"I know that I have no control over what people say about me, but I have control over how I live my life and how I choose to interact with other people," she says. She calls her memoir a "love letter to survivors" and tells me that she hopes her truth will be a comfort and an inspiration to other survivors. Prout, however, is quick to note that this book is not about settling scores or taking control of her story. We are going to change this ourselves, if our administrators can’t do it themselves.'" Bring on the pressure for them to change their ways - to help students feel empowered to say, ‘OK, this is not our culture anymore.
I’d hope that through my book and through shining a light on my singular experience there, will help to do that, will help bring on the pressure. Paul’s should be forced to confront their past and their truth and their history and their current history of rape culture. "The truth hurts sometimes," Prout says, when I ask her if she hopes her book will help change the culture at her former school. Paul's School (Photo courtesy: Chessy Prout) Paul's School, a 162-year-old institution, has a much more vested interest in preserving their reputation than in protecting the rights of survivors.Ĭhessy Prout & Lucy Prout, while students at St. Paul's parent wrote in an email to fellow alumni soliciting donations for Labrie's fees.) One can deduce from Prout's recollections and reporting that St. ("I feel that this star SPS student-recognized by the faculty with the school's character awards-deserves a robust and competent defense," a St. And, as was widely reported at the time of the trial, $100,000 of Labrie's legal fees were contributed by prominent alumni of the institution. Paul's School asked a federal court to force Prout to shed her anonymity and bar her family from discussing the case publicly. As she describes in the memoir, lawyers for St. "So you can be vulnerable and weak sometimes and feel extremely strong other times - and feel empowered by your own vulnerability."Īlthough her attacker, Owen Labrie, was convicted on three misdemeanor statutory rape charges, a misdemeanor of endangering a child, and one felony charge for using a computer to lure a minor for sex, Prout was, unsurprisingly, the one shamed in the court of public opinion.
"One of the reasons why I wanted to write this book in the first place is to show the vulnerability and humanity behind the word 'victim' or 'survivor,'" Chessy Prout tells me over the phone, in an interview conducted a few days ahead of the memoir release. Her new book, also titled I Have The Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice and Hope, is one more step toward her ultimate goal: To reclaim her own future, and empower other survivors to do the same. Paul's School, has became one of the most prominent faces of the movement to end campus sexual assault in the nearly two years since she willingly shed her anonymity and launched her #IHaveTheRightTo campaign. The 19 year old, who was sexually assaulted at age 15 while a student at New Hampshire's St.
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