Digital Extras

BURRILLVILLE -- As instructor Sloan Rielly calls out, "Defensive stance!" 10 girls in the circle snap into position almost instantly.

They stand with their feet well-grounded left one out front, right foot back. They extend their left arms forward at shoulder height, with their left palms facing outward in a vertical position. Their right elbows are bent near their waists, and their right hands are ready to strike.

"No!" they yell in unison, their voices filling the open hallway near the school auditorium.

The sophomore girls are learning to protect themselves from an attack in the Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) program.

A former Pennsylvania police officer, Rielly now works for the domestic violence agency Sojourner House, which serves communities in northern Rhode Island. Her class at Burrillville High School is part of the school's stepped-up efforts to teach its students to recognize and protect themselves from sexual assault and domestic violence.

Last year, the school launched a six-week "healthy relationships" class for freshmen in response, administrators said then, to the December 2001 teen rape case in town that involved a senior boy, Nicholas C. Plante, and a sophomore girl, Laura. After the rape, many students sided with Plante and harassed Laura, who has only been identified in The Journal by her first name.

When 70 students signed up for Rielly's healthy relationships class, guidance counselor Mary Russo said school officials were "astounded." They thought far fewer would take the optional class.

This year, Russo arranged for Rielly to teach the RAD training to some students from that healthy relationships class. Russo and Rielly also showed all sophomores a television movie about a teen dating relationship. Rielly led class discussions about No One Would Tell, in which an abusive boyfriend kills his girlfriend. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Principal Richard G. Trogisch said he thinks the school has changed in recent years, but he thinks it already was a different place at the time of the rape. Laura was comfortable, he said, speaking up about the rape. Looking for a trusted adult to confide in, Laura found school nurse-teacher Marilyn Kelley and told her that Plante raped her.

After 20 years as a school administrator, Trogisch said he had never seen anything polarize a school community as much as that December 2001 rape.

There was a lot of hurt in the community after the rape, Trogisch said. Now, he thinks more students know their rights and when they can say no to sexual contact in part because the guidance department has worked to teach about sexual assault and domestic violence.

"I think there's more of an awareness of what's appropriate and inappropriate between friends," Trogisch said. "I think you can feel it in the climate."

Sophomore Sarah Knowlton said she took the healthy relationships class because she wanted to recognize good, healthy relationships. Some students, she said, signed up for it because of the rape and to learn how to avoid a similar situation. But Knowlton is not the only sophomore who said recently that some students took it just to get out of other classes.

One more effort at the school will officially begin next month. It's the direct result of outrage among members of the Berean Baptist Church about how Laura was treated in town. The church donated $500 and challenged other churches in Burrillville to give money for the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center to teach in the schools. A local nonprofit group called Between the Cracks donated $500, and St. Joseph and St. Theresa churches each gave $100.

Sandra Malone, the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center's coordinator of prevention education, will teach all ninth graders about sexual assault.

Plante was convicted in October 2002 on three counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of second-degree sexual assault. He is serving four years at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Laura is now studying in a program at the Community College of Rhode Island that allows her to earn both high school and college credits in what would have been her senior year at Burrillville High School.

Some of the sophomore girls in the RAD program say the 2001 rape isn't really discussed at school this year. Jessica Therien had read the news reports of the rape.

"And it got me so aggravated because no one believed her," she said.

Jessica LeMay recalls people saying the rape was Laura's fault. Therien said that since Plante was a popular student, he was "nobody you would expect" to commit such a crime.

"Another thing we learned last year: Expect anybody because anybody's capable of it," Mellissa Walters said.

Walters took the defense class this year because that healthy relationships class wasn't enough.

"The healthy relationships class tells you how to recognize the problem, but you can't really deal with it," she said. "The RAD class teaches you how to deal with it."

Therien said the RAD class should be an actual class that any student could take. Russo said such classes are now part of the guidance department's program for students, but the money's not there for them to become full-fledged classes.

"I think with budget issues, that's not going to become a reality any time soon," she said.

There will be another RAD class later this year, but no healthy relationships class, Russo said.

Russo told students she wanted them to watch No One Would Tell because there are so many reports of domestic violence in Burrillville. According to Rielly, the number of calls are higher per capita in Burrillville than any other town in Rhode Island.

"If we can educate you, we can enlighten you," Russo told students.

The judge in the movie also tried to educate when she addressed the friends and family of the boy and girl after the sentencing. Many of them had testified that they saw the boy abuse his girlfriend physically and verbally before the murder.

"How many of you have been hit? How many of you hit your girlfriends?" the judge asked. "This is against the law. You have a responsibility to your friends so this does not happen again."

Sophomore Knowlton said her friends are in good, healthy relationships. It's difficult, she said, to imagine that people who don't look capable of such violence could actually do what the boy in the movie did. If she saw dating violence among her friends, Knowlton said she'd speak up.

"I'd have to say something because after watching that movie, it makes you realize you really have to do something," she said.

Other students in the school, though, said they do see dating violence and controlling tendencies among some young couples. After watching the movie, sophomores Fallon Guertin and Jennifer Cullen said they both knew a boy who was very controlling last year of a girl he was dating.

"And you'd see him screaming at her," Cullen said. "He would call her demeaning names."

Guertin said she told the girl to stay away from him, but the girl said she loved him and couldn't do that. Some time later, that couple broke up, Guertin said.

As a freshman at the time, Guertin said she wasn't comfortable talking with adults about the relationship that she said many students witnessed.

"Now, I'd go and talk to one of the guidance counselors," she said.

Educators are obligated to report suspected sexual abuse to the state Department of Health, history teacher Glenn Siner said. It was in his classes that the students watched the movie.

Siner said it's common in school to see a boyfriend towering over a girlfriend who's crying or to have a female student tell a teacher that her boyfriend prevented her from doing something.

While the school was a different place years ago, Siner said he's confident now that the issue would be addressed appropriately if he reported a violent incident.

"The whole climate of the school has changed," he said. "The emphasis is on respect."

He thinks that change is because of programs the school now offers and the current administration, which changed when Trogisch became principal for the 2000-2001 school year.

"I think he [Rich Trogisch] is sort of the linchpin," Siner said.

Trogisch is very supportive and "really wants to keep us in the 21st century," Siner said. Backing him up are his administrative team assistant principal Lois E. Short and dean of students Barbara Menard, Siner said.

Siner said some things have changed in the school since the 2001 rape case, but some things stay the same.

"There's a constant [student] turnover in high school, and something new and noteworthy is forgotten later, except among faculty," he said.

For that reason, there's a constant need for the kinds of programs Rielly and Russo have brought to the school, Siner said.

Siner said he thinks the rape brought a certain awareness to the school that such programs are good. Russo, too, sees changes.

"I think if that happened again ... I don't think you'd get that same reaction," Russo said of the harassment Laura faced after reporting the rape.

That's partly because of the way students have connected with Rielly, Russo said, but also because the current administrative team supports the guidance department's efforts to address these issues.

Russo is clear about why she's teaching the students about these issues.

"Our goal from all of this is with the next generation coming up, Burrillville will have the fewest number of calls to 911," she said. "Enlightenment through education. The more educated the population, the better. Not just reading, writing and math, but socially educated as well."

As students leave Rielly's sessions, she hands them long, thin stickers with a Web site they can use if they need to report domestic violence. The address is www.BreaktheSilenceMaketheCall.com. Some stick it to their backpacks right away.

Reporter Kate Bramson can be reached by e-mail atkbramson [at] projo.com