Norman High Students Protest How School Handled Rape Survivors, Also Both Kick A** And Take Names

normanStudents at Norman High School held a silent protest yesterday regarding how their school district has handled recent rape allegations. And I take back everything negative I have ever said about teenagers, because those kids kick ass.

On Friday, Jezebel’s Anna Merlan wrote about the alleged rapes of three Norman High students after being contacted by their families and friends. In an article that is deeply disturbing and painful to read, Merlan reveals that three teenage girls have accused the same 18-year-old male student of raping them all within the past year, with two of the alleged attacks happening just days apart in September. Though the boy involved was expelled, not only were the two girls from the attacks in September suspended soon afterwards, but all three girls have also left the school after being taunted and bullied by classmates about the assaults.

The first girl to come forward is called “Grace” in Jezebel’s article. She alleges that the accused, who Jezebel calls “Brian,” raped her while she was drunk and unconscious when she accepted a ride home from him after a party. Within days of the rape she started getting text messages from other students telling her that they knew she had cheated on her boyfriend, and that they had seen a video of it. Brian had recorded himself anally penetrating Grace on his cell phone and then shared it with other kids at school.  It is for sharing that video with other teenagers, and not the rape itself that ultimately got Brian expelled from Norman.

A male friend of Brian’s, who is a total freaking hero, also recorded him admitting to the rape and gave the recording to Grace. On the recording, which you can hear at the Jezebel link, Brian says,

“She was asleep,” he says. “She was, like, incoherent. Like, you could not talk to her at all… And I was just like, all right, get on your knees. And she did. And I just fucked the shit out of her, man. It just happened. She was passed out. I pulled her little tiny-ass shorts she had to the side and I just fucked the shit out of her.”

Grace and her mother have given the recording, as well as incriminating text messages from Brian to the police. The police say that there is an ongoing investigation, but as of today Brian has been neither arrested nor charged with a crime.

When Grace returned to school after two weeks, Merlan says the following occurred:

The very first day Grace was finally able to return to school after the rape””or, in her mother’s words, “when she was brave enough to go on and go back”””Jan says that her daughter was approached by the student who made the comment about her “loving” being “raped in the ass.” After she swung the book bag at him, Jan says, “she was suspended for three days.” As they were in the parking lot after signing the paperwork for the three-day suspension, Jan says, the administrator said it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to come back at all this semester. (The administrator did not respond to a request for comment from Jezebel.)

“I just don’t think she’s ready for school,” Jan remembers the woman saying to her. “She needs to come back when it calms down next semester.”

Jan says she and her daughter were stunned into silence. “We just went home.”

Grace has not been back to school since, and is being tutored at home by a Norman High teacher.

The second girl is a 14-year-old Jezebel calls “Amber” who claims to have been raped by Brian just four days after the attack on Grace. She claims that Brian drugged her after a meeting of the local church youth group (because of course he’s in the church youth group) and offered her a ride home, but instead drove her to his house where he anally raped her in his bedroom while his mom was in the home, sleeping.

The next day when Amber went to school, she was still under the effects of the drugs and was bleeding. She knew something had happened, so she went to the school administration. Here is how Amber and her mother say the administration responded, from the Jezebel article:

[A] school employee asked, “Honey, were you sexually assaulted?”

“I was just crying,” Amber says. “I didn’t say anything.”

The administrator, she says, quickly said, “Never mind. Moving on,” and called Amber’s mother.

According to both Amber and Lettie, the administrator said, “Your daughter didn’t do anything she said she did last night. She didn’t go to church. She went off, did drugs, got into a car with boys.”

Amber was horrified. Her mom took her out of school and to the hospital, helping her to the car “because I couldn’t walk on my own.” The whole way there, she kept repeating the same thing over and over: “He raped me. He raped me.”

At the emergency room, a nurse called police, and Amber says they did a rape kit while her mother tried to reach the administrator, who wasn’t picking up her phone.

A couple days later, Amber says, the administrator left a phone message of her own for Lettie: Amber was suspended for 45 days, she said, for being under the influence of drugs on school property.

Amber also tried to return to school (her suspension was later cut down to ten days) but says that horrific bullying from other students forced her to leave. She transferred to Norman North, but the news spread to that school as well, and the bullying and threats continued. Amber has not been back to either school since. She is considering completing an online program at home.

The third girl, who is referred to as “Katie,” was a recent transfer to the school who had started dating Brian. They would sometimes have consensual sex in the bathroom, but one day, Katie says he anally raped her. Brian, true to form, then told people that Katie was a slut and that she had had sex with four guys at once. After physical assaults and bullying from other students, Katie too dropped out of Norman High. She is now at an alternative high school.

But here’s the part where there’s hope, everybody.

Yesterday, hundreds of Norman High students walked out of class in a silent protest over how their school handled the treatment of these girls. From KFOR.com:

The protestors say school leaders failed to protect the students from being bullied after the alleged sex crimes.

 

The girls claim they were subjected to name calling and even death threats.

 

”It has gotten worse, it’s brutal. They send out videos, they make pictures, they do it online, in person, they get a whole bunch of people involved, it’s just disgusting,” said Maddie Carter, current student.

The community has joined the protest, creating a Facebook page called Yes All Daughters. The group wrote a letter to Norman High principal Scott Beck making the following demands:

  • School must fully accommodate the educational needs of the victims and take all necessary steps to ensure the victims feel welcome and safe at all times on school grounds.
  • School administration shall request a full investigation by law enforcement into the child pornography passed around school and into any teacher or administrator who failed to make mandatory reporting of child abuse as required by Oklahoma Statutes, Title 10, section 7103.
  • School shall create a new, full-time position of Victims’ Advocate for students who report sexual assault, sexual harassment or bullying. That position  is responsible for overseeing all such reports and following up with the student, the student’s parents and law enforcement.
  • School shall create a notice of victims’ rights to be provided to any student who reports sexual assault, sexual harassment, physical assault or bullying.
  • School shall prioritize the immediate implementation of sexual assault, sexual harassment and bullying prevention education for students and faculty.
  • School shall promptly train all faculty on victim sensitivity and the appropriate response to reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment and bullying.
  • School shall establish a committee comprised of three students, three parents and three faculty to oversee the implementation of these demands and to review the programs and policies implemented every 90 days.

In response, the administration at Norman High says that some of these changes were already underway, and that a new curriculum covering sexual assault and sexual harassment has been in development and will cover how to treat survivors.

So let’s all give a big “Hell yeah” to the students of Norman High, who saw injustice being perpetrated at their school and decided to do something about it. Bravo.

(Photo: Twitter)

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