The toxic culture at St. Michael's College School was a secret in the same way that the Harvey Weinstein abuse allegations were a secret or the reports of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces were a secret: If you were close enough, you already knew.
I went to a high school in midtown Toronto that was less than two kilometres from the all-boys private school known as "St. Mike's." We shared the same bleachers when our sports teams squared off against each other, and many of us took the same bus routes home after school.
If you were a girl at my public high school — a five-minute drive but really a world away — it was flattering to get any sort of attention from the sharply uniformed, bombastic boys who would spill onto the bus at the end of the day. A few of my friends actually managed to score an invite to one of their parties, and dutifully reported on it back at school the following Monday. After everyone at the party got high on cocaine, they told us, one boy was made to "engage orally" with someone's faeces.
To this day, I have no idea if that actually happened.
But had you told me prior to last week that a student was allegedly sexually assaulted with a broom handle by members of the junior football team in the school's locker room, I would've been skeptical about that, too. (more...)
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