Aragon Too is an ongoing project by the Outlook to bring light on sexual misconduct on campus. These stories contain sensitive material and graphic descriptions of harassment, assault, and its fallout.
James Veizades
Ninety-three percent of juvenile sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by those the victim is familiar with, be it friends, family or acquaintances, according to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network. Senior James Veizades’ story aligns with this statistic: all three of his perpetrators were close friends.
Veizades met his first perpetrator, Tiana*, when he was in the sixth grade. She was one year older than him, and the two became friends when Tiana confided in Veizades about her sexuality. They easily related to each other; however, Tiana outed Veizades’ sexuality — something he was even unsure of himself at the time. Tiana would make unconsentual physical and verbal advances towards Veizades, even though Veizades was uncomfortable. All the while, Veizades was struggling with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder and self harm.
“I was very uncomfortable with who I was,” Veizades said. “I would stay back in the locker room when everyone left so I could change.”
On one of those days. Tiana lingered in the locker room as well.
“She stayed behind and approached me and it all went from there,” Veizades said. “I wouldn’t count it as rape — I would count it as assault.” After the assault, Tiana and Veizades never addressed the incident, and Veizades waited for Tiana to graduate from middle school.
In eighth grade, Veizades met Merida*, and she became a part of Veizades’ close group of friends. He eventually realized that Merida had a tendency to make efforts to gain attention.
“She really liked attention, and she had to make everything about herself,” Veizades said. “She seemed to act sad to make everyone pay attention to her. That made me vulnerable because I thought she was hurting. I tried my best to protect her.”
Often when Veizades and his group of friends were together Merida would make non—consensual physical and verbal advances toward Veizades.
“She was all over me,” Veizades said. “I would tell her ‘no,’ and she would continue, saying ‘come on, come over, come over here,’ and I would tell her ‘no’ again. Then she would back away and act really sad, which made me feel sorry for her, so I would go back.”
Merida’s emotional manipulation made Veizades feel stuck in the situation.
“On one of the worst nights, all our friends were in the car and she had her hands on my thighs,” Veizades said. “I couldn’t do anything about it; all of my friends were in the car. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”
These incidents have led to a strain on Veizades’ mental health.
“I was already struggling with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder and self harm. I was drinking and taking pills, and I was at the lowest point in my entire life. I had already tried to kill myself at those points. The experiences with Tiana and Merida really felt like signs to just give up completely. I just really wanted to die. I just didn’t know how to get out of it. I had to go away to a mental hospital to deal with it because I was already trying to kill myself and I had a very distinct plan, but I got help in time,” Veizades said.
Even during Veizades’ recovery, Merida continuously tried to contact him, leaving a couple hundred text messages and voicemails.
“I finally cut her out completely and that helped me,” Veizades said. Yet, because of this, Veizades lost his friend group, and thus, his peer support.
“It was hard because a lot of my friends took her side because they have been friends for a lot longer than we have. Also they didn’t really know [about the sexual harassment and assault].”
Currently, Veizades is undergoing treatment for his post traumatic stress disorder.
“I still get a lot of flashbacks and dreams about it,” Veizades said. “I was laying in bed with [my current girlfriend] and in the middle of the night I shoved her off me and yelled, ’get off of me!’ Then I just broke down.”
According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, 21 percent of transgender, genderqueer and gender non—conforming college students have been sexually assaulted. Veizades, an activist for the LGBTQ+ community, came out as transgender during the summer before his senior year. Being transgender, Veizades often experienced gender dysphoria, where tension between his biological gender and personal gender identity causes distress. Aurora*, the third perpetrator, and Veizades met during this time, and she was one of the first people to know him as transgender. They were beginning a relationship when Veizades went away for the summer. Yet, Aurora kept in contact with Veizades while he was away.
“She’s kept hitting up my phone when I was away and she [wanted to see a movie],” Veizades said. “She told me that she wanted to see a movie she wouldn’t care about just in case like we ‘missed it,’ wink.”
After the movie, Aurora and Veizades went sat on a public bench, where Aurora made physical advances.
“She made a move on me, like jumped on me. She started kissing me and we were out in public. I was like ‘slow down a little,’ but she didn’t it. I told her, ‘hey, nothing more than kissing, don’t touch me, I am not okay. Let’s just keep it really simple,’ because that would be too much dysphoria for me. She didn’t listen and she was touching my chest,” Veizades said. “I pulled away again and said, ‘no,’ but she kept doing it. I kept telling her to stop, but she didn’t listen and then at some point it seemed pointless, and I just sat there. I felt completely empty.”
Reflecting on his experiences with sexual harassment, Veizades notes that his experiences affect him continuously.
“Every day when I wake up, and every day when I go to bed, there’s a few like minutes where I forget that it ever happened and then I feel it all over again. I carry it with me everyday. It affects all of my relationships, not just with, girlfriends but even friendships in general. I’m very closed off, ” Veizades said.
While talking about his traumatic experiences has brought him to become an avid supporter of those who experience sexual harassment and assault, Veizades often experiences emotional numbness.
“I never even know what’s wrong; I just feel everything and I can’t pinpoint it anymore,” Veizades said. “I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know what it is because there’s just so much. I just never want to talk about it, and I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
Regarding the MeToo movement, Veizades wishes that more people would support and believe survivors.
“There’s so much stigma about false stories and everything,” Veizades. “ It hurts to think that people wouldn’t believe anyone, because they have no idea what it is to like to go through that.”
Granger Brenneman
Throughout his four years at Aragon, class of 2018 alum Granger Brenneman was plagued by fears of isolation and rejection, caused by the harassment he experienced during his freshman year.
To this day, it affects almost every aspect of his life: his relationships, his ability to trust others, the way he looks back at his time at Aragon.
The harassment started in one of his classes during his freshman year.
“I initially thought [the harassment] was a hazing thing that happened to freshmen by upperclassmen,” Brenneman said. “I just didn’t think to tell anyone.”
At first, the incidents were minor, but enough to make Brenneman uneasy. “Just what one would usually hear,” he said. “Touching where it really wasn’t okay.”
The harassment escalated one day in class: “I remember one time he smacked the legs of a stool on my ass,” Brenneman said. “I think that’s the most graphic, notable one that stuck out in my mind.”
Even after the reoccuring harassment he experienced throughout the school year, Brenneman didn’t fully register what was happening. “At that moment, I thought maybe I was being picked on a little more, but nothing out of the ordinary,” Brenneman said. “Looking back at it, I was like, oh my god, I was bullied,’ and then later, ‘Oh my god, I was sexually harassed.’”
Brenneman only told his parents about the harassment.
“I feel like I should have [talked to someone], [but] I didn’t think that that option was available to me,” Brenneman said. “I assumed I was being [overly sensitive] about it. I think senior year, when I realized I was being bullied, I remember telling myself, ‘you should have gone to the admin about it.’”
While Brenneman wishes that the perpetrator had been held accountable, he believes that blame should not only fall on the harasser — but also on the bystanders who allowed it to happen.
“Now that I fully understand it, five years after the fact, I think the blame is more on the student body than anything he did,” Brenneman said.
While the incidents of harassment Brenneman experienced are unforgettable, it was the effects of the incidents that were — and are — everlasting.
“It affected me more after the fact than when it actually happened … It really affected my relationship with Aragon and how I viewed the community and my relationship with it.”
“I [became] distant … knowing that even if I did show a little bit of vulnerability they’d pounce,” Brenneman said. “I never could be weak around them.”
Looking back on the incident, he doesn’t think it could have been prevented, but it could have been stopped.
“I just want to be stuck up for,” Brenneman said. “I just wanted somebody to [tell me that] this wasn’t a community where that was supposed to happen.”
Until a few weeks ago, when he spoke up and agreed to share his story, it was a secret; a heavy and burdensome one. Fortunately, his harasser graduated after his sophomore year, and he didn’t have to face him every day. But whenever he did, it was a painful reminder of what it felt like to be silenced and ignored.
“We’d pass each other in the halls. It was actually really strange,” Brenneman said. “Once I hit sophomore year, he was pretty friendly with me. He tried to act as if nothing had happened, which only confirmed that [the harassment] was kind of a widespread thing that just happened.”
Brenneman has high hopes for what the Me Too movement could accomplish. But he believes it will require not just small changes, but cultural shifts in the ways that we deal with harassment and ultimately allow survivors to tell their stories; that it will require accountability and recognition of where our society (including our schools) have fallen short.
“I think a great strength of the Me Too movement was that it empowered the accusers to name those who had harassed them … [we need] to step forward and say, ‘He did this, and these people stood by and let him do it while he did it,’” Brenneman said. “If we don’t name names, if we don’t [call] out people in the community who are doing this, then we don’t put a face to the action.”
He believes that it is important that people realize sexual harassers are not just Hollywood millionaires or powerful politicians. They are our family members, our friends, our peers.
“We think it’s just some guy,” Brenneman said. “It could be anyone . Somebody that’s in their table group, somebody they have P.E. with, the guy who sits next to them in class.”
For Brenneman, telling his story serves a dual purpose: it allows him to reflect on his own experience, and, hopefully, encourages the greater community to reflect on how such experiences are perpetrated, perceived and punished.
“I needed to say it,” he said. “I needed to say it and have somebody from the school hear it.”
Whether or not challenging the culture of exclusion will change it — he’s unsure.
“I can only hope. But, you know, I’m not very confident.”
Judy*
Experiences that cause the victim to question themselves instead of a perpetrator is an unfortunate and common issue in instances of sexual harassment. Asking oneself what they did wrong, what they should have done differently and what could have been avoided all take a toll on one’s mental health — and can have detrimental effects on the victim. For one Aragon student, these effects seem permanent: Judy* finds herself anxious and fearful when at the location and similar ones where the harassment occurred, and although the perpetrator was punished and the harassment ended, these feelings persist.
As a student-athlete at Aragon, Judy practices at an outside training facility during her off season. It was there that she was approached by a trainer working for the facility, who offered to give her private lessons and urged her to hire him as her private coach.
“I would go to the [facility] every day, [and] he would always be there. He started giving me things and asking personal questions about my life, started commenting about my looks. It got weirder and weirder,” she said.
Eventually feeling overwhelming uncomfortable, Judy told her father about what had been occurring.
“My dad told me to make sure I was never alone with him, to stay out in public, and to let him know again if [the coach] did anything particular. But the coach started talking to my dad, he started to be friendly with him, trying to get my dad to hire him as my personal coach,” she said. “We never hired him. He would give me like private lessons, for free. I never even asked for them or anything, he would just come up to me, and his comments just kept getting weirder.”
While there was no physical contact, the verbal harassment continued. Judy never felt as though she needed to speak up, because she didn’t believe there was enough happening to constitute a report.
“He never physically harassed me, so I tried to brush it off and I thought it was fine. It had been going on for months and months at this point … if someone mentioned the [facility], I would kind of get really uncomfortable, even though I wasn’t even there,” she said.
As the harassment continued, it took a toll on her mental health. She found it hard to focus and maintain concentration at the facility where she trained and at locations that were similar.
“I would always look over my shoulder when I was there. I was always uncomfortable. I wouldn’t play well if I knew he was watching me. I actually noticed a change in myself; when I was in that area, it had a mental effect on me,” she said.
As Judy’s season began, his comments got worse.
“He told me that young girls liked to date older men because they knew how to give them a good time, and they knew how to treat them. He would say it in a way that was very suggestive, but I always thought that I was making it worse in my head, even though I wasn’t,” she said.
Her struggle with self-blame persisted.
“People started noticing and started asking me about it, and I would always say it was fine because I was actually embarrassed about it. I don’t know why I was embarrassed either, because it wasn’t like I did anything wrong. I think that I was always afraid that people would say it was my fault for letting it happen,” she said. “I don’t know why I never said anything to him, but he was in a position of power. Of course I wanted to get better, and he took advantage of that.”
After eventually filing a report with the school and police, proper action was taken. Judy had to go talk to counselors and give descriptions; yet, despite the lengthy process, she was able to take away new knowledge from a horrible experience.
“From my experience, it completely changed my outlook on sexual harassment,” she said. “The words he spoke to me and the way he made me feel, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. It was a sickening feeling.”
