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# ‘The boys will be boys’: Former students at Trinity Episcopal detail what they describe as a culture of sexual misconduct dating back years
- URL: https://www.richmonder.org/the-boys-will-be-boys-former-students-at-trinity-episcopal-detail-what-they-describe-as-a-culture-of-sexual-misconduct-dating-back-years/
- Published: 2026-10-28T09:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-28T12:10:15.000Z
- Description: “On a whole, we have a bigger, more complex problem than just girls wanting attention or boys being stupid.”
- Author: Victoria A. Ifatusin
- Tags: Education, #lead

*Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault. The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673.*

---

Sitting in class one day, a boy grabbed Isabel’s phone from her hand. He took an explicit photo of his hand holding his crotch, then gave the phone back.

Isabel was 14 years old at the time.

It wasn’t her only brush with sexual harassment at Trinity Episcopal School. Her time at the school was cut short after a video of her having sex in a school bathroom leaked throughout the school halls and outside of it. She was in eighth grade; the boy was a junior.

She is one of five students who shared their experiences at the private South Richmond school, where tuition this year costs $31,350.

Isabel asked to be referred to by her first name. Other students The Richmonder spoke to asked to remain anonymous.

The former students referenced an [alleged gang rape at Cornell University](https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/09/tompkins-county-da-reopens-criminal-investigation-into-alleged-chi-phi-gang-rape), pointing to it as a reason for their desire to speak up about their experiences at Trinity. 

“This stuff has been making me upset,” Isabel said. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

A week before the Cornell case was reopened, the Richmond Police Department [opened an investigation into Trinity after an adult alleged that criminal activity was occurring there](https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/possible-unlawful-student-conduct-trinity-episcopal/). The exact reason for the police investigation remains undisclosed, but a former student who still has close ties to the school said a photo of a girl bending over with her chest exposed spread within a Snapchat group of 25 male students. 

Two former students alleged similar incidents have repeatedly occurred at Trinity for years, and that eighth graders were particularly susceptible, in part because their advisor’s office was located near The Commons, a gathering point for high schoolers.

One student recalled walking into the advisor’s office. A boy sat down on a blue beanbag chair and told another girl in the office at the time to sit on his lap. 

After she did, the boy had an upperclassman take a photo of him placing his hand on the girl’s behind. The student said the advisor was not in the office at the time.

That same student had photos of her shared in a Snapchat group called “The Boys,” which she alleged was used by the school’s boys to exchange images of female students.

Former students painted a picture of the school as an institution that cultivated an environment where young boys, especially athletes, harmed young girls without facing serious consequences. The Richmonder reviewed photos, texts and other documents that corroborated the stories.

Two of the women said that the boys who harassed them or coerced them into having sex came from wealthy families, and they believe that the boys’ wealth played a role in Trinity’s administration turning a blind eye to what happened to them.

“They don’t really protect the students, they care more about protecting their ass,” said one former student.

In response to questions from The Richmonder, a spokesperson for Trinity said that the school “cannot comment on the pending investigations or anonymous allegations from five and six years ago.” They also declined a request to interview Head of School Rob Short. 

“Trinity student conduct is governed by our Student Parent Handbook, which includes clear language prohibiting bullying (including cyber bullying), hazing, harassment and sexual misconduct, both on and off campus. It also prohibits retaliation based on reports of or involvement in bullying (and cyber bullying), hazing, harassment and sexual misconduct allegations,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“The school takes the safety and well-being of its students seriously. We are committed to protecting the confidentiality of current and former students and, for that reason, cannot comment on the allegations or on any student matters.”

A day before the spokesperson responded back to The Richmonder, [Short announced plans to retire after leading the school since 2015](https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/trinity-episcopal-head-of-school-retiring/) in an email sent to the school community. He will remain in his position until June 2027.

One student said the culture at Trinity felt particularly different than other private schools in the area. 

“In other private schools, the boys still have some respect for their female classmates,” she said. “At Trinity, it just feels more as though the girls are seen as objects.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/trinity-3-1.jpg)

### **‘I just saw it as normal’**

Isabel’s time attending Trinity Episcopal School was cut short after a nonconsensual video of her having sex with a junior at the time in a school bathroom was leaked. 

A big reason why Isabel wanted to attend Trinity was because the school had a strong volleyball team. She wanted to continue playing the sport after leaving middle school, and hoped to play at the collegiate level. 

But before Isabel even got to Trinity in 2019, students at the school knew her to be “easy” or “a little bit of a hoe.” Isabel told The Richmonder that she had previously sent naked images of herself to students, and word spread quickly.

She did it at the time “to be accepted” or just “create connections with people.”

“If you wanted someone to like you, it felt like that’s what you had to do. Not in a relationship way, but even in a friend way,” she said, specifically referring to boys. 

But when she sent her images to one student, she remembers, “it went everywhere.”

As the images spread, she garnered the interest of a high school junior. The Richmonder will refer to the junior as Joshua. That is not his real name.

Joshua, she said, was in her study hall and the two students developed a friendship, frequently texted and often hung out only after school. 

Isabel believes a big part of what attracted Joshua to her was her reputation at the school, she said. Isabel had sex for the first time consensually at 14, and it was something students knew about, including Joshua. It was a persona that she accepted, she said, and it wasn’t so bad because “people weren’t talking s— about me as far as I knew.”

“I was just getting solicited by a lot of guys often,” she said. “I just saw it as normal.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/text3.jpg)

In texts, the junior tells Isabel he wants to have sex, but is worried about being judged as unpopular if he is seen with an eighth grader.

Joshua and Isabel agreed to hook up in the school’s basement bathroom, known to students as the M4 bathroom, on Jan. 15, 2020 after school.

Doing this at school “was a convenience thing” for both students, Isabel said. There wasn’t really a reason to hang out with Joshua as an eighth grader outside of school, and she said he told her he didn’t want anyone to know about it because of the age difference.

As she approached the entrance of the bathroom, which had a single stall inside, she saw Joshua accompanied by three other boys from the school’s basketball team. Joshua himself was not on the basketball team, she said. 

“There’s all these people,” she said. “I started freaking out a little bit because there were people down there. … They were kind of like, ‘you can’t back out,’ along those lines. I can’t say verbatim that’s what they said, but that was the vibe. It was like, ‘don’t back out, don’t be a pussy,’ type of vibe.”

Isabel and Joshua went inside.

“He’d asked me if he could take a video, and I was like, ‘why? No.’ He was just like, ‘It’s just for me, I just want to use it to jerk off.’ And I was like, ‘No, please don’t do that. This is already enough,’” she said. “But he ended up taking a video when I was turned around.”

She emphasized that the sex was consensual, but the video was not. The video quickly spread outside his circle, despite her asking him to stop. But another student told her that he saw the video on a popular adult website, she said. 

While he told her that he was sorry and concerned about the leak, it seemed to her that Joshua didn’t really care, because “he was definitely getting celebrated by it.”

While his video was making the rounds, another video was also taken at the same time from outside the bathroom. Isabel said a few girls in the basement had recorded their own video, where the sounds from the bathroom were audible. That video too, Isabel said, was shared throughout the school building “within one to two days.”

“Literally everyone knew,” she said. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/text_message_10.png)

A classmate checks in on Isabel after the videos begin circulating.

The solicitation by others picked up even more. She showed The Richmonder multiple screenshots containing messages between herself and different boys at the time. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/textmessage4.jpg)

Isabel is asked by another classmate for "booty pics" after the video circulates.

A somewhat saving grace came to her in the form of the flu that month, which allowed her to stay home. She even prolonged her symptoms, just so that she wouldn’t have to go back to school soon. The ridicule and judgement was still piling and she felt she needed to do a reputation change.

Isabel was determined to stay at the school, “just so people didn’t think that I had been bullied out.” But then her parents found out about the video a few months later through a different parent, and that was when “it became more traumatic for me.” 

Her parents, “infuriated with the school,” did not see the situation the same way she did. They were “heartbroken” and saw their daughter as someone who had been violated, someone who was a victim.

Isabel said that she looks back on what happened to her and sees Trinity as a reason for it, adding that the school overlooked a lot of what she went through. 

“I’m more resentful of the school, because clearly, so many of those guys just believed that they would get away with it. Time after time after time,” she said. 

She continued: “There’s this very popular idea that, ‘Oh, we don’t want to ruin someone’s life with that,’ like labeling them as this or that. So I have to be a liar? What about my life?”

Her parents reported the incident to Short, and she tried to distance herself from the process so that her classmates wouldn’t know or label her as a “snitch.” But she recalled the school not saying anything to students, whether that be in an assembly or during the school’s morning meetings, to bring awareness to the issue of sexual misconduct.

“Everyone, even at that age, kinda knows you get attacked for coming forward about that stuff – at the school especially,” she said. 

Joshua was eventually expelled from the school, she said. 

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### **‘He was one of my best friends who I trusted a lot’**

Another student who spoke anonymously with The Richmonder detailed being sexually assaulted by a male classmate. She will be referred to as Student 1.

She had built up enough trust in the student, who will be referred to as John, that when he invited her to his house to watch a Spider-Man movie, she accepted. John is not his real name.

“He had turned on the movie and immediately \[was\] touching up on me. I can feel him just looking at me. This is my first sexual experience, so I’m nervous. I remember his eye contact at me, and I remember thinking, ‘As soon as I turn over, we’re gonna start making out.’ And that's what happened.

“That’s probably going on for maybe a minute, and he starts putting his hand towards my pants, and he keeps his hand there multiple times, and I just grabbed it back up and was trying to brush it off. He kept putting it down, and then one time I tried and he put my hand back and hushed me and told me to lay down, and I sat up. I resisted him a lot before I gave in,” she said, speaking through tears.

“He was one of my best friends who I trusted a lot,” she said.

John later asked her to be his girlfriend multiple times shortly after that night, which she eventually gave into. She said she was scared that he would tell other students about that night if she didn’t, including her brother, who shared mutual friends with John. 

But she swore to herself that she would never hang out with him alone in private, even though he had asked her to multiple times. 

John was “blatantly awful” to her during their short-lived one-month relationship and even more so after they broke up, she said. He once threw her phone and shattered it at school after an argument. He poured water from his water bottle on her during lunch, leaving her to attend the rest of her classes wet. 

Every other week, she said, he either was begging for her forgiveness or “calling me a whore, calling me fat, calling me a bitch, telling me to kill myself, calling me a waste of sperm, just a piece of ass.” She detailed her interactions with him in a journal she kept at the time. 

“Anything and everything you can think of, he would call me and tell me,” she said. 

The female student remembers speaking to an administrator at the school who told her that “they’re the worst class of boys we’ve seen in a while.” 

“But no one ever did anything,” she said. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/trinity-1.jpg)

### **Party culture**

One student, whom The Richmonder will refer to as Peter, was known for throwing house parties that pulled kids from private and public schools all over the Richmond area. Peter is not his real name. 

His house became a frequent scene where alleged sexual assault and coercion from male students would occur, according to two past students.

At one party, Isabel said she was drinking, and became inebriated and upset.

Another student, whom The Richmonder will refer to as Nick, noticed that she was drunk, and he approached her. Nick is not his real name. Isabel considered Nick to be someone she was on good terms with. He didn’t seem like a threat and she trusted him. 

Nick offered to take her away from the party. He drove her to Robious Landing Park and walked down to a dock outside. There, she said, Nick coerced her into having sex with him. She was 15.

“Mind you, I never would’ve done that,” she said. “I just had that reputation. People felt very comfortable coming to me for sex. And I think they knew I saw myself that way too.” 

She continued: "I obviously would never have hooked up with him if I had been sober."

But Isabel apparently wasn’t alone. That same night of the party, she said another student was sexually assaulted by Peter, the host of the party. Isabel named multiple girls who spoke out about the events of that night on social media. Those girls, Isabel said, attended and stayed at Trinity for the full four years of high school.

There was a “sex scandal” at the school every year, she said. Isabel told The Richmonder multiple incidents involving girls – some of which are close friends – who experienced sexual misconduct from boys in the school. In some cases, the school would kick some of the students out, “but never really address it again.”

A multitude of girls complained about sexual misconduct to the school during her time there, she said. 

“I’m not the first nor the last.”

Student 1 also shared that two other girls were harassed at two separate parties at Peter’s house. One girl was saved by friends from a boy who held her down while trying to put his hands in her pants. The other girl was Isabel. 

Peter himself would later solicit the unnamed student. He coerced her into having sex with him in the bathroom in his house.

Peter was also in Student 1’s class. She saw him unexpectedly, leading her to have a panic attack. She told a teacher what happened, without realizing that the teacher was a mandated reporter.

But rather than removing Peter from the class, administrators made her change her schedule three times so as to not be in a class with him, Student 1 said.

Around the same time, there were complaints coming in from her parents, who were emailing the school and Short and threatening legal action. This was something she did not want her parents doing, and she felt “humiliated and scared.” 

She soon felt that teachers and administrators were also treating her differently, walking on eggshells around her and no longer seeing her as a leader who’s capable. Instead, she felt like they saw her as “this fragile thing that might ruin the reputation of the school.”

When the opportunity arose for her to file a police report against Peter, she chose not to because she wanted to help the school and herself “move on.” And she even took it a step further, feeling responsible to schedule an appointment with Short to apologize to him. 

“‘I’m sorry that this has been brought to your attention and now you have to deal with it,’” she recalled saying. She was 16.

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### **A prized athletics program**

All former students who The Richmonder spoke to said that the school provided an environment that allowed a culture of sexual misconduct to thrive in multiple ways. 

“I think that the culture is more so centered around shaming women but also protecting men,” said one of the former students. 

Rather than being punished, expelled or even admonished by the school, boys were praised by friends and classmates, and made popular for their misconduct.

A former student said she believes two of the students facing discipline for the most recent incident played on the basketball team, which won a state title in 2017 and has multiple famous alumni who have played high-level college basketball. 

One student said the school also allows eighth- and ninth-grade students, specifically athletes, to be “reclassed.” By repeating a grade, they enter college older, creating a better chance of obtaining a scholarship. 

Another student said that athletes had a sort of shield from the school, allowing them to harm girls and “end up being problems.”

Isabel said the sports at the school is “where the money goes.” The school’s emphasis on sports was such a priority that it didn’t feel like Trinity was “fostering a super strong academic environment.”

At one point, students took matters into their own hands by conducting various walkouts on campus during the school day, one student said. 

One former student said she helped organize a walkout against sexual assault when she was a senior. Students put up signs at the school that had statements like “STOP SA.” 

Student 1 even felt compelled to bring up the problem of sexual harassment with administrators, who asked her what the school should do. 

“I went and took the liberty to reach out to the YWCA and they came and did a presentation about sexual assault,” she said.

Another student, present for those walkouts, added that the school allowed the protests, but it felt like they weren’t going to listen. 

This student also said that name-calling and blaming didn’t stop at the students. She remembers a female athletic coach “over and over and over again” calling girls “sluts” or “asking for it” when news about alleged assault came out.

She would side with the boys involved such cases, saying “‘she ruined his life, and like it was undeserved,’” or “‘he didn’t deserve it, he was the sweetest guy.’” 

That coach, who still works at Trinity, has been at the school for a very long time, said the former student.

One former student said that teachers particularly cared more about students than administrators did. But the teachers’ inability to do anything, along with the lack of action from administrators, played a role in allowing the boys’ behavior to continue.

“On a whole, we have a bigger, more complex problem than just girls wanting attention or boys being stupid. I think that it's deeper than that. And I think that if we continue to frame it as such, we won't make any progress at all,” said another former student.

“Now I realize I wasn’t an adult and I was a kid, and it would have been more than helpful to just have staff intervene and say, ‘hey, that’s really not okay.’ That makes sense instead of just constantly the blind eyes, the turning of the ears,” Student 1 said. 

“It was always just inevitable behavior between boys and girls,” Student 1 continued. “Very much, ‘The boys will be boys’ and ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this right now, but they won’t always be like this one day.’” 

### **How the girls are now**

Both students who shared stories of being coerced into sex said they are in therapy and have done a lot of healing. 

Leaving the school helped Student 1 realize that the behavior tolerated and excused at Trinity was unacceptable to people outside of the school. 

Now she is back in community college, working toward obtaining a bachelor's in psychology. She hopes to eventually obtain her master’s in social work or counseling. 

As for Isabel, she calls what happened to her “a cornerstone trauma.” 

“I think I would remind myself that it’s okay to accept being a victim sometimes. It doesn’t necessarily have to make you weak. It’s something that happens to so many people, it’s so common unfortunately and it’s okay to be hurt and to feel that hurt. And you can channel it in a more positive way than blame yourself.”

“My mom always used to say ‘don’t cut your nose off to spite your face,’ and that’s pretty much what I did. I ruined myself just to not feel like a victim.”

Isabel is now studying political science and philosophy. She is currently on a break, but she has hopes of getting into law. 

Isabel referenced her mom telling administrators that what happened to her daughter should be “a sign for a need to change.”

“‘What happened to my daughter, I hope it never happens again. I hope that this can be a sign that you guys need to have a change of culture,’” she recalled her mom saying. 

“And that was seven years ago.”

📝

****Help us report:** We are committed to sharing voices from the community. To participate in a future story, contact reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at [**vifatusin@richmonder.org*](mailto:vifatusin@richmonder.org).

*Editor's note: This story has been updated to remove a potentially identifying detail about one of the girls.*