I Was Raped By My Friend At School | A Surviving Story - video Dailymotion

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Today on Unfiltered Stories, we share Georgeta Rae's story. Georgeta was in music school when she was sexually molested by her TA for the first time. Later, in her sophomore year, she decided to give her male friend a place to sleep in her dorm room, but he ended up raping her.   Our guests sit down with their loved ones to discuss their real-life secrets, difficulties and traumas for the first time. Here, we embrace vulnerability and we celebrate what makes us different, without shame or judgement. Welcome to Unfiltered Stories, it’s time to start healing. 🌅   #survivorstories #unfilteredstories   Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.  Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.  By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.   🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅  Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB  Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT  Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN

Transcript

00:00I'm Georgetta Ray and this is my story as a rape and sexual abuse survivor.

00:04We grew up in Denver, Colorado. We grew up Jewish, so we were mikvud or baptized into the Jewish

00:09religion when we were first adopted. And we grew up, went to a Jewish day school. I went to a

00:16middle school that was for the arts. And then I went to a high school, same high school,

00:21Denver School of the Arts. I became a band major. And then I realized that I really wanted to do

00:26music and the arts. And so I quit my sports. I retired from ski racing after a few years and

00:31decided that's what I was going to focus on. I auditioned for a bunch of different schools,

00:35got into Berklee College of Music, and I went there mostly because my band teacher really changed

00:44my life and narrative on some of the things I had gone through. And he was somebody that

00:48I really looked up to. And he went to Berklee College of Music. I met the TA in a guitar

00:54class.

00:54It was a music theory class that I had to take. The TA was also a senior. For me, I

00:59was a first

01:01chair flu. You know, I wanted to take this advanced theory class, and I did. And it was at a

01:07time

01:07that I wasn't really going to lunch or anything. It was also at a time I wasn't eating as much,

01:13so I wasn't going to lunch. So I was practicing in the practice rooms or I was, you know, doing

01:17whatever. So he would tutor me, you know, play music with me. And again, he was also technically

01:23a student, but he was working as a TA. It got to a point where he started making those

01:28sexual advances and taking advantage of me sexually, you know, like in the little corridors

01:33away from the camera. It's hard to see. Just telling me basically what to do or just touching

01:39me without any kind of conversation. And I was 15. I had not had sex. For me, I didn't have

01:47that

01:47actual knowledge yet. You know, he would say that I could excel in class. You know, I was just

01:52little things like that. I was thinking, okay, maybe he'll make my grade better. Yeah, it was

01:55just, I also didn't have enough friends to where I could afford to lose any kind of social connection.

02:03I was scared of upsetting him. I was scared of making him mad. And then it kind of came to

02:07a peak

02:08one day. It was in the evening. It was super late. I was like practicing super late. And he offered

02:14to drive me home. And so, but he parked in this alley and that's where he forced me to do

02:20sexual acts to him. I didn't even tell anybody until the next day. I can't remember. It was so

02:24long ago that it was 12 years ago. So I can't really remember how I got home or anything, but

02:28definitely got home. And this friend of mine, um, well, this acquaintance of mine at the time,

02:33he walked up to me and he asked me, you know, if I was okay and everything. And at that

02:39point,

02:39just something felt so wrong in my gut about what was going on that I just told him, this is

02:45what

02:45happened. He basically said, he's taking advantage of you. This needs to stop. But at the end of the

02:51day, I get called into the principal's office and there's police officers. There's my parents.

02:57There's the principal. And my friend had told them. And so I had to file the report. He got suspended,

03:05but I tried to kill myself. So I was in a hospital for two weeks. And by the time I

03:15got back,

03:15he was back in school, the teacher, the guitar teacher, the one that he would help pulled me

03:21aside one day into the empty choir room. But he said, uh, so you were in an uncomfortable situation

03:27and this is how it ended up. That's not okay. You ruined this guy's life. Da, da, da, da. It

03:32was

03:32almost, it was almost, he flipped a switch in my brain and my very confused teenage brain where I had

03:39to apologize to the TA. If you fast forward a couple of years, I get a call. I want to

03:44apologize.

03:45I want to have a conversation and I'm going to be open and say that he and I started talking

03:51again.

03:52So eventually, finally, I was like, I can't, this is enough. You know, I'm, you know, it was

03:57in and out of my life for a while and it just didn't make sense. And so it was very

04:01back and forth.

04:02I liked talking to this person. I also hate this person because of what he did. And so it was

04:06confusing. Back at that time, I, like, the woman was always the liar, you know, in those situations.

04:13And it was like, well, what did you do? And so that was something that I basically had to deal

04:19with just the rest of high school. Going from high school, getting out of Denver to college in Boston

04:26was awesome. Oh, I was so happy. I, you know, was able to just be myself in a way that

04:32I couldn't

04:33be in Denver. When I got there, everybody had the same goal. Everybody just wanted to play music.

04:37It was a very just basic thing. There were no mean dancers. There were no mean theater kids.

04:44There were no docs. There was nothing, you know, it was just musicians. And I met a lot of people.

04:50And of course, you're not going to like everyone. Not everyone's going to like you. But for the

04:54most part, everything was very simple and very nice. I was a very studious person. And so I really

04:59connected with other studious people who were just practicing and working. So leading up to

05:04sophomore year, so first year, pretty much without a bang. Sophomore year, I had met a whole other

05:11group of friends, a great group. And there was somebody in the group who, um, he was very personable.

05:20And for me, I thought he was nice, but I wasn't as drawn to him as everybody else was, I

05:27would say.

05:27He and I, like, got along as friends. We played music. At the time, I didn't have a roommate because

05:33my first roommate, who I adore, uh, she didn't end up, uh, staying because she had some, uh, issues and

05:41she had to go home. And so a lot of the time, the group would hang out in my room.

05:45One night,

05:45it was two in the morning, I think, around, I get a call. So, you know, he calls me at

05:51two in the

05:52morning and he says, I got locked out of my apartment and I can't go back inside. And it was

05:56October. It was cold. It was Boston. I was listening and I was like, I don't know because the,

06:03you know, the visiting hours are closed. I don't even know if I can get you in here because he

06:07wanted to see if he could just crash in the extra bed. I wanted to give him a place to

06:10crash.

06:10And so, uh, he, you know, he got up and I said, you know, here's the extra bed,

06:15you know, I'm going to bed. And he immediately crawls into my bed. So I, you know, and I was

06:20already in my bed and I was just like, get, you know, please get out. You kind of do not

06:25want you

06:25to be here right now. And he said, I just want to sleep. The rest of it kind of just

06:29happened in

06:31seconds almost. And it was very just aggressive and rash. And before I knew it, the guy was on top

06:39of

06:39me and I was, and I was just, you know, thinking I'm, I have no idea what's happening. I was

06:45really

06:45tired. I was starting to wake up a bit and I kept telling him to stop, stop. And something that

06:50always will come to my head is him saying, no, no, no, you want to have sex. You won't have

06:54sex.

06:54And just, you know, kept going for it. Eventually he did end up breaking me. And I was looking up

07:00at

07:00the ceiling, just thinking how, like, what is going on right now? And I eventually came to and

07:06went into flight. So I was able to get him off. And so I ran into the bathroom. He kept

07:12banging on the bathroom door, trying to get me out. I felt very threatened. And so I tried to

07:17call the security, the campus security, no answer. So I called this guy that was part of

07:24our friend group who had a bunch of other guys, though I knew it would be up and drunk. So

07:27I

07:28figured, you know, maybe they can come and get him out. Essentially he left, grabbed his

07:32shoes. He left at this point. I was still in the bathroom, just hiding, screaming at

07:36him, trying to get him out. We call, we had two friends stay on my floor, you know, that night

07:40and stay with me, which was very nice of them. And we called the security, the public security,

07:48finally comes to get me to file a statement, everything of that sort. Take pictures. I did

07:53have some like cuts and bruises on my legs, on the back of my legs because of the bar from

07:57the bed.

07:57I got a rape kit, did all that. About a day later, I get called into the office, the counselor.

08:04She says, she gives me these pamphlets of my options and all this stuff and, you know,

08:09tries to get the story, tells me what her follow-up's going to be. I don't hear anything for months.

08:16And months turned into a year. And between that year, I ended up taking a semester off from school

08:23because my eating disorder got really bad. And so I ended up leaving because I was so stressed

08:29seeing him. He kept constantly trying to intimidate me in the area, outside the gym. And it just got

08:35to a point that I couldn't be there anymore. So I, so after taking a semester off, I come back

08:41in the

08:41fall. I still haven't heard anything from counseling, anything. And almost a year to the day, maybe a

08:48little bit later, we did something called the Think About It course. And the Think About It course was an

08:53online course that educated students on the dangers of alcohol, drug use, assaults, you know, all of

09:00that. And it became a graduation requirement. So everybody had to take this, I think, four-hour

09:06online course. And at the end, they asked for feedback. And one of the pieces of feedback was

09:12about the recording system. And I'm sure pretty much anybody who knows me would not be surprised

09:17that I let it loose in that feedback form. And I get a call from the new, I don't know

09:23if he was new

09:24or if the college just didn't ever tell us this existed, but the chief of equity, but he reached

09:31out and he said he wanted to talk in person. So we talked in person. He said, I can open

09:37the case

09:37again for you if you would like. I had to basically relive it, tell my whole story again, which was

09:42not

09:42the best thing. Things were really tough because this was just in my circuit so often, you know,

09:48with classes and everything. So they ended up changing my schedule instead of his to keep me

09:54away from him, which was very frustrating because those were classes I had handpicked to take. And

09:59then I had to change my whole schedule and they didn't change his. So I ended up winning the case.

10:03I mean, I got the, I didn't get the decision until spring of that next semester. So I had to

10:11go

10:11through this process for months. And so the way that Joe wrote it was, he said, on this situation,

10:18being accused of harassment, the school finds responsible. And so each point that they were

10:24saying abuse, assaults, battery, all these things were, all these things were found response.

10:31I was really happy. I was on cloud nine. I had a professor who was an incredible source of

10:37support for me at the time. And I ran to the professor and then we look further and we see

10:42he was only suspended for a year. After that winter break, I'm back next spring. I'm sitting in a,

10:51in the lobby with a good friend of mine who also had a very sad story. And this, he comes

10:59up to us

10:59and just starts talking to us. He's just back on campus. I didn't know. The school didn't tell me.

11:03I had asked so many times for them to say, I need to know, just tell me when he's back.

11:10They didn't.

11:11And it was a constant trying to just push things under the rug, push things under the rug. And so

11:16I knew at that point, I wanted to start advocating and start just trying to figure something out.

11:21So I started working with Rain in the Speakers Bureau for a while. And so I was doing a couple

11:28speaking engagements here and there, but for the most part, couldn't really get anything off the

11:32ground. I was helping some other friends and eventually it became more vocal about the whole

11:38thing online. So I didn't out the name initially. I just said, this is my story. Berkeley really

11:45screwed up here. This is the situation. I don't really think Berkeley was ready for me, but I wasn't

11:53ever nasty or aggressive, but if there was something that was wrong or if there was a policy that wasn't

11:59being followed, you bet after I did reading a Title IX bootcamp, all of this research, you bet I knew

12:05what policies were being broken. So it was something that I became more of that subject matter expert for

12:10these students of what is the policy? I believe the fall of my senior year, closer to the almost the

12:17winter, there was an article that came out in the Boston Globe and it was about Berkeley letting 12

12:23professors go silently for sexually abusing or harassing their students. But I didn't really

12:29want to bring this to the forefront of my life anymore, my assaults. I wanted to kind of have it

12:34in the past. And so I didn't want to go to the walkout. There was a walkout that the students

12:39at

12:40Berkeley had organized. I went downstairs outside after class one day, not knowing where that walkout was

12:45starting, but I saw all these people gathering, getting ready to go. There were some people with

12:50red bands on their heads as marshals so that they could help people cross the street safely,

12:56walking into the stadium or the auditorium. And I was going to walk away and then I saw

13:05lined up against the wall, getting ready to march in this anti-basically walkout.

13:12And that was the moment that everything switched in my head. I was not going to let that happen.

13:18He already convinced a lot of the industry that he wasn't suspended. He convinced them that he was

13:25in Shanghai on some musical opportunity. So he was already very manipulative. He's already very,

13:30I am perfect. You know, I ended up pulling a random person aside who had a recorder and a

13:37notebook basically. And I said, so do you see that guy over there? That's my rapist. And Berkeley

13:42let him back in and he's trying to march in this, in this walk right now. And it ended up

13:46being the

13:47reporter for the Boston Globe. And I became a marshal. I literally grabbed a red band. There's

13:51a Getty image online. I was the one who, you know, they were like, somebody's going to run back and

13:56forth in the middle of the street, you know, to help people if the light turns red. And I immediately

14:01just threw myself in, started just doing that work to get everybody over safely. And I was the first

14:06one to speak at the sit-in as well. So I ended up, you know, I went from being just

14:11quiet and not

14:11wanting to say anything to being somebody who was just forcefully trying to make these changes.

14:17Some friends in my, and I formed a group. We, it was Berkeley and BOCO, Boston Conservatory,

14:23which is our sister college. And it was at a time that Boston Conservatory and Berkeley were merging

14:29into one school. So we were already trying to get people involved with each other. And so it was a

14:35mix of students that were really against, obviously, sexual assault and wanted these policies changed.

14:41So we started this group. A lot of students heard of this group and started reaching out saying,

14:46hey, I need an advisor. Can Georgetta advise me? Can Zach advise me? And it just became this

14:52thing for students, you know, that is a safe place. People were sharing their stories. And there was almost,

14:59there was this case of this, again, teaching assistant. So it definitely rubbed me the wrong

15:04way. In college, he was taking advantage of all these young men at school. And that was a huge case.

15:11And, you know, it was something that I advised one of the boys on it. And he actually had to

15:16leave

15:16school. So it was a Zoom investigation. And we did change some policies. I mean, they did firm some

15:22things up. They made things a little better. So after the walk-in, his name becomes very prominent.

15:27It becomes very public. I'm not the one who made it public. But there were, so there were two kids.

15:35There was, and there's this other guy. I think his name is Liam. And those two were found responsible

15:42for around the same time. And they both were allowed back at school. So they were kind of the

15:48examples being made. And nobody wanted them living on campus. So that was kind of the first thing.

15:55So there were groups. It was insane. There were groups that were doing sit-ins outside of Roger's

16:02office. Just doing, and run by teachers. I mean, people were pissed. People did not want these guys

16:08on campus. And there was somebody, I still do not know who this, to this day, who wrote this. But

16:15somebody

16:15wrote a petition that is still online that says expel me. This became very publicly hated. And

16:22so did. Honestly, when a school doesn't do what they're supposed to do the first time,

16:28this happens. People talk. You're going to get found out. And honestly, public scrutiny can be 10

16:36times worse than expulsion. So sometimes you just got to do it. And then I started getting

16:41threatening messages online. And it was Instagram in particular. And it was really the main online

16:49platform I'd been using at the time. They were accounts just saying some of the most cruel things

16:55on my pictures, in my messages, threatening me, threatening my family. And sometimes it would say,

17:02hey, I am a friend of this. And so that was a moment I was thinking. And in my head,

17:07I was also

17:08thinking, he doesn't have any friends. Obviously, everybody hates this guy. So in my head, I'm

17:13thinking this is. And so I go back to the school. I go to the public safety. I'm still a

17:18senior. This

17:19is all happening. So I, you know, go to public safety. I'm showing all these messages. When I tell

17:27you, the school failed me once again, they did nothing. And it got to a point I had a really

17:33good

17:33friend who I'm very thankful for. And he was so protective. And he wanted to make sure that this guy

17:42wasn't getting near me. My friends were starting to get pissed. Like it just it was some of some of

17:48those messages were very cruel. And some of them, the thing that confused me to this day, and I still

17:53don't know, I filed police reports, I've done everything I put, you know, give it over my phone.

18:00They were saying they're touching on some personal things that only somebody very close to me would

18:05know. So I wasn't even sure who it was at that point. Some of those things I had told a

18:10very select

18:11few. But in my head, I was thinking there's no way these that my friends would do this. I mean,

18:16this is crazy. So it got to a point. I walked downstairs of my apartment building and senior year

18:23I was living alone. I got to live alone in my apartment, which was a shame. But I went

18:29to I went downstairs. And there's this guy right after I got a message, just standing outside my

18:33apartment building staring. And I was really scared. And I called my friends, you know, I just needed

18:40some backup. Because the school isn't doing anything. I just said, I said, you know, if this is

18:46something's coming here, you know, I'm gonna we're gonna find you. But the police are gonna find you.

18:50And it just I wanted to draw more public attention to him. Because I knew if I could draw more

18:57public

18:57attention to him, he might stop. And he did.

I Was Raped By My Friend At School | A Surviving Story

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