With its soft lighting and cosy couches, the classroom hangout at the River East-Transcona School Division high school is supposed to be a safe space for students to decompress.
But that changed one Monday in January.
That day, after the supervising teacher had left the room, a teenage girl says she was sitting on the floor with her back against a love seat when a much larger male student sat down on the cushion directly behind her, boxing her in between his knees.
She said he reached over and forced his hands beneath her shirt, grabbing her breasts for several minutes while she froze and did not speak or move.
“I was too scared to say anything.”
A month later, sitting in her living room surrounded by family members, the girl recounts what happened.
The alleged assault was traumatic enough, the girl and her family say, but the response from school administrators and senior division staff felt like betrayal.