Sexual Assault Has a Room of Its Own in the NYC Department of Education
I have tried to write this blog a million times since January 3: before the Coronavirus pandemic hit the US, before we were all quarantined, before the war against police brutality roared back to life, before the world changed.
Earlier, I couldn’t find the words to say my truth, and even when I finally did, I didn’t know how to put them together to make sense and make the strong statement I want so much to say. Nearly six months later, I’m still hitting backspace more than I’m typing words.
I haven’t written a single poem about this nor written text messages that describe what happened. All I have is merely one of the many official statements that detail exactly what transpired between one of my coworkers and myself and a plea to transfer schools. My plea was never denied because it never made it worthy of existing. I was not worthy of existing in that space.
September 2019 marked my first year as an English teacher at a middle school. I was 28 years old. I stayed up all night, got to school to hit the copy machine first thing in the morning at 6 am, taught throughout the day and learned over 300 names, and went to graduate school at night. I had 11 different classes, teaching a supplementary English course I was not hired to do, but I suppose that’s what happens when the founding principal quits two days before school starts and a power-hungry assistant principal drops the “Assistant” part of her title.
What wasn’t supposed to happen was, “Your case is out of our jurisdiction,” written across my computer screen. After four months of fighting to get myself out of my school and into another, I was not told until I had asked numerous times what was going on with my case. That answer would not be handed to me until I no longer worked for the DOE.
What wasn’t supposed to happen was the hiding of evidence, manipulation and coercion of a teacher (me), and the total non-support of school administration.
CW: Depictions of sexual assault
Note: All names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.
Happy Hour. I had missed the first one because of class, so I wanted to get to know my coworkers and show I wasn’t a totally anti-social being. Though, I hate going to these things alone, so I asked a few of my fellow teachers if they were going. I didn’t know the Happy Hour protocol of leaving ASAP, like just about before the students. But there was one person still waiting for the train three blocks away.
He waited for me. The one who had guided me with my self-contained Special Education students because I had no training in that field whatsoever. He saved me again. “Thank you for waiting,” I said as we boarded the train to Manhattan, to Happy Hour.
“Do you even know where this place is?” I asked. The staff liked to choose places really far from our school. My coworker, Gary, said the bar was right by his place! Sweet, I can drop off my giant ass gym bag instead of hauling it around for suspiciously, I thought. I was to meet my partner to go rock climbing afterward. It was what we did on Friday nights. I loved it.
Gary said I can drop off my things. What a relief. But he wanted to shower and change before heading to the bar. He went hard at bars, I could tell. And fair enough; our school had no air conditioning. Even I was dripping sweat and I at least had a fan in my room.
I also wasn’t used to the extreme lack of sleep and waking up at 4 am. He said I could take a nap in his room. I didn’t argue with this generosity, and maybe this is where I should have. This is where rape apologists would say I fucked up. This is where this becomes my fault. I know that.
But I crashed before my head even hit the pillow.
Maybe 15 minutes later, I felt someone next to me. Arms around me, a body braced against mine, an erection that grazed my thigh. At first thought, he was my partner, holding me gently. But then why weren’t we rock climbing? No! I opened my eyes. “Take off your clothes,” he whispered into my ear.
I tried to wriggle free from his grasp. A tug on my lanyard, the one all teachers had to keep track of your classroom keys in addition to all the other keys we have to get through the day. He held me tighter as I kicked. “I want to see you with only your lanyard on.”
Not at all sexy. Not at all expected.
I told him again that I had a partner, the same one I talked about on other occasions before this moment, even mentioning on the train my rock climbing plans. I told him I didn’t want to. I told him that I wanted to go to Happy Hour. Done. This should be the end of the story.
But it continues. My resistance continues, and Gary finally lets me go only to try to pull me off the bed. I grip the bed frame, not wanting to be near him. He takes this opportunity to pull down my pants. I’m horrified, mortified. That was not my choice, for him to see me like that. He wasn’t my partner; he was my coworker. There was a line and we crossed it.
I pulled up my pants, letting go of the bed frame. He lifted the mattress and that’s when my brain lost control of my limbs, completely entering panic mode. It was so quick I can’t quite remember my thoughts as I flew into his TV and hit the small entertainment center before falling to the floor.
My arm hurt, my chest and my head. As I lifted myself up, Gary kicked me about six times. It wasn’t very hard but enough for air to escape my lungs in bursts. I needed to get out.
Gary tossed me on the bed. I bartered with him: “Let’s go to Happy Hour and we’ll pretend none of this happened.” Such a good deal. Take it, take it.
He bartered back: “We can have sex, you can give me a blowjob, or I can masturbate to you.” Now, the last option seemed the least invasive and horrific, but was it really? What would it entail from me? So I gave my offer again, only for us to go back and forth.
Until I made a break for the door. The lock had to work from this side, right? I unlocked it, and then Gary slammed me against the wall. I slid down and crawled out of the room until I realized I left behind my keys and phone. How would I call for help? And I needed the classroom keys or I was so dead. So I hurried back to get my things fully aware that this would cost me.
We wrestled each other like we were playing around, but no. I’d grown up with a bunch of boys, so I knew how to fight, sort of. But I froze when cloth covered my eyes and I felt the breeze of the fan on my bare skin. Gary held my shirt in his hand.
I screamed and grabbed it from him. I had the upper hand in our wrestling match. After swiftly grabbing my shit, I bolted for the front door. “Wait!” Gary said. “Let’s talk this out. What happened? I thought you were being playful.” Playful. So self-defense is now playful. My body is now playful.
I didn’t really know what to say but shook my head. He gave me this long-winded story about why he thought I was flirting with him and he’d mistaken. Yes, mistaken badly. As he went on, I texted my partner, who worked ten blocks away, to come get me. Then Gary noticed me texting. “You know, your boyfriend is going to be really mad at you about all this.”
“Why would he be mad at me?” I asked, because none of this was my fault.
“Because of how you started this whole thing. How you led me on and were being playful.” There it was again. Playful. Flirtatious.
Not my fault, not my fault, I kept telling myself. “I’m leaving,” I said, as if I needed to announce fleeing from harassment.
“Okay,” he said. It felt like winter, biting and raw and cold.
My partner met me about ten minutes later, took me to the safety of his apartment, and called my parents as I slept away the anxiety and fear tucked into my body. I’d later find out Happy Hour was in the Upper East Side, while I had spent that afternoon in Midtown. And Gary hadn’t gone to the bar either.
I loathed the next school day. I spent prep periods and lunch in the staff bathroom or in the closet of my co-teacher’s classroom, students right on the other side of the door. I spent this time in silence, or crying to my partner or mom while sitting on a toilet everyone uses. Panic attacks daily, meltdowns once a week.
One day I woke to my 4 am alarm and immediately had a panic attack. I passed out like I do sometimes after a severe attack. I woke up to missed calls from my partner and vice principal. It was already fourth period. Shit, indeed.
I rushed myself to get ready and call an Uber, pleading for the man to get me to my school across the Bronx as fast as possible. The guy did! Still, I trudged the dreaded Walk of Shame (the other one) to sign in and to my principal’s office, where she and the VP were waiting for me with heavy looks of “Seriously? You’re a hot mess minus the hot.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “Can I please start?” My principal had already let a few jabs in, but they nodded.
“I haven’t been myself for over a month. Something happened.” I told them about my morning, to which they replied with no sympathy. “But something happened.” I wanted to be heard, to be listened to no matter how long it took. “I know my performance hasn’t been its best, but I’ve been trying.”
I spoke of the bathroom panic room, the closet of isolation, the fear in my heart and my stomach that this man would keep trying to talk to me or trick me into a classroom. After pleading with them to tell them what happened, I told them. My principal took down my statement. She asked me if I thought he was a danger to the children. No. She told me to go home. But no, my station was here, in school, to teach these kids too precious to let down more than I already had.
Then the VP knocked on my door while I was on prep. She saw me through the glass, told me to follow her and take my things. Here it was: I was fired.
I fucking wish.
Five police officers littered the principal’s office, one outside in case of stray kids. My principal told me she had to call given my statement. And there, I made my second statement to the NYPD. They tried to strong arm me, tell me they would arrest the teacher on the spot. I thought of the students he taught, the ones so vulnerable it would cause too much trauma, so I continued to make this trauma my own. I wouldn’t name him, not yet.
They asked me if he was a threat to the kids. No.
I said I wanted my uncle, a highly ranked lawyer in NYC. No.
I said I wanted my partner, an emotional support and a witness to the crime. No.
I said I wanted my mother. No.
Instead, after two hours, they were taking me to the station. I walked the three flights downstairs, saw my students’ peeking eyes, and heard their voices: “Mx. Luk! Mx. Luk, what’s happening?”
“Don’t say anything and hold your head up high,” my VP told me. She tried to block their view with her body, buy how can you block six police men with speakers on and bulletproof vests and squad cars? They shoved me into one as I cried, “Please no, they’ll take me to the hospital.
I’ve spent so many police rides that ended up in hospitalization. Mental health, so often misunderstood. We just want to be heard, not silenced or drugged or cast away.
We stopped at the precinct for a change of shift. Odd. Then down the highway for what felt like hours. I tried texting my uncle, parents, partner, and friends. Anyone for help. I had no idea where I was going. But it was an hour-long ride. To Chinatown! The Special Victims Office, where sexual assault victims are apparently led to wait for something unknown.
A detective, to whom I would tell yet my third statement. This one for NYPD records. I did the best I could. No, I don’t remember the exact address but do know the cross street. No, I will not name him, could not have those children lose their favorite teacher. They were not in harm’s way. Only I was.
I’d get my police records in 4 weeks (make that 8). I could finally transfer schools and teach where I was needed.
The police were going to leave me there in the middle of Chinatown. I needed my belongings. All I had was my phone. So they drove me an hours up the highway, a bit past the precinct. I met with my principal and VP again, where I gave my fourth statement.
There would be many more statements to come. Pages and pages of statements. A book of statements. This is yet another statement.
I met with the DOE’s department of investigation for sexual assault cases. My mother was allowed to attend for support but could not speak unless asked a question. Guess what? I gave my statement.
She’d get back to me soon. Soon meaning never because she avoided every email and every phone call.
Two weeks later, I gave my principal and VP Gary’s real name. I said he was the one. Why now? Because I had to. Because I had to be responsible even if no one else was.
Nothing was done. He was still employed here. The investigation would need to happen in order for him to be fired or placed elsewhere to hurt some other woman.
I saw him every day. I panicked every day. I ate my lunch in the bathroom like I was the middle schooler.
Until the woman at the DOE investigative unit finally answered my call:
“It’s out of our jurisdiction. There’s nothing we can do.”
And just like that, it was all over. It was at the responsibility of an incompetent police who report came back littered with clerical errors rendering my transfer impossible. I’d have to wait two to three months for errors to be changed, small ones.
By then, it’d be May or April, open market for teachers to jump ship to another school in hopes of it being better. No one had imagined the Coronavirus pandemic. All I saw was hopelessness and one way out.
I emailed my principal and VP my 30-day resignation, according to DOE policy. I was lucky that part of that time was spent during winter break and I can rest easy during that time. But there was an end to my suffering, to my panic attacks, to the meltdowns, to hiding, to fear.
But there is still no end to the trauma, the loss of a career I would’ve been great at, the loss of purpose I felt helping underserved schools.
Where am I now? What am I doing to help them, to help me heal? This pandemic has led all of that to a horrific standstill, where so many students are suffering and my talents to teach online would’ve benefited most. But no one saw it coming. I saw no way out but through the very last school door, of which I worked in education for ten years.
I just turned 29, and I have no career ahead of me. I have dreams. I have aspirations. I have trauma clutching my ankles telling me no. I have a dog I need to take care of.
Buy my debut poetry book, Shadow at My Feet, here! Courtney Luk’s debut full-length poetry book is a product of processing trauma, chronic depression, and anxiety. It is with self-love that this book shows the tragedies and beauty of love, friendship, and the toxicity that lies between.
