81. The Peace Corps Tragedy
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This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Moreland, and I'm so glad you are here with me. I'm just going to skip over the spiel, but you know, like, subscribe, share, do all the things, okay? Let's just jump straight into my 10 seconds today. Okay, I was off my grind for a little bit with journaling, and one thing I really like to do when I'm journaling is...

I do it in my bullet journal, but you can do it in a planner. Honestly, you can do it in a regular journal. I just like to, the night before, write down everything I want to do the next day, the goals I would like to hit, just kind of, I guess, a little plan, if you will, but also I will write down like love myself or spend time with me or even just kind of things like that. And then in the morning when I wake up, I just quickly open it up. I do a quick scan. I think about it and then

As night time rolls back around, I look through, see how I did and then plan out my next day. And honestly, that is just a little cheat that I mean, I guess I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the word habit maybe that I do that I feel like just makes it so I'm living intentionally and really doing things throughout the day that I want to do, focusing on the things I want to focus on. And so if that's just a little hack, you could even do it in your notes app or wherever and

that you guys would like to implement. I think it really helps not only just make sure that I don't miss any meetings or whatnot, but also that I am, you know, sometimes I'm writing being kind to myself or just little things that I want to focus on. And then I read it the night before, I look at it again in the morning and then I check back in at night. And it's just a great way to kind of keep track and also just, yeah, live the life you want.

With that being said, let's get into today's episode. All right, so most people would agree that it's great to give back when you can, whether that means volunteering with a charity you love or donating to a worthy cause, even just checking in on a sick friend or calling a lonely neighbor to ask them how they're doing. Not only does this help make the world a little bit better of a place, it feels good to do what's right.

There's even evidence that giving to charity can improve your self-esteem or help fight the symptoms of depression. So some studies say that giving back can actually improve your physical and mental health too.

People who volunteer may have lower cholesterol, but we need more research to say for sure. This is all to say that supporting your community doesn't just help other people, it can actually improve your own life too. And of course, generally, volunteering and chipping in for good causes are usually safe things to do. Most of the time, good works don't put your life in danger.

But in today's case, one woman's sense of philanthropy and altruism led directly to her murder. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Her name was Kate Pusey.

and she cared a lot about helping other people. And this may be because Kate's father, Harry, was a member of the Department of Defense, and he and his wife, this is Kate's mother, Louis, spent their lives teaching young people in many different countries. And this meant that Kate traveled a lot throughout her childhood and saw what life was like all over the world. She was born in Germany, grew up in Japan, and then went to college in the United States.

And along the way, she also spent some time in Italy, Greece, Ghana, Hong Kong, Thailand. I mean, the list goes on. So she started getting involved with political groups when she was in high school, speaking out against different injustices that she saw.

This was in addition to serving on the student council and getting the best grades of anyone in her class. She graduated as valedictorian. And in college, Kate did a lot of volunteer work with children, particularly children who grew up in less privileged circumstances. Then she took some time off of school to do work with a nonprofit. But by 2007, when she was 23 years old,

Kate still wasn't satisfied. She wanted to do even more. And so that's why she enlisted with the Peace Corps. Now, this organization is technically sponsored by the U.S. government. It's not a private charity. It's a public institution. And volunteers with the Peace Corps travel to other countries in the developing world to help them build infrastructure or teach in schools or offer medical support.

So when Kate signed up, it was a much bigger deal than, say, picking up a few shifts at a nonprofit after work or giving up her weekend. She was essentially agreeing to travel to another country and uproot her whole life to help people who were less fortunate.

So right after Kate enlisted, she learned that she'd be working as an English teacher in a rural village in the African nation of Benin. Now, Benin is a very small, very poor nation. The official national language is French, and that's one reason Kate was sent there. She actually spoke French very well.

One problem was that Benin wasn't very politically stable around the time that Kate got her assignment. For decades, there had been numerous coups, regime changes, and huge shifts of power. In fact, by 2007, the country had gone nearly a full decade without a formal prime minister, which was a pretty major position to just do without.

Now, Kate's father, Harry, had probably seen his fair share of dangerous situations during his time with the Department of Defense. But even he thought this assignment with the Peace Corps sounded too dangerous for Kate. So he asked her to reconsider, to either quit the Peace Corps or ask if she could be sent somewhere else instead.

But each time he brought up his fears, Kate reassured him she was not afraid to go to Benin. She told him, Dad, I am doing exactly what I always wanted to do. So in the spring of 2007, Kate got on a plane and headed off to begin her two-year assignment in that small rural village in Benin.

But Kate wasn't content to just show up, run through a classroom lesson plan, and then go home at the end of each day. She also got to know her neighbors and plugged into the community. She befriended lots of locals who lived in or near her village.

And on top of all of that, she also cared deeply about gender equality and women's and girls' issues. So she set up a club just for the girls at the school where she was teaching and actually a couple of camps for them as well. At these events, Kate would talk about sexism and standing up for yourself. She also helped her students learn about their bodies and their reproductive health.

This is all to say that Kate was a lot more than an English teacher. Kate was trying to empower girls and help them change the culture around themselves for the better.

So Kate spent about two years in Benin. She was supposed to serve from May of 2007 until May of 2009. And needless to say, she was busy during that time with all of the projects that she was working on. The good news was that she wasn't on her own. There was a whole team of Peace Corps employees and volunteers who were based in this village, and they all helped Kate keep everything running smoothly. At least that's what I heard.

That's what they were supposed to do. One of her colleagues was a man named Konstantin Bjo. He also worked for the Peace Corps, but unlike Kate, he wasn't an American and he wasn't a volunteer. He was a local, originally from Benin, and he was a contractor who'd been hired for this project.

And this detail will be very important later in the story. Constan's brother worked as a manager in one of the Peace Corps' main offices in Benin.

And his name was Shockbio. And he outranked both Constan and Kate. So to summarize, Constan was a local man working at the same school as Kate. He was teaching seventh grade and he had a powerful brother who was overseeing the work that the both of them were doing. And that brother's name is Shock. Now, on top of all of that, Constan reportedly had a problem.

a pretty dark secret and it was something that Kate learned by talking to her students, specifically about consent and sexual health. See, according to the girls Kate worked with, who were all seventh graders, meaning they were around 12 or 13 years old, Constan had a pattern of inappropriate sexual behavior with the girls at the school. He'd reportedly convinced some of the seventh graders to sleep with him.

rape. And a few times, according to allegations, if a girl told him no, he would force himself on her anyway. The gossip went that he'd even gotten more than one of these girls pregnant. Now, once Kate heard these allegations, she knew that she had to do something. And she also knew that it could be risky to confront Constan about the rumors directly.

She didn't know how he'd react to the news or if he'd make her professional life more difficult by getting his brother involved. Not to mention these allegations are very serious. If they were true, Kate couldn't handle them on her own.

She needed to report the news to someone who was much higher ranking. So on February 9th, 2009, Kate wrote an email to the higher ups in the Peace Corps' Benin Division. The hope was that they'd be able to investigate and intervene to keep the girls safe.

Now, sending this email was no easy task. Kate was living and working in a village that didn't even have electricity, let alone Wi-Fi. So she actually had to drive for two and a half hours just to get to the nearest community that had a computer with an Internet connection for her to use. Then, after she typed up her suspicions and her worries, she had to turn around and drive another two and a half hours back home.

All that just to send one email. But Kate knew it was important. She wrote this, quote, She went on to describe all of the allegations against Constan and she asked for him to be fired.

Kate added that she didn't want him to find out that she was the one who'd reported him. She wrote, quote, "For obvious reasons, it's important to me that I remain anonymous in this situation." Now, in spite of Kate's very explicit and reasonable request, Constance somehow learned that Kate had reported him for his alleged inappropriate behavior. And to this day, it is not clear how Constance figured this out.

However, whoever leaked the information never came forward. But I will say, there were only a small handful of people who should have had access to Kate's email, and one of them was Constan's brother, the one who worked as a manager in the exact same office that Kate contacted with her tip about the sexual assault allegations.

So while we can't prove that he had anything to do with this, it is widely accepted that Shock probably passed the news along to Constan. And we also know that the Peace Corps took Kate's accusations very seriously and they did a thorough investigation. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.

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On March 2nd, which was less than a month after Kate sent her email, an official called her to clarify and confirm some of the information that she'd shared. And based on what they learned, they actually fired Constan the next week on March 10th, 2009. Now, sadly, that wasn't the end of the problems with him and the allegations. If anything, the issues only got worse from here.

And it soon became very clear that Kate was right to be afraid about her identity being leaked. Constan handled the news badly and he made it clear that he blamed Kate for reporting him.

It's not entirely clear to me if Constan explicitly threatened her or if he just behaved in a more low-key but unsettling way. I do know that on a phone call with her mom in March of 2009, Kate said she was worried about him. She didn't get into much detail, but she did mention him by name and say that she was dealing with what she described as his craziness.

Then she assured her mom that she didn't have to worry. She had it under control. After all, she was supposed to come home to the United States in just two more months. She's had to make it to May and then Kate could board a flight out of the country and never have to think about Constan and his strange behavior ever again. Now, unfortunately, things didn't work out that way and the situation was quickly spiraling out of Kate's hands.

See, Kate was living in a hut in the village where she worked. And like I said before, the village didn't have electricity, meaning Kate's house was not air conditioned. I have to assume the hut got very, very warm even at night. And Kate usually slept on a mattress on the ground on the porch outside. Presumably this was just to help her stay cool. But it also meant that she wasn't inside behind anything.

Her hut was surrounded by a wall, and I guess she figured or hoped that that would be enough to keep her safe. Well, just one day after Constance firing, on the night of March 11th, Kate was asleep on her porch. And while she was dozing, someone jumped that wall that ran around her hut, and then they slit Kate's throat.

Nobody saw the crime or suspected that anything was wrong until the next morning. Kate had hired a local hairdresser to come over for an early appointment at her house. And at 9 a.m. on March 12th, that hairdresser walked up to Kate's porch and found her body. She had been murdered. Now, it wasn't simple or easy for the police to notify Kate's family of what happened.

By this point, they were living in the U.S. in the state of Georgia. So the investigators told the Peace Corps what had happened and the Peace Corps relayed the news. They also handled the situation terribly. Kate's father, Harry, was fighting stage four lung cancer and he spent a lot of time in chemotherapy and other medical appointments. That March day, he was at the hospital getting a blood transfusion. His cell phone rang and with the needle still jammed in his arm, pumping blood into his veins, he answered.

And there's no such thing as a good way to hear the news that someone you love has been murdered. But this certainly was not the right circumstance for such a traumatic blow either.

In fact, shortly after he learned that Kate was dead, Harry's health took a turn for the worse. It was almost like he'd lost the will to fight. And it didn't help that the Peace Corps didn't seem to really be handling the situation with much sensitivity at all. Like I said before, they delivered this bad news over the phone. They never sent anyone to talk to the Poozies in person or make sure they were okay. Not when Kate first died and not at any time afterward.

They were also pretty secretive about the murder and the investigation. Harry and his wife, Lewis, had a lot of questions about how Kate had died, whether the police had any suspects, and what was going on in Benin. But the Corps consistently dodged their questions and refused to answer. It could be because the person the Poozies were talking to didn't know much of anything, or because the police were asking them to not repeat much either.

But so far, as Lewis and Harry were concerned, it seemed more like the Corps was being secretive. Some people have suspected that the Peace Corps didn't want the PR scandal that would come from one of their volunteers getting murdered on a mission. So rather than confront the negative headlines head on, they may have chosen to kind of ignore the situation and hope that it just went away on its own. It was a challenge, even for Harry and Lewis, to get their daughter's personal possessions back.

A court official said they'd make sure they gathered all of Kate's things and have them safely delivered, which apparently meant shoving them into a cardboard box and leaving them in the Poozy's driveway. Like literally, they just threw all of Kate's effects in a box and dumped it unattended in front of their house.

It was all so frustrating and her parents felt like they had no choice but to go to the press and complain about how they were being treated. A lot of the news coverage about Kate's murder and the aftermath came from their statements.

And since they still didn't even know the full story, that means there are a lot of details that haven't really been publicized here in the United States. And you'll see this as the episode goes on. There are some things about this story that I just was not able to find in my research, but I'll try to share everything I did figure out.

Now, I know that after Kate's body was found, the investigation moved pretty quickly. So far as the police were concerned, there was no huge mystery around the question of who did this. It was clear that Constan had a motive to want to hurt her and her emails made it equally clear that Kate had been afraid of retaliation from him.

The only real surprise came when the police concluded that Constan had killed Kate and he didn't work alone. He had three alleged collaborators, including his brother, Jacques. The other two men were named Joseph Ougu and Abdu Ghaffari Amusa. Now, Abdu was also a Peace Corps employee, and the police believed he was the person who received Kate's email and then forwarded it to Jacques.

In turn, supposedly, Jacques told Constant that Kate was the one who'd reported him. So assuming the police's theory was correct, Jacques and Abdou didn't have anything to do with the murder itself, but by violating Kate's confidentiality, they had set a series of events into motion. And this all ended with a violent and fatal attack on Kate while she slept.

In the eyes of the investigators, that was enough to charge the two men for the murder. And as for Joseph, I'm not entirely sure what evidence led police to him, but they suspected that he'd helped Constan to actually commit the murder in some way. So all four of them were arrested and thrown in jail to wait for their trial date. And as it turned out, they ended up waiting for a long time. Years went by with no trial and no forward progression in the case.

It was bad enough that five years later in 2014, the US Congress actually passed a resolution saying they were committed to bringing justice to Kate. Of course, they didn't have any formal authority over Benin's judicial system. The resolution looked good on paper, but they couldn't force the authorities in another country to actually go to trial. All they could do was offer the FBI's services.

Apparently, they hope that if the Federal Bureau of Investigation can help Ben and E's police find more physical evidence, it might actually help the case move forward. Instead, more months and then years went by and nobody ever set a court date.

Now, before I go to the next point, I want to highlight one piece of all of this that makes this case very complicated. As I mentioned before, Constan's brother, Shock, was one of the four men who were arrested for Kate's murder. And you'll remember that there were allegations that Shock was the one who leaked Kate's name to Constan.

However, there was no proof and he denied it and he said he wasn't the one who tipped his brother off and he didn't know who had. Now, whether you believe that or not, even members of the Peace Corps, Kate's former friends, thought it was wrong for Jacques to sit in prison while the years went by. So in 2015, a group of former volunteers actually created a change.org petition specifically asking for Jacques to be set free.

I mean, they did acknowledge that he might have been the one to leak Kate's identity, but they didn't think he'd realized that that could lead to Kate getting killed. So instead, these volunteers insisted that if Jacques had shared that information, it was a one-time lapse in judgment. It was a tragic mistake, one that allegedly ended in Kate's death, but it wasn't premeditated murder. They didn't think that Jacques should be charged with a crime at all.

And interestingly, I couldn't find any record of a similar Change.org petition for the other alleged leaker, Abdu. Now, I'm not sure exactly why that is because they both played the same role, but I do know that Shock's petition wasn't successful. It got fewer than 600 signatures,

And even that being said, the advocates didn't need a petition to get a court date for Jacques. He and the other accused men actually faced their charges a little more than a year later, so in March of 2017.

So that was nearly eight years that Constan, Schock, and the other two men spent sitting in jail waiting for their day in court. And after that long wait, the trial only lasted for two days. And I'm not sure what exact arguments Constan and the others put forward during that hearing, but I do know some of the claims Constan had publicly made before that point during the eight years that he was in prison.

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So when he wrote letters to journalists, he complained that he'd been framed. He believed that US officials wanted him to take the fall for Kate's murder, or at least that's what he said he believed. We can debate about how likely that scenario was, whether there was any evidence of a frame up or if Constan was just trying to say whatever would make him look good and innocent.

I do know that when it came to his trial, Constan, Schock, and the other two men were all found not guilty and all four of them were acquitted. Now I'll be honest right now. I'm not entirely sure how the court came to that verdict. Nobody ever issued an official statement explaining their reasoning. I will say though that Benin's legal system is very different from what we have in the United States. They do not bring in a jury.

Instead, people who've been accused of crimes have to face a judge, and a statement from a US official implied that may have been a factor, but it's hard to say how exactly. I also know there was some evidence against Constan that the prosecutors weren't able to get introduced into the trial, but I don't know how much more beyond that.

And unfortunately, the press coverage of this hearing was very vague, at least everything that made it here to the U.S. So I can't even say very much beyond those broad strokes. But it sounds like the judge was making the best decision they could based on very limited evidence. And that evidence wasn't enough to convict them. So with their acquittal, all four men were released. And to this day, as near as I can tell, they're all free men.

Now, sadly, many of Kate's loved ones believe they'll never see justice in her case. Although Constan and his alleged co-conspirators were acquitted, many people believe they were responsible for the crime. Rumor says they got away with murder, specifically Constan and Joseph, who are believed to have done the actual killing.

Since it seems unlikely that the police will ever find any new suspects to bring charges against, Kate's family and loved ones have focused their energy elsewhere. And I think this is important to introduce while covering this case. From the time of her death onward, they tried to raise awareness of Kate's story as much as they could, which, as I mentioned before, was tricky because Kate's

they still didn't even know the full details of what had happened to her. They were still frustrated, not just with the Ben and E's legal system, but with the Peace Corps too. The Puzis felt like the organization wasn't doing enough to keep Kate or any other volunteers safe.

So on the two-year anniversary of Kate's death, that would have been March 11th, 2011, they hosted a memorial on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. This memorial wasn't only for Kate, but for 24 other volunteers who have been murdered during their service. Not to mention the countless enlistees who'd survived sexual assaults while they were working for the Peace Corps.

The gathering was a way of signaling that the people there weren't only there to honor Kate, they were also there to demand something change. Kate's family fought for a new law that would keep future enlistees safe.

See, they didn't want to get this Peace Corps shut down. They certainly didn't want future volunteers to feel hesitant about signing up or going overseas. Kate had really believed in the work she was doing. So her family wanted to make it easier for other people to do the same kind of work, but to be protected while they did it. The new law would require Peace Corps volunteers get training on sexual assault and on how to intervene if someone seemed like they were at risk,

including from another volunteer or employee. The idea was that with better training, Kate's superiors would have known better than to let Shock see that email that she'd sent. Or if Shock had better guidance and clearer rules to follow, he might have chosen not to allegedly even tip off his brother. Maybe in the future, other employees would do a better job of protecting whistleblowers. They might even avoid hiring potentially dangerous men like Constan in the first place.

So President Obama signed this act into law on November 21st, 2011. It then came to be known as the Kate Pusey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. And the Puseys got another win when the Peace Corps formally apologized to them for the way everything went down with Kate and the way they handled the aftermath.

One of the managers in the Benin office also resigned, demonstrating that they understood how badly everything had been mismanaged. Now, of course, her parents didn't just want an apology or a resignation. They hoped Kate's death could bring about real change. But sadly, even the new law didn't fix the fundamental issues that contributed to Kate's death because more reports came out about other attacks, including sexual assaults, against volunteers.

And the organization continued to do a pretty bad job of investigating them, bringing the issues to light, protecting victims' privacy and confidentiality. So four years after the law went into effect in 2015, a survey showed that 20% of all Peace Corps volunteers had experienced a sexual assault during their service. That works out to one in five people.

The issues were ongoing through the hashtag MeToo era and during a more recent department review in 2020. Sadly, the problems seem to be just too pervasive for one single law and a bit of extra training to be able to fix them. There needs to be a much bigger reform process.

The really tragic part of this story is that Kate just wanted to help people. Her murder did become a rallying cry for later advocates and reformers, but she shouldn't have had to die in order to make the world a better place. So while the work goes on, I want to end by honoring the work Kate did in her life.

The many things that she accomplished before her murder. She educated all of her students and she specifically empowered young girls. She also made great sacrifices traveling to an unfamiliar country living in a hut with no electricity. All the while Kate was brave. She spoke up when something looked wrong even if that could and did have serious consequences for her.

She practiced what she preached, believing the girls who came to her with a problem and doing everything she could to try and solve it. And when she lost her life, we all lost an enormous force for good. And that is the story of Kate Pusey and the work she did in the Peace Corps and how it led to her murder.

I hope we can all take some time right now to remember Kate and what she stood for, and I will see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye!