Focus: Adults in the Room
Focus is KUOW’s home for immersive audio documentaries. Each season zooms in on a single story that challenges commonly held narratives about life in the Pacific Northwest and reveals something bigger about American society.
The production team behind the Peabody-nominated Lost Patients returns with a new investigative series: Adults in the Room begins on February 24, 2026.
Seattle, 1999. At Garfield High School, Mr. Hudson is a legend. With a thundering voice and imposing stature, Mr. Hudson — or “Tom” as select students call him — teaches biology and leads an elite outdoors program. But when teen reporters at the school paper start exploring a rumor that he sexually abused students, all hell breaks loose. Adults close ranks, and schoolmates turn on the young journalists. And then one day, a voice on the school intercom announces that Mr. Hudson is dead.
Isolde Raftery is one of the students who first hears about and reports allegations against Mr. Hudson. Three decades later, she is an investigative journalist in Seattle. In Adults in the Room, Raftery re-reports the story to understand what really happened in 1999. Was a whole school community groomed by a charismatic predator? Or was she part of a whisper campaign that cost the life of a great teacher?
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Episodes
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Episode 3: Adults in the Room, 'Blame the Messenger'
Months go by as two student reporters anxiously await the results of an investigation into a teacher accused of sexual misconduct. Then a sudden tragedy changes everything.
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Episode 2: Price of Belief, Adults in the Room
Garfield High School is shocked after learning their beloved principal is in an inappropriate relationship with a student. In the fallout of the revelation about their principal, Isolde and Ella hear a second-hand allegation of child abuse against teacher Tom Hudson from a member of his outdoors club, Post 84. The students debate what they should do and decide to bring the allegation to their journalism teacher, Dave Ehrich, and Isolde’s parents.
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In 'Adults in the Room,' a KUOW investigative journalist re-reports the story that's haunted her for nearly three decades
The new series launches today as part of Focus, a dedicated podcast channel for immersive audio documentaries.
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Two Seattle girls learn a secret at their high school. Their lives change forever.