Warning: this article deals with accounts of rape/sexual assault and may be triggering for survivors of abuse.

“It makes me feel ashamed of who I am as a person even though none of it’s true and I feel helpless because I’m honestly too afraid to speak out against them. They can get away with whatever they want with numerous girls and they’re all seen as heroes.”

I had met Lucy* before. We had been to the same parties and had many mutual friends, but this was the first time I saw the pain behind the otherwise enthusiastic and energetic young woman I knew. In fact, as a former student at The King’s School, the double standards she speaks of applied to my friends and me. Devastatingly, this is not her only experience with sexual assault; Lucy recounts four other incidents where private school boys have violated her consent.

One of her worst experiences occurred during Schoolies, where she recalls: “I was definitely taken advantage of in my drunken state and several boys witnessed it and didn’t say anything until the morning, when they told all the girls that they were pretty sure I had been raped.”

Boys from certain private schools have a reputation – informed by wealth, privilege and social power – as Sydney’s elite. During my six years of high school, I began to notice trends. They congregate at similar bars and parties, where they exercise control over who can attend, and, by extension, who reaps the “benefits” and social cache of these exclusive environments. It is in these environments, where these boys are lauded and placed on a pedestal, that Emily*, a former student at Loreto Normanhurst, suggests their true colours show.

“They are so much greater than the rest of the male species that they are able to do anything,” Emily says. Her perception is shared by other interviewees who conceded their tendency to be arrogant and entitled “really comes across on nights out”.

As I spoke to more young women, these attitudes appeared to manifest as something far more egregious. Hannah*, a former student at MLC, shared painful memories of being assaulted by a student after she passed out at a Head of the River after party. Other students then made jokes about the incident in an assembly for the entire school to hear.