For the last week I’ve been reporting on allegations of sexual assault at Crieff High School but this is a problem right across Scotland.
I know because it happened to me.
Speaking to alleged victims about their trauma brought it home for me that I was a victim too.
My attacker was known to me only by name – he wasn’t in my year and we’d never interacted before.
And yet, surrounded by hundreds of other pupils and encouraged by his friend, he believed he had the right to grab me from behind and grope me in broad daylight.
I managed to fight him off but I’ve never been able to shake the fear of what could have happened had we not been outside a school with hundreds of eyes on us.
I felt far too vulnerable to continue towards my home so a friend escorted me back to the school where I immediately reported it to my head teacher.
I was lucky because she immediately believed and supported me.
But that isn’t something that happens in every scenario, and I can understand why some young women would feel too afraid or embarrassed to report sexual assault.
School sexual assault made me fearful
The brave stories from current and former Crieff pupils tell us girls and women still feel unsafe in areas like schools – the very places where we are supposed to feel safe.
I missed school for several days after I’d been assaulted.
When I decided to escalate it further with the police, I had to relay exactly where and how the boy had put his hands on me.
He’d meant it as a joke, he said.
But his idea of a joke has stayed with me almost 10 years later.
In the eyes of the boy’s family, I was the evil person trying to ruin a teenager’s life.
It became too much for me and I eventually dropped it – afraid of ruining someone’s life over a ‘joke’.
But he’d ruined mine.
He’d ruined my fearlessness.
We can speak up – but who is listening?
I, like thousands of other women, will always be fearful of walking home alone.
I’ll always feel afraid when a man is walking behind me.
But I’ve learned that if we don’t speak up for ourselves, no one else will.
The fact that girls are still being victims of misogyny, sexual assault and harassment in schools is shocking.
And it shouldn’t take a 16-year-old Crieff pupil to write an open letter before we all take notice.
Rebecca McCurdy is a reporter on The Courier’s schools and families team.
