When Rachel Bradshaw-Bean was raped in her high school's band room in 2010, she told school officials what happened. The School then proceeded to kick her out of the school, blaming her for "public lewdness."
Now, in her first in depth interview with NBC News since the crisis, Bradshaw-Bean opens up about the ordeal she went through and it's impact on her life. After she was cast out of school, Bradshaw-Bean and the boy she said raped her were sent to a school designated for students with behavioral problems.
"I felt like a criminal," she told NBC News. "I saw him there all the time."
Neena Chaudhry, an attorney from the National Women's Law Center, a Washington D.C. based nonprofit, said Bradhsaw-Bean is not the only one to be let down by their own school.
"High schools across the country are failing to live up to their responsibility to address sexual assault and harassment," Chaudhry told NBC News. "There's no excuse."
School officials in Steubenville, Ohio are under investigation for allegedly covering up evidence that incriminated two athletes in the rape of a 16-year-old at a house party.
According to federal law Title IX, education institutions are prohibited from practicing gender discrimination, and are supposed to launch an internal investigation among other protocols in situations of sexual assault. However, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights received 59 complaints this year saying the law was violated, NBC News reported. The DOE received 33 complaints in 2012.
Henderson High School in Texas, where Bradshaw-Bean went, only relied on a police report that said the sex between Bradshaw-Bean and her attacker was consensual, NBC News reported.
The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights investigated the school in June 2012, concluding the school ignored Title IX and did not give "a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason" for expelling Bradshaw-Bean, NBC News reported.
Bradshaw-Bean, who is now 20, hopes her story will help other girls.
"I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I did," she told NBC News.
Read Bradshaw-Bean's full NBC interview here.
