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In Youth's Tender Emotions, Abusers Find Easy Pickings

Wytheville, Va.

More than a year before he stole her virginity in the high school wrestling room, Michael Dwayne Blevins had figured out how to make the pretty blonde in his 8th grade science class feel special.

It started one day not long after she had entered Rural Retreat High School in Wythe County, Va. The teacher, then in his early 30s, was silently reading a letter in class. When several students teased him about wanting to look at it, he replied that she was the only one he would grant that privilege.

"He told me I was the one person he could always trust," recalled the girl, now 17. She, in turn, assured him, "If you ever need somebody to talk to, you...