FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – Two survivors are sharing their stories after a former Clarenceville High School choir teacher was found guilty of criminal sexual conduct.
An Oakland County jury found Jason Debandt, 44, guilty of five charges of criminal sexual conduct. The verdict was delivered on Friday after the trial began earlier in the month
Kate Estepp, 27, and Victoria Langlois, 25, are both former students who testified against Debandt at trial. They say they were sexually assaulted by Debandt as teenagers.
Debandt was the choir teacher at Clarenceville High School in Livonia. He also oversaw the school plays, where he grew close with many of his victims.
“It didn’t start off as something weird, it started off as something safe,” Langlois said.
Read: Former Clarenceville School District teacher found guilty of criminal sexual conduct
Estepp and Langlois were 16 when they met Debandt. They said he cared for them like a friend, but soon, things turned sexual.
“I came home one night after play practice at like 10 p.m. and I was in my room in bed, like getting ready to go to bed and he texted me, ‘I love you,’” Estepp said. “I remember being so taken aback and, like pushing back and being like, ‘No you don’t’ and he reconfirmed it, and he’s like ‘Yes I do.’”
Estepp said she began going over to his house in Berkley where they would engage in oral sex.
It was during Langlois’s junior year that she began sexting with Debandt. He sent her sexually explicit photos, which the prosecution presented as evidence at the trial.
In 2020, multiple students came forward with allegations against Debadnt.
“I was naive enough when I was a child to believe that I was the only person that had this special relationship with Jason (Debandt),” Langlois said. “And then all of the sudden there’s eight of us that have had this relationship with Jason in some form or another.”
The survivors were overwhelmed with emotion when the jury delivered the guilty verdict.
“I’ll never forget when he was found guilty, I looked at him in the eye and he looked at me too,” Langlois said. “And he just shook his head no like I did something wrong, and all I did was shake my head back yes. This is what I did and this is where you are and I watched him get handcuffed and I watched him walk out of that courtroom.”
Debandt is currently being held at the Oakland County Jail as he awaits his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for June 6 at 8:30 a.m.