Ronnie Rideout’s raw, unfiltered account of the nightmares at Bellevue Junior High

Gym teachers abused 13- and 14-year-old boys for generations, using basement pool, locker rooms and showers as hunting grounds

BELLEVUE — For decades, it was the “open secret” of Bellevue Junior High. A requirement of nude swimming, justified by a thin veil of “sanitation,” that left generations of boys vulnerable in a basement pool. But while some remember the era with a nervous laugh, Ronnie Rideout remembers the sound of a 2x6 hitting skin and the sight of a predator watching from the shadows of the locker room.

In an exclusive, raw, and often profanity-laced interview with StayTunedSandusky.com, Rideout—now 65 and living in Portsmouth, Ohio—detailed a childhood defined by institutional violence and a total lack of “backup.”

“I was a little fucking skinny ass fucking boy didn’t weigh 100 fucking pounds,” Rideout recalls. “I had grown ass fucking men haul off and try and take a fucking Babe Ruth swing at my ass with the equivalent of a fucking 2 by 6.”