From a young age growing up in the FCPS district, administration has continuously told us throughout the years that if we need help they will be there to support us. They forgot to mention the fine print at the bottom though. I was sexually assaulted in the eighth grade by a boy who claimed to be my best friend and who I trusted at the time more than just about anyone. I was at our other mutual best friends house at the time and was taking a nap. I was about to fully drift off into sleep when he came and laid next to me. At the time I thought nothing of it, he’d never made a move on me before and neither had I, we were strictly friends in my mind. Until I felt his hand start moving up my thigh. I should’ve gotten up right then and there but I froze. Maybe he didn’t realize where his hand was? I moved my leg over a little bit and he quickly moved his hand back. At this point I thought it was a little weird but didn’t pay too much mind to it and started to try to fall back asleep. About three minutes later after he thought I was fully asleep, he moved his hand back onto my thigh and attempted to unzip the zipper to my shorts with the button to them following. I had pretended to wake up and got up immediately. Our mutual friend then came over and tapped him on the shoulder and he pretended like he was sleeping. I never mentioned it to him after that day because I was too scared to confront him. Three years later after I had heard that this is not the only time he had been sexually aggressive with sleeping girls and girls in general, I decided to text him. He told me that I was insane and he was raised better than that and then proceeded to block me. I decided to try and put it in the back of my mind realizing that he would not take accountability for his actions. About a month later I get a text in a group chat from my friend telling us that there is a girl that had been sexually assaulted while she was sleeping by him the previous weekend and that the girl wanted my friend to warn us to stay away from him. I talked to the other girls and they were reluctant , rightfully so, to report what he had done to them. I mean, this kid has a big name at Robinson, and being a victim of sexual assault is scary enough on its own, let alone report it when we knew that the chance of it being taken seriously by his peers and by administration was slim. One girl though, was comfortable enough to not only confront him but to tell her story to administration as well as alert them that there have been other girls. They told her that there was nothing they could do because it was not on school grounds. I know. Appalling right? How are we supposed to feel safe in school walking around the same hallways as our assaulters knowing that the school will do nothing? How are other girls supposed to feel comfortable and like their stories will be heard and matter, when the very people who have been preaching to us, “tell a trusted adult”, “we want a safe school environment”,  tell us it’s out of their hands and there’s no consequences for the boy? The other girls and I want justice and we want justice for every other girl who has been assaulted as well. We want to be heard and have our trauma be acknowledged by the people who claim to have our best interest at heart.  We don’t want to allow the cycle of sexual assault tolerance to be normalized any longer.