LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A former student at a theological seminary is facing harassment and stalking charges after police said he made more than 500 sexually explicit calls to female students, reported WLKY-TV in Louisville.

Police said the caller was someone the victims knew well: John LeToto, a former classmate at Boyce College in Louisville.

"The first call I received, I didn't really think much of it," said one victim. "I thought maybe it was a mistake."

The victim, whose identity is concealed, said the calls continued for at least eight more months.

"I wasn't really sure who it was, so it put fear into me because I didn't live close to my family and I didn't know if it was someone I knew or someone I'd recently given my number to that was an acquaintance, so it was kind of scary at first," she said.

The victim said her female friends at Boyce College were getting the calls, too.

"I said, 'I've been getting these phone calls.' She said, 'Oh, I've been getting those, too.' So it kind of snowballed from there," she said. "She told me what she had been getting and we had similar experiences and she was living here at the time."

The victim said the calls showed up as a private or unknown number. The caller would play sexually explicit sounds and breathe heavily into the phone.

The calls would stop when the victims left the country for mission work, but when they returned, the calls would start again.

"We were just in fear for our own safety and for the safety of the other girls we knew," the victim said. "It could have been someone who was physically stalking us or someone who desired to hurt us."

According to court documents, LeToto always blocked his phone number and never spoke until Feb. 25, when he failed to block one of the calls to a victim and that victim recognized the defendant's number.

LeToto is now facing 50 charges of harassment and five charges of stalking.

Police tracked LeToto through phone records.

"Once we got the subpoenas for the phone records, we were able to connect the dots between each one of the victims' phone records and the phone numbers and determine who that person was making the calls," said LMPD Detective Rodney Underwood.

"As a group we just felt really sad over it and we kind of grieved over it for awhile," the victim said. "The person was a friend of ours and someone we trusted and really cared about and so to know it was someone we knew we just felt a little disappointed, a little betrayed."