March, rally held for sexual assault survivors
Current, former Los Gatos High students protest ‘rape culture’ they say exists at school
LOS GATOS » About three dozen young people, many of them current and former Los Gatos High School female students, gathered in the city’s downtown on Aug. 10 to rally and march in solidarity with sexual assault survivors and to protest the “rape culture” many say exists at the school and the district’s lackluster response to complaints.
Holding up signs that read “Silence is not consent,” “Believe survivors” and “Reporting doesn’t ruin their lives, they did that themselves,” the student-led group From Survivors for Survivors and some of their supporters briefly blocked traffic on Santa Cruz Avenue before taking over the city’s public square, where several of the women told their stories of sexual assault.
Abbi Berry, a recent Los Gatos High graduate and co-founder of the group, told the crowd she knows firsthand the “intense emotional toll” that speaking up about sexual assault can take on survivors like her.
She was among several dozen students who gathered at the Los Gatos High School football field in July 2020 as part of a groundswell of support for survivors of sexual assault and harassment. Inspired by the events of last year, Berry said she and other survivors at the school have continued their fight to change
district policies.
“People are still talking about the shock waves we sent through town,” Berry said. “This movement did a lot, but it wasn’t easy. It took an intense emotional toll on us. At times we abandoned our emotional wellbeing for this fight. We should not have to rally and beg to be protected.”
Alaina Fox, a 2021 graduate and former editor of the school’s newspaper El Gato, said it became clear after the allegations began to surface that the school would not stand for stories critical of its investigative approach. She said she was “censored” multiple times and prohibited from writing about survivors’ stories or the school’s response.
“These are not isolated incidents, but a pattern of punishing anybody who tries to shed light on a decades-old problem, a pattern of protecting those who are responsible for the problems,” Fox said. “The administration’s strategy is and always has been to maintain a façade
of the prefect school that belies the endemic violence that is hidden underneath. The goal isn’t to make things better; the goal is to avoid having to deal with it.”
Eight members of Los Gatos High School and district administration attended the rally, along with all five members of the board of trustees, “to demonstrate support for our students speaking out against sexual harassment and assault,” Superintendent Michael Grove said in a statement on Aug. 11.
He said the district has “made a great deal of progress over the last year,” including revising board policies on Title IX investigations, approving an around-the-clock hotline for tips and reports, and implementing an ongoing four-year education curriculum about bullying and sexual harassment. The district also has hired an expert to support Title IX coordination and a new director of school culture.
“As we did with the survivors
event that we supported and hosted at Los Gatos HS in July 2020, we fully support our students in advocating for survivors of sexual assault and/ or harassment and we are proud of those who speak out against this behavior as it has no place in our community,” Grove’s statement said. “We continue to listen to and engage with our students to better educate our community and prevent this heinous behavior and to support those who are survivors of it.”
But former school district trustee Scott Broomfield — father of a Los Gatos student who alleges she was sexually assaulted by a classmate — told the crowd he is among those who have grown frustrated with the school’s response to sexual misconduct allegations. Broomfield said his family had to move away from Los Gatos after his daughter Lyssa — who also is a cofounder of From Survivors for Survivors — made a report about her assault.
“Everyone has a right to due process, but this is about accountability,” Broomfield told this news organization. “Every little small voice can make changes, so we just keep poking at the problem, and someday it will be better.”
Noting that most of those at the rally were young women, Broomfield urged young boys and men to “stand up, too.”
The rally also was meant to show support for two lawsuits filed against the school district and Catholic Diocese of San Jose over the past year. In January, a former runner sued the district and two ex-track and field coaches, alleging that she was sexually abused for more than three years.
The suit contends Los Gatos High School officials did nothing to stop Chioke “Chee” Robinson from sexually abusing the woman for years. Robinson was arrested two years ago on suspicion of sexually assaulting four girls over a 12-year period while he worked at Los Gatos and Piedmont Hills high schools.
A few months later, former
track star and current Fox Sports newscaster Heather Hennessy sued the schools in May, alleging that she was sexually exploited by Robinson starting in 1998 when she was a 14-year-old freshman at Archbishop Mitty High School. Hennessy tried to get away from Robinson by transferring to Los Gatos High, but he got a job there around the same time, the suit alleges.
Hennessy, who attended the Aug. 10 rally, said her abuse has “eaten me up from the inside out” for years, and now she stands up to make sure “this doesn’t happen to any child again.”
“Until I see the school district take a stand for what is right, I will continue to speak,” Hennessy said. “I was sexually abused and assaulted, and when I tried to speak out about it I was silenced. Things could’ve changed if I had been empowered at my school or just treated equally. School is made to guide you into the real world; it should not be a place where there’s a culture of abuse and manipulation of students.”