Trigger Warning: This article discusses situations of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

It wasn’t my fault. It will never be my fault.

When I was in eighth grade, I was sexually assaulted in a classroom. Me and him, sitting innocently next to each other during study hall, my stomach filled with butterflies because he was sitting next to me. I liked him. Then, his hand slid down to my thigh and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. He smiled at me, and I felt like all of the troubled feelings rushing to my brain should’ve gone away with that one smile. They didn’t.

Deep down, I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t listen to myself. I thought only about his attention on me, his hand on my thigh, traveling higher and higher until I finally got up from my seat and left the classroom. I thought this signal would be enough, that he would understand that I didn’t want him touching me. It wasn’t.

After that, it became a routine. I would walk into the classroom, sit down and then he would sit down next to me. He would smile at me and ask me questions about his math homework as his hand found its familiar place on my thigh, then on my butt. Around me, I would look at my friends, silently pleading for them to notice something, anything. But they never did.

He took advantage of me and the fact that I was too scared to speak up. No one would believe me if I told someone about what he did to me. I could destroy his life by speaking about what happened, but I was frozen.

He took my safety, my confidence and my trust. I asked myself every single day when I came home from school, will it end tomorrow? Will I be able to tell him no? Everything on my body felt like it was no longer mine. With one touch, he owned me. He could manipulate me into feeling like what he did to me was normal, that I was the one who wanted it.

Now, I can speak up and I will speak up.

When people think about sexual assault, one of the first things they think of is rape. However, sexual assault is defined as any form of unwanted sexual touching, whether it ends at touching or escalates to rape. Sexual harassment takes on a broader definition from sexual assault, encompassing sexual or discriminatory comments, requests and sexual assault.

Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. Yet, no one really talks about the shocking statistics of sexual assault in our country. There is no sexual assault unit built into Wayland Middle School’s wellness curriculum. While there is a rape prevention and awareness curriculum built into the high school’s junior year wellness class, one class is not enough.

Given the fact that 8% of sexual assaults occur on school property and women between the ages of 16 and 19 years old are four times more likely to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault, there needs to be a change in Wayland’s wellness curriculums for earlier preventative education.

During wellness classes, WHS juniors are taught about sexual assault, harassment, rape, consent and dating violence. These topics are hard to learn about even if you aren’t a survivor, and they should be treated with the utmost delicacy.

Trigger warnings are not only considerate, but they are crucial in a curriculum as difficult as one about sexual assault. I never even knew what a trigger was until this year. I never knew that a single situation could cause my world to collapse within itself. I thought I had healed from my sexual assault, but with one triggering event, I was right back in that moment.

A trigger is something that sets off a memory of a traumatic event, bringing the person back to the event of the original trauma. This could cause a person to experience overwhelming emotions, physical symptoms or thoughts. There absolutely needs to be more awareness about what may trigger someone who’s survived assault, as well as a normalization of providing trigger warnings before difficult wellness classes.

I shouldn’t have to prevent myself from re-traumatization in a place where I should always feel safe. It is not my responsibility, but the responsibility of educators to make sure their students are comfortable and safe in school.

Most school administrators don’t know how to handle situations of sexual assault and harassment, plain and simple. There is no sexual assault and Title IX curriculum at WMS, which would have helped me tremendously when I was sexually assaulted. Throughout middle school, I learned about healthy relationships and communication, but I never learned about what to do if my guy friend puts his hand up my thigh during class. Wouldn’t that have been helpful?

When I got the courage to report my sexual assault, Title IX was a law that I became intimately familiar with. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX provides students with options if they’ve been sexually assaulted, harassed, raped or abused in a school setting. Some of these options include filing a formal complaint and getting academic accommodations, or just getting academic accommodations without filing a formal complaint.

After I was introduced to Title IX, my eighth grade experience got much better. He was removed from all of my classes, I was given an academic restraining order from him so that I’d never have to see him again, and the school conducted an investigation into the allegations of him sexually assaulting me. My friends and I were questioned by the principal and I told my story over and over again. However, one thing that I didn’t get from filing a Title IX complaint was closure. The school only gave him a week-long in-school suspension, and my whole sexual assault case was closed within the year, leaving me with the heavy question of, “was filing my Title IX complaint worth it?”

It was worth it. My story will not be forgotten.

I always thought that I was alone in my experience, but after listening and reading about survivors’ stories, I realized that I have immense power. More power than my eighth-grade self had. I have a platform now to share my story and raise awareness for sexual assault and harassment within schools, and I will use my platform because this topic is too important to ignore.

It’s important to me that no one ever has to go through what I went through without knowing that they have resources, rights and the power to speak up. To any victims that feel like they cannot speak up yet, please know that you aren’t weak. You are human. I’ll never be the same girl I was three and a half years ago, but I vow to use my experience to raise awareness and never give him power over me again.