“Alex Su, 17, a senior at Newport High School in Washington state, went to school officials this year to report that a classmate she had previously dated had physically and verbally abused her. She said in an interview that she reported the physically abusive relationship because she wanted 'some form of accountability.' But Su said she was frustrated by the school’s slow response and lack of action weeks after she came forward. So she began posting her frustrations online.
“'It’s been about 5-6 weeks since I told administrators and nothing is being done, they won’t remove him from my classes or hold him accountable for anything,' she wrote in a post shared on her Instagram stories. 'I’m not posting about this for sympathy but just because I am angry that even by telling a trusted adult nothing has happened and [the Bellevue School District] has not taken any appropriate action. I sent the vice principal pictures of bruises and texts of this boy admitting he hit me multiple times. I’m not sure what else to do at this moment. I don’t feel safe at school.'”
(Daniella Silva. “Students are walking out of school to protest districts’ handling of sexual assault allegations.” NBC News. December 21, 2021.)
Su said school officials told her to take down her social media posts or potentially face consequences because the student she accused felt unsafe. The response from her classmates, however, was quite different. They flooded her with support and vowed, themselves, to take action against the administration. Hundreds of students walked out of the school late last month in support of Su and abuse survivors and called for school districts to take accountability to protect their students
Protests Erupt
Daniella Silva from NBC News reports that all over the country, waves of students have rallied to support sexual abuse victims and protest how their own districts handle such allegations. Silva says the protest at Su’s school has been followed by similar walkouts of hundreds of students at surrounding schools. She reports …
“In mid-October, more than a hundred students walked out of Denton Guyer High School in Denton, Texas, following a report of a sexual assault on campus. More than 100 students walked out of Mentor High School in Mentor, Ohio, early last month over claims that the school did not take allegations of sexual harassment, racism and bullying seriously.
"About 150 high school students rallied outside a school board meeting in Seattle this month. And this month, hundreds of students from at least eight high schools in San Francisco walked out in protest of the district’s handling of sexual assault complaints.”
(Daniella Silva. “Students are walking out of school to protest districts’ handling of sexual assault allegations.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/education-nation/students-are-walking-school-protest-districts-handling-sexual-assault-rcna8940. December 21, 2021.)
Angela Esquivel Hawkins, a Stanford University administrator who also advocates for victims of sexual assault, sees the highlight this year of the desire among young people to make themselves heard on a number of social issues. Hawkins says …
“I see this growing movement as the next generation kind of taking up a stance and saying we’re not going to stand for this now, and we certainly won’t stand for it in the future.”
Hawkins cites reasons for this movement:
This generation of high school students “increasingly has access to information about broader societal issues that are kind of coming to the fore and being basically taken out from under the rug,” through movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter and the protests for racial equality and against police brutality.
They have greater access to one another through social media and to information like their rights under Title IX, the federal law that protects students from sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools.
Their unique experience of having lived through 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced them to stay home from school and the murder of George Floyd put a spotlight on injustice and responses to it.
They now have a “kinetic force” that was going to come out one way or another,” and “once they’re back on campus, it’s almost like the level of tolerance is maybe lower and combined with the sense of empowerment to speak out is higher.”
(Daniella Silva. “Students are walking out of school to protest districts’ handling of sexual assault allegations.” NBC News. December 21, 2021.)
Ohio
“The state has 1.8 million school-age children, said Rosa Beltre, executive director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Of those, one in four girls and one in six boys will be victims of sexual abuse; but only a third will report it, she told a Senate committee during an Oct. 5 hearing for House Bill 105.
“Sexual assault continues to be the most underreported crime in the U.S. and in Ohio,” Beltre said.
(Jim Gaines. “Southwest Ohio lawmakers push bill to teach students how to prevent sex abuse.” Dayton Daily News. October 11, 2021.)
(D. Finkelhor, et al. “Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: Prevalence, characteristics and risk factors.” Child Abuse & Neglect 14, 19-28. 1990.)
At least three dozen states have passed a law that requires age-appropriate instruction of child sexual abuse education and prevention in schools. A similar bill is in an Ohio Senate committee now but is facing opposition from a conservative Christian group. On June 16, 2021 the bill – House Bill 105 – went to the Senate and was referred to the Committee on Primary and Secondary Education.
There was bipartisan support when the House passed the bill earlier this year, but Aaron Baer with the Center for Christian Virtue said his group is opposed because it doesn’t have an opt-out requirement for parents and doesn’t prevent some groups from providing the educational materials.
“A lot of this curriculum, the sexual violence prevention, is the same people like Planned Parenthood or SEICUS that want to teach inappropriate sexual curriculum to children at young ages,” Baer said.
Versions of the bill have failed in five previous legislative sessions. House Bill 105 is the latest Ohio iteration of “Erin’s Law” (passed in Illinois in 2010), Erin’s Law has been adopted in some form by 37 states. named for author and activist Erin Merryn. Merryn, now a spokesperson for the National Children’s Alliance, was sexually abused for six years as a child; as an adult, she advocates for schools to teach children personal body safety in order to prevent sexual abuse.
Note:
The bill would require schools each year to provide age-appropriate instruction in child sexual abuse prevention for grades K-6, and age-appropriate instruction in sexual violence prevention education for grades 7-12. Parents or guardians would be notified of the scheduled lesson and allowed on request to inspect the instructional material.
The state Department of Education would offer links on its website to help schools develop their curricula.
Schools would have to include training on recognizing and reporting child sexual abuse into their required in-service training for teachers and other professionals. Instruction in preventing abuse would have to include information on counseling and resources for children who are sexually abused.
The Ohio Education Association, which represents more than 121,000 teachers and other education professionals in the state, remains cautious about HB 105 as a sensitive topic, Director of Government Relations Director Steve Dyer said.
On October 5, 2021, Sally Dyer told her own story to members of the Ohio Senate Primary & Secondary Education Committee, urging them to pass House Bill 105. Dyer, a Dayton resident and childhood sexual abuse survivor herself said she has testified in favor of those bills repeatedly since 2016.
(Dyer's youngest sister had also been a victim of sexual abuse starting at age 5. Her sister suffered immeasurably – including dozens of suicide attempts, hospitalizations, self-mutilation and eating disorders. She killed herself when she was 45.)
That day, Dyer testified …
“I grew up in an affluent Cincinnati neighborhood, the middle child in a family of 6 children. I was molested from the age of 7 -12 years old by my oldest brother. I kept my secret for more than 14 years, afraid to tell anyone, first under threats from my brother that no one would believe me, and later out of shame and the false belief that I had survived the abuse unscathed.”
(Sally Dyer. HB 377. December 12, 2017 HB 377 Testimony.)
In the early 1980’s when she worked as the Coordinator for the Child Abuse Review and Evaluation Team at Children’s Medical Center in Dayton, Dyer's team attended an all day workshop on incest.
Dyer continued …
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘they are talking about me, but I’m OK.’ That false sense of being OK was shattered when I began experiencing flashbacks a couple of years later. I finally told my secret to my best friend, my husband. I was 26 years old. With his encouragement, I persisted over the course of 12 years and 5 different therapists to come to terms with the abuse and to heal. I have no doubt today that the abuse I experienced would have stopped sooner and my path to healing would have been so much easier if I had felt safe to disclose my secret to one of my favorite teachers in elementary or middle school.”
(Sally Dyer. HB 377. December 12, 2017 HB 377 Testimony.)
While serving as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate, Guardian Ad Litem) volunteer for 18 years, Dyer was privileged to represent dozens of children before the Montgomery County Juvenile Court. Sexual abuse was part of the story of many of the children she served. She wanted to tell the committee about one in particular. It was the same story she had told in 2017 for testimony of HB 377.
She begins …
“I was appointed to advocate for Robert when he was 10 years old. (She did this for eight years.) By that time, he was living in his third foster home. Robert’s story is one more tragic tale of how childhood sexual abuse can ruin a life if left undisclosed or untreated.
“In short, Robert was sexually abused multiple times by multiple people, while he was with his birth family as well as while he was in the custody of an agency that was supposed to protect him. After experiencing unreported abuse earlier in his childhood, Robert came in contact with a pedophile that had been featured on 'America’s Most Wanted' television program and had skipped bail in New Jersey only to end up in Dayton. Robert first encountered this pedophile at the home of a family member, but the abuse continued even after he was removed from his family and placed in a foster home.
“While Robert bravely testified to the grand jury against his perpetrator, I am sure that if Robert had felt safe to disclose the earlier abuse by family members to a trusted teacher, he would have been better equipped to avoid further harm when he later came in contact with this ruthless pedophile.
“My relationship with Robert continued after he was emancipated and “aged out” of the foster care system. Robert’s early childhood trauma led him down the path of addiction - which he told me helped him 'forget the pain' of the trauma and abuse he had endured throughout his childhood.
“The last time I saw Robert was in April of this year at a residential drug treatment program, one that his probation officer had been able to get him into following a 3 month stay in the county jail. I had high hopes that he would finally be able to tackle his long history of sexual abuse with a trained therapist on a regular basis and hopefully find the ever elusive sobriety and happiness that he had been in search of for most of his life - and that he deserved.
“I learned that Robert had left the program the day after we spoke and became another statistic 4 weeks later. On May 24, 2017 he was found dead - a victim of a heroin and/or fentanyl overdose behind a car wash in North Dayton.”
(Sally Dyer. HB 377. December 12, 2017 HB 377 Testimony.)
As written, the bill gives the Ohio Department of Education authority to choose the resources for age-appropriate training on sexual abuse and violence prevention.
(Jo Ingles. “Bill To Have Ohio Schools Teach Kids About Sexual Abuse Faces Opposition. The Statehouse News Bureau. November 22, 2021.)
On December 5, 2021, the Senate passed legislation – Senate Bill 201 – sponsored by State Senator Stephanie Kunze (R-Hilliard), which will improve the efficiency and tracking of sexual assault kits through the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
Senate Bill 323 will require the Attorney General to develop and maintain a statewide system to improve transparency around the collection, submission and analysis of sexual assault evidence kits.
"As we continue to help victims of sexual assault rebuild their lives, it is imperative that we provide them the ability to check the status of the testing of their rape kits, discreetly and respectfully," said Kunze. "My hope is that through this effort, we will help these victims with emotional healing, closure and a journey to move forward from their horrific experience."
The "Ohio Attorney General's Sexual Assault Kit Tracking System" will give those who have undergone a sexual assault forensic examination the option to anonymously track the status of their rape kit evidence by entering a barcode number into a free, online program.
The legislation seeks to require all agencies involved in the chain-of custody, of the sexual assault kits, to participate in the tracking program. This statewide system is being paid for by funds identified by the Ohio Attorney General’ s office and will not require monies to be allocated by the Ohio General Assembly.
Senate Bill 323 will now be sent to the Ohio House for further consideration.
(Stephanie Kunze. “Senate Passes Bill Supporting Victims of Sexual Assault in their Pursuit of Justice.” The Ohio Senate: 134th General Assembly. December 05, 2018.)
Conclusion
God bless these student advocates protesting for victims of sexual abuse. It is evident the general public and specifically schools must acknowledge this widespread criminal activity and pass new legislation to address it. The victims of abuse and their advocates are speaking out and demanding immediate, warranted action. It's about time for all of us to join them in evoking needed change.
When lifetime risk, annual incidence, and annual economic burden of sexual violence is compared with other major public health issues in the United States – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS – public funding data from 2013 showed although sexual violence is as prevalent as and more costly than are these other major public health issues, it receives a fraction of the public funds that they receive.
(Randall Waechter, PhD and Van Ma, Bsc. “Sexual Violence in America: Public Funding and Social Priority.” Am J Public Health 105. December 2015.)
Imagine. Every 68 seconds another American is sexually assaulted.
(Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. “National Crime Victimization Survey, 2019.” 2020.)
Sexual violence is notoriously difficult to measure, and there is no single source of data that provides a complete picture of the crime. According to a Justice Department analysis of violent crime in 2016, 80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported.
At the same time, false accusations of rape or sexual assault are rare. Research shows that rates of false reporting are frequently inflated, in part because of inconsistent definitions and protocols, or a weak understanding of sexual assault.
One of the most shocking facts about sexual assault is that approximately only between 2-10% of sexual assault reports filed have been proven false.
(David Lisak, Lori Gardinier, Sarah C Nicksa, and Ashley M Cote. “False allegations of sexual assualt: an analysis of ten years of reported cases.” Violence Against Women 16. December 16, 2010.)
Ohio must address sexual violence prevention with new zeal. It is evident some right-wing supporters like the Center for Christian Virtue have consistently resisted efforts to stop the sexual abuse by falsely stating bills like House Bill 105 provide no option for parents to opt their children out of the program and essentially teach them about this issue. This is not true. According to state Rep. Scott Lipps, R-Franklin, previous versions of the bill have had an “opt-out” option.
In fact, the Center for Christian Virtue urges parents to write Ohio lawmakers to vote “no” on HB 105. Their website says: “Your Ohio lawmakers need to know that HB 105 will not protect our children from sexual abuse, but will both expose children to explicit sexual content and deny parents the right to direct the upbringing of their children.”
Such legislation will not “deny parents” that right. If truth be known, these ultra-conservatives are afraid of scientific instruction – particularly that which may touch on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender roles. They link education models to initiatives of Planned Parenthood and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
Please, let's set the record straight.
Homophobia has no place in our education system. Over the last 15 years, lawmakers and school administrators have increasingly recognized that LGBT youth are a vulnerable population in school settings.
As a community, LGBTQ people face higher rates of poverty, stigma, and marginalization, which put them at greater risk for sexual assault. The group also faces higher rates of hate-motivated violence, which can often take the form of sexual assault.
LGBT people are nearly four times more likely than non-LGBT people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to a new study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. In addition, LGBT people are more likely to experience violence both by someone well-known to the victim and at the hands of a stranger.
(Andrew R. Flores, Lynn Langton, et al. “Victimization rates and traits of sexual and gender minorities in the United States: Results from the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017.” Science Advances. Vol. 6, No. 40. October 02, 2020.)
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, nonbinary or otherwise gender non-conforming (LGBTQI+) youth and those perceived as LGBTQI+ are at an increased risk of being bullied. Results from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) show that, nationwide, more U.S. high school students who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) report having been bullied on school property (32%) and cyberbullied (26.6%) in the past year than their straight peers (17.1% and 14.1%, respectively).
(Robert R. Redfield, MD. “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance – United States, 2019.” Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. Supplement / Vol. 69 / No. 1. August 21, 2020.)
Let the record also show that in many states and school districts, LGBT students and teachers lack protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In others, protections that do exist are inadequate or unenforced. The risks for abuse are evident.
And, in addition to physical abuse, this lack of protections undermines a number of fundamental human rights, including LGBT students’ rights to education, freedom from discrimination, access to information, free expression, association, and privacy.
As transgender and gender non-conforming students have become more visible, too, many states and school districts have ignored their needs and failed to ensure they enjoy the same academic and extracurricular benefits as their non-transgender peers.
Ohioans, the children are calling out for help. Only the most callous individuals will turn a deaf ear to their pleas. Those who cloak their prejudices and push political or religious agendas instead of supporting action for all youth stand in the way. Let's push the imposters aside and pass needed legislation. No one … NO ONE should have to endure the threat of sexual abuse. Those who perpetuate such criminal activity deserve a special place in hell.
bone
by Yrsa
Daley-Ward
From One
who says,
“Don’t cry.
You’ll like it after a while.”
and Two who tells you
thank-you
after the fact and can’t look at your face.
To Three who pays for
your breakfast
and a cab home
and your mother’s rent.
To Four
who
says,
“But you felt so good
I didn’t know how to stop.”
To Five who says giving
your body
is tough
but something you do very well.
To Six
Who smells of
tobacco
and says “Come on, I can feel that
you love this.”
To those who feel bad
in the morning yes,
some feel bad in the morning
and sometimes they tell
you
you want it
and sometimes you think that you do.
Thank heavens you’re
resetting
ever
setting and
Resetting
How else do you sew up
the tears?
How else can the body survive?
When Yrsa Daley-Ward wrote the poem “bone” years ago, it came to her as many of her poems do: in the morning, just after waking up, and she wrote what hit her, in an attempt to tell the truth about something not often said.
The result is a poem that speaks plainly of sexual abuse through a series of numbered but unnamed aggressors who get away with what they do in different ways: “From One / who says, ‘Don’t cry. You’ll like it after a while,’” she writes. “And Two who tells you thank you / after the fact and can’t look at your face.”
Daley-Ward has been reading the poem aloud for years on tour for her poetry collection, also called “bone,” which first came out in 2014 and was just expanded and reissued.
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