Our Stories Go Untold
Teenagers 16 to 19 years old are three and a half times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape
Dear Mr./Ms. President,
I am a high school student in this country, and I am writing to you to bring something very important to your attention. Sexual assault in college is often talked about, but sexual assault in high school is forgotten. Why? Who knows, since one in five female high school students report to be sexually assaulted. But the fear is real. The fear of walking outside alone at night, or going to a party. You have to be so careful. So leery of everyone.
https://www.nsopw.gov/en-US/Education/FactsStatistics?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
I live in close vicinity to where the Stanford rape happened, and where Brock Turner was released.
Three months early.
For “good behavior.”
After only a couple of months locked up.
When he deserved years.
He deserved so much more than the sentence he got. He deserved so much but got so little. It was an eye opening experience.
Also close to me, in 2012 a sophomore girl at Saratoga High School, Audrie Pott, 15, attended a party that had deadly consequences. She had told her parents she was staying the night at a friends, but went to a party and had been drinking. She drank too much too quickly and passed out upstairs. Three boys wrote nasty phrases all over her body, touched her in ways she hadn’t agreed to, and worst of all, took pictures which quickly spread around the school. A week after that party, she committed suicide.
What if that was your daughter, your niece, your friend, or any other important woman in your life?
Audrie Pott was one year older than me and that scares me. Of course there are things I can do to personally prevent that from happening to myself, but you can never really make sure of it.
Sexual harassment also has many negative effects. One in twenty girls are harassed so badly and feel so uncomfortable that they move schools, and 37% of girls feel like they did not want to go to school because of what happened. And that is not fair.
Teenagers 16 to 19 years old are three and a half times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, and Mr/Ms President, we need your help to stop this. You need to support and fund this cause, because without you, who will help these poor kids with stories nobody listens to until it is far too late?
Thank you,
Sarah