- Former high school students are speaking out against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system in North Carolina.
- They said they were silenced or scared into inaction after they came out with reports of sexual assault.
Editor's note: This story contains details of sexual assault.
Nikki Wombwell said she was 15 when an ex-boyfriend sexually assaulted her near their high school campus.
She followed him to the woods outside Myers Park High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, in October 2014.
She was hesitant. But her ex-boyfriend told her earlier that day that he had a gun and threatened to shoot himself unless she met him there after class, Wombwell recalled.
In the woods, she said she was raped, and afterward Wombwell, now 22, went to school officials to report it. But instead of help, she said she received a lack of concern.
Serena Evans was also 15 when she was raped in a boys' bathroom at Myers Park in October 2016, she told Insider. Afterward, she said she left the bathroom and went on to compete in a tennis match.
Days later, she and her mom met with school officials to report the assault.
Like Wombwell, Evans told Insider administrators tried to dissuade her from opening an investigation into the incident. She said administrators told her that she'd be the one who'd face suspension because she "broke the rules" by being in the boys' bathroom.
"That literally put the fear of God in me," Evans said.
Women on college campuses remain at a high risk of sexual assault. But sexual violence faced by young girls in high school often does not raise alarms, experts said, largely because cultural stigmas and systemic matters make the issue easy to ignore.
For years, Wombwell and Evans have spoken out publicly against their assaults, as well as against the school's response. They've detailed painful accounts of sexual violence to local media outlets. They've filed lawsuits in federal court.
They did all this because they feel their high school and its administrators did not — at the time — take their accounts seriously. Years later, Wombwell and Evans are starting to see what they're hopeful is the beginning of monumental change in North Carolina — spurred by years of testimony and relentless activism.
This past April, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education voted to fire Superintendent Earnest Winston, after an external investigator discovered complaints about the way he handled Title IX investigations, according to internal documents. And that same month, a former candidate running for district attorney vowed to look into cases of sexual assault in North Carolina high schools.
These events were "a step in the right direction," but there's still more work to be done, said Evans, who in June filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
Stigmas around sexual assault are '10 to 100 times as bad' when it comes to high school
University campuses oftentimes have several offices dedicated to providing safe-sex education. Multiple staff members are available to "advance sexual assault awareness and prevention initiatives," Dr. Stephanie J. Hull, the president and CEO of nonprofit organization Girls Inc. told Insider.
In high schools across the US, though, sex education isn't even guaranteed, and in some cases, it's come under fire.
In Illinois, for example, after Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law mandating that all schools teach sex ed in adherence to the National Sex Education Standards, one lawmaker called the move "over-the-top and obscene." And a Florida school board rejected sex ed textbooks that talk in part about pregnancy and having healthy relationships.
Fewer resources and a lack of support for such educational material mean that it might be harder for high school students to come forward with reports of sexual assault or harassment. High school students "require a great deal more courage, given the social stigma" and taboo behind being a survivor of assault, Hull said.
Other experts agree.
"If there were taboos on college campuses, it's 10 to 100 times as bad when you're talking about secondary school," said Shael Norris, executive director of SafeBAE, an organization working to end sexual assault among minors.
The most recent Department of Education data shows that reports of sexual assault from kindergarten to senior year of high school sharply rose between 2015 and 2018. There were about 9,600 reports of sexual violence in the 2015 to 2016 school year. In the 2017 to 2018 school year, that number rose to nearly 15,000, an increase of more than 50%.
Those figures are likely undercounted, experts say.
Norris told Insider that because school administrators and adults, in general, are averse to the idea of kids having sex before they reach adulthood, sexual assault at the high school level is rarely discussed.
"We're still a puritanical society when it comes right down to it," Norris said. "We do not want to think about kids in any kind of sexual context, consensual or otherwise," Norris said.
'I can't sit back and not do something about it'
In 2019, Wombwell filed a federal lawsuit against Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, alleging that the school district "responded with deliberate indifference" when she came forward.
According to the complaint, the school principal at the time, Mark Bosco, discouraged Wombwell from filing a report — telling her she'd get in trouble for having sex on campus if the boy was found innocent.
Then he "directly implied" to Wombwell "that she should just let the whole thing blow over in order to avoid this risk to her academic future," the lawsuit says.
Another time, he appeared to acknowledge that he knew of the potential for dangerous scenarios like sexual violence occurring on campus.
"Girls sometimes can go into the woods and don't come back happy," Mark Bosco, the principal at the time, told students at an assembly in 2016, according to Wombwell.
To her, this was an indication that the school was aware of Wombwell's assault in the woods but continued to turn a blind eye.
Neither Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools nor Bosco responded to Insider's request for comment.
In a deposition obtained by Insider, Bosco denied telling Wombwell that she could be disciplined for reporting the assault. Still, Bosco testified that he told Wombwell "if it's determined that you're going off-campus to have sex in the woods, that she could get in trouble."
She settled with the school in April 2021 in the amount of $50,000, according to an agreement obtained and viewed by Insider.
As part of the settlement, neither CMS nor Bosco was required to admit guilt. The school district, however, suspended Bosco with pay last August. He was reassigned to the district as the senior administrator of expanded learning and partnerships.
"Jill Roe" was the name Wombwell initially used in a lawsuit against her school district. But when she heard of Serena Evans' alleged assault at the school, she said she decided to reveal her identity.
"As long as this keeps happening to other young girls, then I can't sit back and not do something about it," Wombwell said.
Evans said after her assault in 2016 that the vice principal at Myers told her and her mother a suspension would go on her school record and would affect her ability to get into a good college.
"It's a form of bullying," Evans' mother, Kay Mayes, said in an interview with Insider.
Evans claimed that the school never understood the concern voiced by young girls.
Evans said school administrators made her feel like she could say no if pressured to have sex — a claim that has been demystified by sexual assault experts. At 5'2" and about 110 pounds, she felt small compared to the defensive-tackle football player who she said raped her.
In her lawsuit, Evans also said she's experienced sexual harassment at the hands of her male classmates. The boys, the complaint says, did "unwanted physical touching, including groping her breasts and buttocks."
Several teachers and administrators apparently witnessed the behavior, but when Evans reported it, the complaints were dismissed, her lawsuit alleges.
A school counselor, according to the lawsuit, encouraged her to "'ignore the boys' and to make concessions for their behavior since 'girls mature faster than boys do.'"
Both Wombwell and Evans said they've developed post-traumatic stress disorder. Immediately after the rape, Evans had an ovarian cyst burst, she and her mom told Insider. She quit tennis, her mom said, and she's never been able to get back into it. Her mental health got so bad that her mother moved her out of Myers Park, Mayes told Insider.
There's a need for more schools to revamp the way they think about and respond to assault, experts say
Roughly 20% of all girls will be a victim of child sexual abuse, according to 2010 data from The Department of Health and Human Services — which appears to be the latest available data available. And about 28% of all children between 14 and 17 are sexually victimized, the data says.
"Statistically, your chance of survival if you're sexually assaulted at or under the age of 14 is almost nonexistent," Norris of SafeBAE told Insider. That's because children can try to die by suicide or develop PTSD as a result of an assault, she added.
It's been years since the alleged assault, and Evans has since healed from the ruptured ovarian cyst. She's a junior now at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and she has become an activist for those going through what she experienced. But Evans said she's also drained, growing tired of fighting and having to explain herself or the rape to people in institutions that don't seem to take it seriously.
She still experiences panic attacks and painful flashbacks that she said force her to relive the trauma.
"I don't like to be home if my mom's not home," Evans. "Even if we're not talking, I just want her there. I want someone there."
More high school students are standing up — and speaking out
Norris, executive director of SafeBAE, said that walkouts like that are more common today than ever.
Students at Olympic High School in North Carolina, also part of the CMS district, protested as well. They orchestrated a walkout last October in protest of the school's decision to allow a football player accused of sexual assault to continue playing in games.
CMS said it would punish the students who planned and participated in the walkout.
However, about a week after the protest, the district's athletic director said student-athletes will be barred from participating in athletic sports while any charges are pending.
Similar demonstrations against sexual assault from high schoolers have taken place in Texas, Florida and Ohio.
Members of Gen Z are leveraging social media to call out abusers and demand change, Norris told Insider. And with in-person learning resuming nationwide, "kids are just straight up walking out of school" in protest of sexual assault policies, she added.
These walkouts and social media callouts have "moved the needle," galvanizing schools all over the country to be more proactive in reaching out to organizations like SafeBAE, according to Norris. Meanwhile, other CMS students continue to come forward with their own accounts of sexual assault on campus.
Insider previously reported that a 15-year-old girl had been suspended from school last November after telling administrators she had been sexually assaulted on campus.
The teenager told Hawthorne Academy High School officials that the classmate had inappropriately touched her in the bathroom. In response, school administrators reported the claim to police but also accused the student of filing a false report and suspended her from class.
The local police department investigated the incident, and the male classmate faced charges against a minor for sexual battery. Two top administrators have since been suspended with pay.
Though there's a lot of movement on the sexual violence against high school kids front, there's so much more to be done, Evans said, adding that the "whole system needs an overhaul."
"There are so many children's lives being affected permanently," Evans said. "What is it going to take?"