Matthew Corey Schulz’s evil act after finding teen girl’s note

A woman groomed by a now-dead ex-Trinity College teacher has broken decades of silence to reveal how one evil act led to years of abuse.

When Lenore* was in year 10, she was sexually assaulted at a party – frightened and traumatised, she did not know who to turn to for help.

“I really struggled coping with it mentally and, toward the end of the year, I felt I needed to get some sort of help,” she told The Advertiser this week.

“I wrote down what happened and slipped it under the door of my school’s counsellor but they never came to me, there was never a report, it was never followed up.”

Years would pass before Lenore learned the note never reached the counsellor – it had been intercepted by English teacher Matthew Corey Schulz.

Schulz used that information, and those years, to groom the teenager, to convince her to move in with him, and to coercively control her life, social media and friendships.

When the abuse began, she was 15 and he was 32.

“It’s so hard to describe the control they (abusers) have over you,” Lenore said.

“It started as ‘you’re beautiful, you’re so clever’, the love-bombing sort of stuff, then it becomes ‘you’re a whore’ and ‘you’re cheating on me’.

“One night, he got himself so worked up that he tried to kill himself … when I tried to stop him, he shoved me away and I hit my head and became unconscious.

“I woke up, early the next morning, to him raping me.”

A PREDATOR’S TALE

Former teacher Matthew Corey Schulz, centre, outside court. Picture: Brenton Edwards

More than a decade would pass before Lenore reported her abuse and Schulz, 45, of Cockatoo Valley, was charged with one count of being an adult who sexually abused a child.

He was further charged with two counts of engaging in sexual intercourse with a person without consent – all of the charges related to Lenore.

In their court documents, SA Police alleged the offences occurred between 2011 and 2012 in the northern suburbs.

Schulz was working at Trinity College Gawler when he was arrested – Lenore was not a student at that school.

In a Trinity newsletter, he claimed he “was good friends” with American singer-songwriter Mike Patton, of rock bands Faith No More and Mr Bungle.

However, Schulz died before entering any pleas to the allegations and after unsuccessfully seeking to have his identity suppressed.

In the wake of Schulz’ death, Lenore has chosen to speak out about her abuse and encourage others to come forward.

She said that, since Schulz’s charges became public, she had been contacted by several other people making similar allegations against him.

“It’s always weighed on me, whether I was a ‘one-off’ … that was always a question in my mind,” she said.

Lenore said the abuse did not start immediately after Schulz took her note, nor after he arranged to have her transferred into his class the following year.

“I was quite vulnerable, and he took great interest in the things I was interested in – writing, music and movies – and we ‘magically’ had all that in common,” she said.

She said they would spend time together under the pretence of tutoring and, when she changed schools, he became “frantic” to stay in touch with her.

“He gave me his email address and later said ‘hey, I never got an email from you, send me one’ so I did,” she said.

“It grew from there … he started making little love-bombing comments … (the abuse started) after we saw a movie.”

LEASHED BY A MONSTER

Schulz failed in a court bid to have his identity suppressed. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Schulz’s profile picture in a school newsletter. Picture: Supplied

Over the next six months, Lenore said she and Schulz referred to themselves, secretly, as “girlfriend and boyfriend” – she has long since recognised the power imbalance.

At the time, however, she agreed to move in with him at his house, which was near her new school.

She said her former teacher made sure they were inseparable, and that she was dependent upon him.

“When I was apart from him I became a starved animal, craving his validation, exactly how he had taught me,” she said.

“I was in a constant state of needing only his attention and his love … he didn’t even notice me becoming emaciated.”

Lenore says she now recognises the power imbalance. Picture: iStock

Lenore said Schulz’s coercive control started by cutting her off from friends on social media.

“He would say ‘my wife cheated on me with someone she met on Facebook, Facebook is poison, nothing good comes from it’,” she said.

Schulz convinced her to cut her friends list from 300 people to 100, then to 30, then told her “there’s really no point in having Facebook anymore, you should delete it”.

From there, she said, his control “seeped” into every aspect of her life.

“This included the way I dressed, who I spoke to and how often, manipulation of my finances and the chores I did around the house,” she said.

“He controlled how I coloured my hair, what music and movies I entertained myself with and even down to how I chewed my food.

“He oppressed me so severely that he could allow me to run off leash with full confidence that I would always come when called.”

Lenore said Schulz was jealous in public, accusing her of infidelity if male staff spoke to her at shops or if she had to do a group assignment with a boy.

“Years later, I found in one of my journals a list of subjects I was going to try and learn about to make myself more interesting to him,” she said.

“Next to it, I had a list of things that I thought were wrong about me and were the reasons he didn’t love me.

“Those are such sad thoughts to have, as a 16 and 17-year-old, and I can’t believe that was my mindframe back then.”

She said that, on the night of the first rape, Schulz became enraged.

“He had escalated to the point where his veil of humanity was gone … he was yelling and screaming, calling me all these different things,” she said.

That rape, while she was unconscious, was followed by a second months later.

“When he looked at me, I could see he was one moment away from beating me to nothing,” she said.

“When I tried to sleep at night, I thought he might creep atop me and choke me to death … I worried that I would not wake up and, sometimes, I even hoped for it.

“Things had gotten so bad, and he was so hard to live with, that I just shut down … I don’t remember the last year of living with him … that area of my mind is just blank.”

I’VE SHOWN MY POWER

“Lenore” says she takes no pleasure in Schulz’s death, as she “100 per cent” wanted her day in court. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Lenore moved out of Schulz’s home in 2013, aged 19, having spent her youth helping to support him financially.

“I left in financial ruin, I had no friends, no social skills … I was born again with no personality, no likes, no dislikes, no interests that weren’t his,” she said.

“It wasn’t until I was able to rebuild myself that I began to recognise the damage he had caused me and what he took from me.”

She also discovered, via social media, that Schulz had copied one of her tattoo designs and had it inked onto his own body after she left.

“I didn’t even have a tattoo which he hadn’t taken for his own,” she said.

Lenore seldom interacted with Schulz over the following years, apart from social media messages in which he apologised for “how toxic I was” and promised to be a better person.

“I never saw it that way (as abuse) and I’ll be the first to admit I f***ed up, I realise that,” he wrote.

“Is there anything I can do? Disappear completely? You’re an awesome person and I don’t want to be a reminder of shitty pain or anything.”

Lenore rejected him, saying: “It’s doesn’t matter if you’re there or not, it (the pain) will always be there.”

Schulz did not contact Lenore after she reported him to SA Police and the Teacher’s Registration Board.

She said that, having completed her studies and poised to start her professional career, she felt she could no longer keep silent about Schulz’s actions.

“My fear of him kept me quiet for a very long time so I was looking forward to my day in court, 100 per cent,” she said.

“Matt was my tormentor, my abuser, my demon, my rapist and my insanity … I wanted to see the look on his face when he was convicted.

“I take absolutely no pleasure from his death.”

Lenore has instructed Andrew Carpenter, of Websters Lawyers, to pursue legal action against the Department for Education.

She is also hoping to advocate for others who were “unable to do it for themselves when they were children”.

“I’m proud of myself, of the strength and pure grit I know I possess to go on in spite of it all,” she said.

“I have shown my power, strength, tenacity and grit. I have proven it to myself … I’ve already forgiven myself.

“I know what I am capable of and I’m glad Matt didn’t see that when we met … how meek he must have thought I was.”