First he made her feel uncomfortable, and then he tried to get physical. 

  

She told him he had a nice butt. Then she grabbed it, unwanted. 

  

The unconsensual relations between the he’s and she’s of the world are playing out in schools, grocery stores and workplaces everywhere.

  

One example can be found in the life of a student at Glendale. Katie Cheek, sophomore, started feeling uncomfortable when a boy she considered a  friend sent her unwelcome, explicit images. Eventually these pictures led into forceful physical action.

  

“We were friends for about a month before he started asking for pictures and sending pictures,” Cheek said. “Then a week or so after, he was physical.”

  

Many times when Cheek was waiting for her mom to pick her up from school, she would wait in this friend’s car. Other people would join them, except for one instance when she was alone.

  

“One time, he locked the doors and tried to put his hand down my pants,” Cheek said. “I found a way out, thank God, but it really traumatized me. After that, he would stand outside my house and wait for me to go out in the mornings. It was really crazy.” 

  

After Cheek’s experience, she felt unable to stand up for herself. 

  

“I was really scared because every time a close friend of mine would bring it up to him, he would deny it,” Cheek said. “I got really worried and felt like I didn’t have a voice at the time. I thought it was just going to go away, but it took a bit longer than I expected.”

  

A strong support system is what helped Cheek through that hard time. She wants to tell others who have been in similar situations that healing is possible. 

   

“I was actually doing a slam poetry thing for one of my classes,” said Cheek. “That really opened it up, and I could get my feelings out there. I started getting into music, and that really helped me. I had really good friends, and my family supported me through all of it.”

  

Cheek’s vulnerability to speak out has come from the movements to end sexual assault and abuse. She says she wants to do her part to let students know that sexual harassment does happen.

  

“With the ‘Me Too’ going around, I thought it was the perfect time to get my story out to everyone else who is going through the same thing,” Cheek said.

  

Cheek wants other students to know that they can persevere through sexual harassment. 

  

“It gets better,” Cheek said. “It takes a while, but it definitely gets better. When you get through it with your head held high, you are 10 times stronger than before.”

   

At Glendale, approximately one out of every two students have experienced sexual harassment in some form. Students also do not feel able to report sexual harassment and abuse done to themselves or to others (see infographic). With movements like “Me Too” and “Time’s Up”, there is a growing number of people who want to see the end of this epidemic. 

  

There are many definitions of sexual harassment and abuse. For Springfield Public Schools, it is defined in a category with other topics such as bullying and discrimination. 

  

“We have a board-adopted policy regarding harassment,” Dr. Natalie Cauldwell, Glendale principal, said. “We think of harassment in an umbrella with all kinds of harassment, which includes sexual harassment and bullying. We have really specific guidelines for harassment that say no form of discrimination for anyone based on sex, physical disability, race and ethnicity will be tolerated.”

  

Other detailed definitions can be found when looking into the statutes on sexual assault and harassment in the United States. The laws vary by state. The Missouri law mirrors that of the school district’s zero-tolerance policy. Penalties for rape and non-consenting sodomy include imprisonment, registry on the sex offenders list and fines. 

  

Dr. Diana Hassani is a certified sexual addiction therapist, based in Springfield, who also specializes in sexual abuse. She has worked with clients as young as three and as old as 75. In her line of work, Dr. Hassani works a lot with sexual trauma. Trauma is the title given to sexual events that occur before the brain can interpret them. 

  

“Anything where we are exposed to something sexual before we are old enough to understand that as sexual, our brain records as trauma,” Dr. Hassani said. “The part of our brain that actually records information as sexual doesn’t come online until post-puberty, and then that doesn’t completely finish developing until about age 25.”

  

Dr. Hassani uses an analogy when talking about what the brain does with those uncomfortable feelings that come from a traumatic sexual event. 

  

“In my world, the impact is what we look at,” Dr. Hassani said. “The impact of harassment I describe as a trauma tank. We have big-t traumas and little-t traumas. The big-t traumas are the things that anyone in the community would recognize as being a trauma. When we talk about sexual harassment, that’s the kind of thing that goes in one pebble at a time. It doesn’t matter if in your trauma tank there are big-t’s or little-t’s. It doesn’t matter if there are pebbles or boulders or grains of sand; it’s cumulative.”

  

There are different types of traumas that people encounter. Dr. Hassani describes sexual harassment and abuse as being on a scale. 

  

“The gradient goes from someone making a rude comment to rape,” Dr. Hassani said. “It’s all on there somewhere, and the brain processes it similarly. Does it process rape way more intensely than it would a negative or objectifying comment? Yes, but you are still being sexualized and objectified. You are not being looked at as a whole person if someone makes a comment that is sexually harassing.” 

  

A large reason why there are so many instances of sexual abuse and harassment today is because of the increased sexuality in the media. Women are portrayed as sexual objects and men are told to be sexual predators. Dr. Gail Dines, Emerita Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, gave a TED talk in 2015 about the effects of growing up in a “pornified culture”. 

  

“The culture is mass-perpetrating against our girls,” Dr. Dines said. “Perp-culture part two for the boys is the porn industry. Do you know that ‘porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined’? Just get your head around that. We know from studies that nearly 90 percent of the top-watched rented scenes have at least physical or verbal abuse against the woman…. Our children are worth more. Our culture is worth more. Our boys are worth more and our girls are worth more.” 

  

This promotion of sex does not show children and teenagers what it means to have healthy sexuality. There are six stages of intimacy that make up healthy sexuality. 

  

“Intimacy is where we connect with people,” Dr. Hassani said. “We can have intimate connections with people at a cliché level. At the cliché level, it is, ‘Oh hi. How are you?’ ‘I am well.’ The next level deeper is where we have details. We feel safe to share details with that person. The next level of intimacy is thoughts. I’m willing to share my thoughts with you, and we can sit and have philosophical discussions about my thoughts. The next level, which is even deeper, is our feelings level. When we are talking about feelings, now we are talking about relationships. The next level is my desires. When I am in a relationship where I can share my desires, then I can tell what my hopes are and what I want. The deepest level is physical. Now I’m willing to share my body with someone. I am willing to share what I think about my body, how my body feels and what the desires for my body are. When we can go through that whole list and we can have cliché, detail, thought, feeling, desire and then physical, now we have healthy sexuality.”

  

As a society, the desire to end sexual abuse is evident. The “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” movements have been making headlines. The desire of these movements is to bring awareness about sexual abuse and to allow people to know they are not alone. The online aspect of this, however, may be more damaging than helpful to victims of sexual assault. 

  

“It is very easy to hide behind a keyboard and say, ‘Me too,’” Dr. Hassani said. “Now you feel like you have shared deeply. I’m way down in feelings. Maybe I’m down in desires. Maybe I’m even to a physical place if it was actual physical abuse. I have shared physically. Now it’s out there for everyone to see, and I’m feeling traumatized again. It’s very retraumatizing for people not to have that safety.” 

  

How then, does the end come to sexual assault? The answer is in vulnerability. As a society, victims of sexual abuse need to feel safe and able to be vulnerable about their experience. The conversation needs to continue in healthy ways. Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at University of Houston, has researched human connection for over 12 years. In both 2011 and 2012, she gave TED talks on the power of shame and vulnerability. 

  

“Vulnerability is not weakness, and that myth is profoundly dangerous,” Dr. Brown said. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. I have come to the belief that vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.”  

  

At Glendale, Dr. Cauldwell and the other members of the administration want school to be a safe environment. Dr. Cauldwell hopes students feel able to speak up and continue the conversation. 

  

“We really want the opportunity to help students feel empowered to take care of themselves,” Dr. Cauldwell said. “That is the message that I want for students to have. We are here to help kids. Hopefully they will feel a level of trust with us so they can come to us and let us know when they are not feeling safe at school or they’re being harassed. That way we can help them navigate those situations.” 

  

In Dr. Hassani’s work, she has discovered some trends in the likelihood of boys and girls coming forward after being sexually assaulted. 

  

“Anecdotally, we see more girls reporting sexual harassment and sexual abuse at the time that it happens,” Dr. Hassani said. “We see more boys internalizing it or not naming it abuse. Then it becomes something that festers inside and results in problematic behaviors later. The men that I see had traumas, little-t’s, big-t’s, early in life before the brain could process it as sexual.”

  

One reason why boys often feel the need to keep quiet is because of the expectation of boys not to feel. In an interview with NBC News over “toxic masculinity”, Dr. Niobe Way, Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, shared the belief society has that only girls can feel.

  

“The culture has created the problem,” Dr. Way said. “We have taken basic human capacities, which are to think and to feel, and we’ve given them genders. We have made thinking into a masculine thing and feeling into a feminine thing. We raise boys in American culture to disconnect from that need [to feel]. Boys are human, and they have the enormous capacity to be connected to their feelings. We need to be nurturing those capacities and nurturing those relationships.” 

 

Empowering men and women to share is all that society can do to help end this injustice. The next step can only be taken by those who are comfortable and ready to move on. They can begin to heal when they can share in a safe and healthy environment what they have gone through. Perpetrators of sexaul assault can also seek help. 

  

“I think the biggest thing about any kind of sexual harassment, sexual abuse or sexual addiction is that feeling of isolation,” Dr. Hassani said. “I think it’s important that people know there are resources, that there are places where you can seek help. It is really important that you are not alone. It is not just you.”

 

To find the names and contacts of counselors who specialize in sexual abuse and addiction, including Dr. Hassani, one can go to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists. There are also hotlines people can use to share their experiences. The phone number of the National Sexual Assault Hotline is 1-800-656-4673. At Glendale, students who feel comfortable are more than welcome to speak with a counselor or member of the administration.