Courage is Contagious

By Adam Barber, McQuaid Jesuit Director of Service and Justice
FortKnight Blog
4 min read

You could hear the proverbial pin drop in the John H. Ryan, Jr. Memorial Gymnasium on Tuesday, October 25, 2022. The assembled high school students, faculty, and guests sat in focused silence as Steve Peacock, McQuaid Jesuit alumnus of the class of 1988, shared the story of his journey as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Donning his jersey from his time as a football Knight, Peacock courageously spoke of the consequences of the trauma he experienced, the impact on his relationships, and his ultimate choice to come forward and tell his story for the first time as a 52 year-old adult.

Steve did not return to his alma mater on his own. Joining him were Alex Prout and Elizabeth Ziegler from I Have The Right To, a national organization devoted to raising awareness among students and educators about sexual assault. Prout and his wife Susan founded I Have The Right To after their daughter Chessy was sexually assaulted while a student at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. The assault and subsequent trial garnered national media attention and laid bare the need to engage young people about sexual assault and the meaning of consent. Since 2017, I Have The Right To has emerged as a leading organization dedicated to creating an ecosystem of respect and support for students and survivors, partnering with schools to host speakers, review policies, and provide educational programming.  McQuaid Jesuit is the first all-boys school to partner with I Have The Right To, and in the past year the organization has connected with a number of other Catholic, all-boys schools, including several in the Jesuit network.

After Steve received a standing ovation from his McQuaid brothers in the audience, Prout and Ziegler zoomed out from the personal story to reveal the scope of the problem. The statistics are, frankly, alarming: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over half of women and almost 1 in 3 men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes. More than 4 in 5 female rape survivors report that they were first raped before age 25. Beyond the life-altering emotional trauma, the financial fallout is also significant, with some estimates putting the lifetime cost at $122,461 per survivor, including medical costs, lost productivity, criminal justice activities, and other costs. This scourge of sexual violence affects millions of Americans each year.

The challenge posed by sexual assault is compounded by the taboo surrounding discussions of it. Despite the #MeToo movement bringing the pernicious and widespread nature of the problem further into the open, many cases of sexual assault continue to go unreported and unprosecuted, with survivors deterred by shame, fear, embarrassment, and the personal and financial costs of litigation and medical care.

Determined to help break this taboo, following the October 2022 presentation, McQuaid Jesuit and I Have The Right To partnered to develop a summit for high school students, educators, and parents. The goal of this inaugural Summit on Healthy Relationships and Consent is to educate and empower around the topics of sexual violence prevention, supporting survivors, and the importance of respect as a precondition for any healthy relationship. A student team from McQuaid Jesuit and Our Lady of Mercy has been helping to guide preparations and planning for the event, in the process learning more about this critical topic and reading, as a group, Chessy Prout’s memoir I Have The Right To.

Headlining the summit is keynote speaker Don McPherson, former Syracuse University and NFL quarterback and author of You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity.  McPherson is particularly passionate about engaging with young men and encouraging them to hold one another accountable to a higher standard of masculinity, leading them to live healthy, full and respectful lives. Joining McPherson at the summit will be noted psychotherapist and author Cheryl M. Bradshaw as well as representatives from Rochester and Buffalo area organizations. Steve Peacock will return, participating on a survivor panel in the morning that will humanize the issue and cultivate a spirit of empathy and understanding behind the statistics.

Our school’s mission statement cites “a lifelong commitment to justice” as one of the aspirations for a McQuaid Jesuit graduate. Steve Peacock’s courageous witness, Chessy Prout’s brave example, and the untold stories of many, many more survivors all summon us to acknowledge that the persistence of sexual assault in our culture is fundamentally an issue of justice, of recognizing the God-given dignity of each person. McQuaid Jesuit is proud to make its own contribution to this cause in the hopes of creating a future free from sexual assault.

On Saturday, March 16, the same Ryan gym that played host to Steve Peacock in October 2022 will welcome students, educators, and parents from McQuaid, Mercy, and other area schools for the inaugural Summit on Healthy Relationships and Consent. To learn more about the summit, you can reach out to me, Adam Baber, McQuaid Jesuit’s Director of Service and Justice, at ababer@mcquaid.org or at 585.256.6129.