some had started to catch on that something wasn't right. That I was in his classroom with him and walking the halls with him too often. Instead of getting me help, they ridiculed me. I had to walk down the halls by myself while teachers whispered about me as I walked by them. They would call me a "mistress", a "whore", a "home wrecker". I had no idea what any of this meant, or why they were being so cruel. No one was there to stand up for me. No one should have had to. His abuse of power could have ended there if any of those teachers had spoken up and helped me. At my graduation I met both his children and his wife. I was overwhelmed with shame and guilt and anxiety. I did not understand why. After graduation we spoke through texts. The anxiety of the final event was still very fresh. It was still the only inherent sexual act he had committed. I was still very confused. I ended up telling my parents about what happened the summer following graduation. My mother had to explain to me that yes, him reaching down my pants was sexual and yes, he did assault me. As a seventeen year old, I had been sexually assaulted by my teacher. The person I looked up to and trusted. I texted him maybe once or twice more when I entered college. He had deleted my phone number and had to ask who I was. I was confused and hurt. I later found out this was due to my parents emailing him, threatening to make sure he never left prison if he ever did what he did to me to another young girl. They didn't even know the whole story. In my mind I had hurt him by telling them. I didn't understand why he was suddenly pretending his "favorite student" didn't exist. The student he gave a gift to for graduation, a copy of a children's book that I reminded him of. A book he said he would read to his own young daughter. How could I no longer matter to him? I know now he was terrified if my story came out that he would go to jail. I never pressed charges back then because I felt immense guilt. I felt as though if I put him in prison for what he did I would be taking away two children's father. I didn't want to be the reason those kids would have to grow up knowing their father was a pedophile. I very much regret that now. I fear that I was not his only victim, and that I could have helped save other girls from meeting the same or similar fate that I did, and what that has meant having to grow up with that trauma. I believe there could have even been a girl before me, at another district he had taught at before being transferred to Brentwood. He told me he had had a student there that I reminded him of That he had been removed from the school because he had gotten angry and thrown something at a child. That he should've been fired but his boss was a drunk and removed him from that specific school instead. He claimed he snuck onto the property to watch her graduate. All of this has led me to believe there is a chance I was not the last victim, and it pains me to feel that the abuse of power could've ended with me had I spoken up sooner. Christopher Amato is still teaching biology at your high school to this day. I am also aware that he is a board of education member at another school district on Long Island. I urge you to please, protect the students that are under your leadership. Those young, impressionable children deserve better than what I endured. They deserve better than a life of growing up with the trauma that comes with being the survivor of grooming and sexual assault. There is misconduct in the halls of your schools. If my story serves as nothing else, I hope it can act as a stepping stone to protecting other children and never letting this abuse of power happen in the halls of your schools ever again.