A SPREADING MOVEMENT
Two days after a sexual assault occurred on my high school’s campus, my co-writer and I decided to tackle the issue of sexual assault in our community. We had six days before our deadline to write a sensitive, impactful and truthful story about an extremely touchy subject, that our administration did not want us to write about. To balance all of these factors out, we focused on the impact one sexual assault had on our school, while making it clear that the incident was not an isolated one. Our goal in writing the story, like our ending quote says, is to start the first step in ending sexual assault — a conversation.
I packed the next days with at least thirteen interviews. Three were with survivors of sexual assault. Because those were done anonymously, I was meticulous about eliminating all identifying details about any of the survivors in the story. I had sent out a survey to students, asking if anyone had experienced sexual assault or harassment and to give their numbers if they were willing to talk to us. I made sure that every person who gave us their number was able to speak with an editor on our staff who would handle their story with grace and maturity.
The other roadblock I ran into was dealing with our administration. I knew talking to the principal was a necessity, but he had put off our interview until the night of deadline. I had assumed we would only be interviewing our principal that night; however, at least seven adults, some of whom I did not know, were in the conference room when I showed up for the interview. It was intimidating and disheartening, as they strongly discouraged us from writing the story. They questioned the legality of writing survivors’ stories anonymously — which we’d checked using the SPLC website — the ethics of it — if it would re-traumatize surivivors — and how it would make the school look. However, the complete acquiescence of survivors and our awareness of how the school had reacted to the sexual assault — positively, for the most part — ensured that their fears were unneccessary and that we had handled the story with compassion and mindfulness.
AWARDS: FIRST PLACE NEWS WRITING MONTHLY CONTEST, KSPA
By Celia Hack and Robbie Veglahn
*names changed to protect identity
Laura Pederson* was empty. Empty and twelve pounds lighter, after a week of not sleeping or eating. She had been raped seven days earlier in her own home. She reported the incident, and action was taken. But she was still empty and stripped of self-respect, left a vulnerable shell of herself.
Two years of therapy and processing later, she walks through a sea of black – of a student body rallying around another survivor and the cause of preventing sexual assault. She was proud of her peers, and she wished their support was enough to keep the movement from dying out. But she’s seen it too many times: someone gets sexually assaulted, and then everyone forgets.
“It’s kind of like leaving soda out for a couple days,” Pederson said. “It just loses its fizz, and it’s just gone. It’s gone, and no one really cares about it.”
After an alleged sexual assault on East grounds was reported on by the KC Star and 41 Action News on Sept. 20, students responded with a metro-wide movement – #WearBlacktoStopAttacks – in the hopes that the national issue of sexual assault continues to be discussed. For one day, Sept. 21, students wore black in recognition of unnamed and unknown sexual assault victims throughout the school, community and country.
“Wearing black doesn’t signify sexual assault happened on [only] one day or that we should be aware of this on [only] one day,” said senior Brena Levy, one of the creator’s of the #WearBlack movement. “We want to keep perpetuating it in the school. We talked to the administration, and they want to do that too. We just want to continue the talk.”
Though a single conversation sparked #WearBlacktoStopAttacks, many conversations have followed in its wake. East parents talked with their sons and daughters about their own experiences with harassment. Students spoke with their peers about what behavior was considered inappropriate. Principal John McKinney began considering the discussion he wanted to have with his students, in which he would clarify how to report a sexual assault and emphasize the necessity of it. Creators of the #WearBlack movement, who believe sexual assault is a bigger issue than an isolated incident at East, started working with the administration to form an awareness group.
Following the alleged incident, a Harbinger survey was sent to the student body addressing sexual assault, defined by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as any unwanted sexual activities such as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape. Of the 511 responses,12.7 percent reported that they had experienced sexual assault falling under this definition. And while 82.6 percent responded “no,” they had not been sexually assaulted, a remaining 4.7 percent reported that they were “not sure” if they had been.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cites that 35.8 percent of sexual assaults occur when the victim is between the ages of 12 and 17 – middle and high school-aged students.
“People don’t address the high school stuff as much as they should,” said sexual assault survivor Caroline Tanner*. “They think college, because people are going out more, getting drunk more, everything. But it can happen anywhere, any age. Literally every one of my closest friends [has] been drunk and taken advantage of.”
Eight survivors, who expressed their willingness to be interviewed in the survey, showed through their differing stories that sexual assault or harassment can happen anywhere and in any way: a church with a boy one’s been dating for three years, in a hotel room with a stranger – or in one’s own bed.
Tanner was 15 years old when she was raped at a party.
“I was blacked out,” Tanner said. “Totally gone.”
Her friend stood just outside the room while Tanner unknowingly, and therefore unwillingly, lost her virginity. The friend had told the 17-year-old rapist, another partygoer, that Tanner was okay with it.
She didn’t go to the police or administration, and since her first experience, has been sexually assaulted in a similar way on multiple occasions.
“It’s so normal to me. People underlook it and don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it is,” Tanner said. “Even people it happens to kind of just brush it off. That’s what I do and that’s what my friends do.”
Though it may have become normal to Tanner, sexual assault typically wasn’t talked about at the high school level, according to Levy. After the #WearBlack day, though, Levy felt like the environment of the school was one where sexual assault could be openly discussed.
“At the end of the day on Wednesday, I told Ireland Hague [co-creator of #WearBlack], ‘I’ve heard the word assault so much today that I’m sick [of] it, that I just want it out of my vocabulary for the day,’” Levy said. “And she said, ‘Well that’s the point.’ We wanted people to talk about it. And I heard people talking about it from the moment I walked into the building to the moment I left.”
The Coordinator of Prevention Services for MOCSA, the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault, Haleigh Harrold, spoke to the necessity of getting the entire community involved and educated when working to prevent sexual assault.
“We know that when there’s not this willingness or urgency to combat sexual violence, or there’s not this conversation happening, that’s a culture that allows sexual violence to occur,” Harrold said.
