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What Audrie Pott Can Teach Us: How Saratoga Can Succeed Where Steubenville Failed

Christine Bancroft |
April 13, 2013 | 11:30 a.m. PDT

Guest Contributor

Audrie Pott, 15, committed suicide in September after allegedly being sexually assaulted by three 16-year-old classmates. (Tumblr)
Audrie Pott, 15, committed suicide in September after allegedly being sexually assaulted by three 16-year-old classmates. (Tumblr)
It should be noted that although it is standard protocol not to release the names or photos of suicide or sexual assault victims, Audrie Pott’s family released her information to the media in the hopes that through Audrie’s story, others may come forward or avoid similar fates. Additionally, because the suspects are minors, their names cannot be released to the public. 

At the intersection of the two main roads of a town of some 30,000 people, there is a wooden, hand-painted sign saying, “Welcome to Saratoga.” Now, this town is flush with media personnel from all over the Bay Area and the nation, and my small, surburban hometown is being discussed by news outlets in London, New York and Washington.   

This is a place I lived for most of my life, a place nestled in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where most adults work for Intel or Sun or Apple or Google, and nearly everyone is upper-middle class and the students live carrying the burden of Ivy League schools, perfect GPAs and parental disappointment on their shoulders. This is a place where the high school football team is so predictably bad that they lost to the crosstown rival for 27 years in a row before winning once in 2011 and then beginning the cycle again. This is a place where the marching band and music department takes up over half of the student population. This is a place where the only claim to fame is that Steven Spielberg attended the high school for his senior year and called it "hell on Earth."

Welcome to Saratoga, California.

Welcome to the town some media sources are calling "the new Steubenville."

At one time, this place was also home to 15-year-old Audrie Pott. But Audrie Pott does not live there anymore, and has not since September 10, 2012, when she hanged herself after being sexually assaulted at a small house party by three 16-year-old classmates. 

She was on the girls' soccer team, enjoyed art and music, loved horses and singing, and she died nearly seven months ago. 

It was Labor Day weekend when Audrie attended a party at a friend's house, where she and around 10 to 20 of her classmates were served liquor mixed with Gatorade, where she was allegedly sexually assaulted by at least three attendees. Two of them were also Saratoga High sophomores; the other, a recent transfer from Saratoga to nearby Gilroy's Christopher High School. During and after the attack, explicit photographs were taken of her body, and in response Audrie posted this on Facebook: "The whole school knows…My life is ruined."

A little over a week later, Audrie was dead.

It's very easy to draw comparisons between Audrie's attack and suicide and the sexual assault of a 16-year-old unnamed victim in Steubenville, Ohio, where perpetrators Trent Mays (17) and Ma'lik Richmond (16) were recently convicted and sentenced to at least one to two years in a juvenile detention center. As the entire Steubenville community rallied in support for two of their star football players, protecting them in spite of their crimes, some individuals attacked victim "Jane Doe" by harassing her, calling her derogatory names and threatening her with physical violence or death.

But then, it's very easy to find similarities between Canada's Rehtaeh Parsons' 2011 attack and recent suicide, or the case of four football players from Torrington, Connecticut, sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls, which lead to a deluge of social media harassment against the victims.

Sept. 14, the Friday after her suicide, students at Saratoga High wore teal, her favorite color, in her memory. (via Kristen Zung)
Sept. 14, the Friday after her suicide, students at Saratoga High wore teal, her favorite color, in her memory. (via Kristen Zung)
There is one major difference, though, between Saratoga and the others, one that has been sensationalized and hyperbolized by media wandering disturbingly close to blatant falsification.

The student body, as a whole, did not know about the attack. The cyberbullying, whatever did occur (which I am sure did occur to some extent), was perpetrated, most likely, by a small group of individuals. Unlike what the lawyer representing the Pott family, Robert Allard, may say about the photos going "viral" online on Facebook, the photos were not uploaded to the social media platform; rather, it is far more likely that the photos were passed through text message and email. 

In Saratoga, there is a very specific sort of culture. It is not the Steubenville or Torrington "us versus them" mentality—where the students rally around each other and fiercely protect the mainstay of their culture, such as the football team. There is no protection at Saratoga. Frankly put, Saratoga culture generally creates an "every-man-for-himself" mentality. In a school of 1,300 or so students, if the whole population knew, there is no way it could have been kept silent for nearly seven months. Outside the group of people who facilitated the attack—Audrie's "friends", the boys and those bystanders who did nothing to help her—most did not know, and most certainly did not torment her. But "most" does not equate to all, and there were certainly those who did hold a large portion of responsibility for her death.

But to a traumatized young girl, the knowledge that there are photographs of her, somewhere, in the hands of someone she should have trusted, seems to warrant suicide. Even though the school may have not have known, she doesn't know who she can turn to. She must have felt like a pariah with her friends, not knowing who to trust, who would call her a "slut" if she told anyone. 

Suicide is never actually the answer, but especially to a 15-year-old who has been attacked and betrayed, it may have seemed like the only option. She felt trapped, but she had options that I wish to God she could have seen, because a little girl is needlessly dead. 

Saratoga has many issues, and many awful people, but they are not mindless, misogynistic sheep laughing and jeering along as a lamb goes to slaughter. They will cut you down or hack into a teacher's computer for an A, but a little girl attacked? If anything, the school has not banded together to protect the perpetrators; rather, they have come together in mutual disgust and outrage. And this is where Steubenville and Saratoga are markedly different, and where we can begin creating a paradigm shift away from rape culture, acceptance and excuse. Saratoga is ashamed and angry. But mostly, they feel sick—the students, the alumni, the parents and community members. Sick, tired and numb.

This memorial for Audrie was placed on the Saratoga High campus the day after her death. (via Tumblr)
This memorial for Audrie was placed on the Saratoga High campus the day after her death. (via Tumblr)
And that's hardly anything in comparison to what the Pott family must feel. Because their baby was taken from them by people she thought she could trust.

There were eight days to save Audrie, but most did not know, and those who did, did nothing to help. Those who were complicit in the attack and whatever cyberbullying happened should be punished to the full extent of the law (and then some, if the sentencing from the Steubenville trial is anything to go by). Those who did participate in the bullying should be severely punished accordingly.

No one has any desire to protect or sympathize with these boys outside of the small group of bystanders at the time of the incident. It's not much, the anger of the community, because there is still a little girl who died directly because of the alleged actions of her classmates, people she trusted and should have felt safe with. But it is a start. It shows others that rape is an unacceptable action. 

Although the heavy toll has already been taken, hopefully Saratoga will prove itself to be everything Steubenville was not. Nothing can change what happened to Audrie Pott. But we can decide how to punish those whose actions led up to her suicide, how to convict and sentence rapists for the crimes they commit, how to treat and support rape victims, and how to change "culture" to "outlier." 

As a society, we need to stop excusing and condoning sexual violence, sexism and misogyny as the "norm." We need to stop blaming the victim. Rapists do not deserve sympathy or pity. They gave that up when they made the decision, drunken or otherwise, to rape another person. 

These boys could have been anyone. Maybe, instead of saying, "It could have been my daughter, my sister, my wife," we should say, "It could have been my son, my brother, my husband." Because as women, the reality of our situation is that we have to be afraid of everyone, because one day, he could be the One. The One who doesn't take no for an answer, or thinks your body is his property and his plaything once you're unconscious, or thinks that because you've had too much to drink, you're fair game because obviously you brought this upon yourself. 

Not all men are rapists. Not all rapists are men. But when we look at a person, we don't know what they are capable of until after the fact. We don't know if they could be. For many women, rapists are not the boogeymen who lurk in dark corners. We walk across the parking lot with our keys between our knuckles in the hopes that the men hiding in the shadows can be fended off, and that you won't be blamed if you go to the bar and it turns out that "no" has lost its meaning.

Like Audrie, Rehtaeh Parsons also committed suicide. 17-years-old from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she was sexually assaulted at a party in 2011. (Tumblr)
Like Audrie, Rehtaeh Parsons also committed suicide. 17-years-old from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she was sexually assaulted at a party in 2011. (Tumblr)
And afterward, if the victim comes forward (many do not), if charges are filed, if it goes to trial, if they are convicted, then do not tell me to think about the promising futures they could have had. Do not tell me about how these stars could have had it all and it slipped through their fingers. Do not talk about this as though it is some accident. No one accidentally rapes another person, just as no one accidentally mugs a person, or accidentally kidnaps a child from a playground. 

Think about the futures Audrie Pott or Rehtaeh Parsons or any of the other millions of silent victims could have had.

I do not think that the three boys who forced Audrie Pott to her suicide will face jail time. I think that they will not suffer anything more than a slap on the wrist, a title of "sex offender" that they carry with them, incomprable to the titles millions of women and men carry with them for the rest of their lives—victim, survivor. Audrie and Rehtaeh and others whose rapists killed them, slowly, days, months, years after the fact—their titles will have to be carried with their loved ones, a lonely, heartaching, backbreaking burden. 

The boys should be charged as adults, because children do not sexually assault other children. If you are mature enough to commit a crime as adult as sexual assault, then you are mature enough to face the consequences and punishment as an adult. And they should be charged with manslaughter, and possession and distribution of child pornography, and sexual assault and sexual battery, to show that it is unacceptable to harm others and that it will not be condoned or excused. Set an example so that others will not follow and people can be saved before they are hurt.

At least we know Rehtaeh and Audrie's names; the weight that rests on the silent population of victims is one that we could not, as a whole, handle. All that disgust and fury and sadness, condensed into one survivor of a crime, one who is told that she or he is to blame. Justice can only be served to them in vague, unknown terms, against men who think they've gotten away with rape, or worse, don't even think they raped anyone at all. Because we live in a society that tells women to be both weak and submissive but also says that whatever harm comes to them is their fault. We tell boys that women are just hot pieces of ass to be batted about for the pleasure of men, and if women try to choose how to live or how to dress or how to act, they are told that they are tempting men and their evidently raging libidos. Men are not animals. Most men can control themselves without needing to control through sexual violence—

But she was drunk; she went to the party; she was flirting with him; she was wearing a short skirt; she is his girlfriend; she's slept with boys before; she's not a virgin with light and purity emanating from every pore—then it's her fault, not the fault of the men and boys who attack her. 

Audrie deserved the right, like all people, to be a teenager and to make the decision to drink or party with friends she trusted and not worry that her classmates would sexually assault her while she was unconscious. Teenagers are going to drink. It may be an idealistic, utopic goal to believe we can end sexual violence, but it's not an ideal to enforce strict punishments on those who commit it. We have a duty to do whatever we can to make it right in her name, and in the name of every other woman and man who awaits justice but fears he or she will never get it.

These boys may have made the decision to sexually assault a young girl, but if we condone it, let it pass by with just a tut-tut and rap on the knuckles, then we are just as much to blame. Condoning it only allows it to continue. Ignoring injustice allows it to continue, to fester and breed and spread and flourish. Punish the perpetrators, punish the bystanders, punish the bullies.

She deserved more than what she got. They all did.

Look out for your friends. Look out for your brothers and sisters. If you see something that disturbs you, do not stand idly by and allow it to happen. If someone cannot protect him or herself, then you should step in to help. If you cannot personally intervene, find someone who can. There were hundreds of ways we could have helped Audrie in the days before and after the attack, but none of them happened.

And now, the only words we have left for them, for Audrie and everyone else, are "I'm sorry" and "rest in peace," because the damage is already done. They did not know peace in their last days. So for their sakes, it is up to us, as a society, to give their attackers hell on their behalf. 

If you would like to support the Audrie Pott Foundation, a nonprofit organization created in her name to offer arts and music scholarships and to provide counseling for struggling youths, you can find their page here or find them on Facebook here. Rehtaeh Parsons' family as set up a page in her honor here. The Pott family is currently campaigning for a bill in her name that would enforce harsher penalties for cyberbullies. 

 

Guest Contributor Christine Bancroft is a Saratoga High alumna. Reach her here; follow her here



 

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