For nearly two decades, Gene Evans was the top spokesperson for two Oregon agencies charged with doing right by children.
But, as OPB reported this week, two former students say he sexually abused them when he was an Oregon teacher in the 1980s, including one who said he began an intense sexual relationship with her when she was just 17 and he was 31.
Evans was never charged with a crime. And he told OPB by email, “These are stories and allegations from nearly 40 years ago. I have never been questioned, investigated or charged with any wrongdoing like this during my years as a teacher or anytime since.”
Evans did not respond to a phone call from The Oregonian/OregonLive but emailed the news organization the same statement he previously sent OPB.
Reporting by OPB reporter Joni Auden Land relied on contemporaneous accounts including diary entries, ticket stubs and yearbook entries, plus interviews with former students, family members and a teacher from that period, to show how Evans allegedly abused his photography position at St. Helens High School to groom and sexually assault two students.
In 1988, OPB’s reporting shows that Evans resigned from the high school and divorced his wife, moving to Eugene to continue to see one of the students, who by then had enrolled at the University of Oregon. OPB found no evidence that any adult ever reported Evans’ alleged actions to police despite widespread rumors, and the woman told the news outlet she still feels let down by the inaction all these years later.
Evans, 68, was the spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Education from 2001 until 2008 and then for the Oregon Department of Human Services from 2008 until his retirement in 2017, when he earned $118,295. The Public Employees Retirement System pays him about $40,000 annually, as of 2024.
The accusations against him surfaced late last year, OPB wrote, after police arrested a St. Helens teacher and a retired teacher on charges of sexually abusing students.
The November 2024 arrests sparked an ongoing public reckoning over the school district’s failures to act on students’ complaints about teachers’ sexual misconduct, and OPB’s reporting suggests the pattern is decades old.
This month, the St. Helens School District superintendent resigned after four months on paid leave amid the roiling controversy.
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