Can't ease the trauma of others

So, yesterday news had formally broken about an “incident” at my town’s high school that had been brewing earlier in the week. This “incident” involved a student getting sexually assaulted on school grounds by 4 other students while they recorded the lewd act and uploaded it online. Many other students at the school had witnessed this video before the school and police had been notified. The 4 monsters that had violated the student now have charges against them. However that’s not the end of it. This “incident” had rocked our small town. Parents are aggavated that this had happened in the first place. Other students are afraid to go to school because of it. Police are guarding the school during school hours. Many parents and students feel the district is trying to rug sweep the incident and pretend it never happened.
I have graduated from the school so I have no skin in the game but I just feel so powerless that I can’t even talk to anyone and try to ease their feelings about the whole mess. But, I obviously can’t. I don’t know where to start and I’m forced to watch from the sidelines while this mess continues to unfold around us. This mess will continue to unravel for the rest of the school year and it’s so close to Christmas so kids are stressed about tests since they’ll be out of school for a week for the holidays and now they are worried that they are going to be assaulted at school.

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Sometimes you have to realize although you can’t make the situation better how you want to, you can find alternate routes to making sure others don’t become those monsters or feel comfortable sharing if something similar, in any way, has happened or does happen with them.
Get involved with a youth outreach. Volunteer your time to spend with them, talk with them and get to know them.
You can’t stop or change what already happened but you can change the lives of kids so they help make the world a better place and, in turn, you help make the world a better place.
And you will be rewarded so much just from pouring into the lives of others. :heart:️ No payment needed, just the joy of friendship and helping others.

Update: Today the high school got a threat related to “incident”. Someone wanted to shoot all the students, staff, and other involved in the athletics. The one sport had already forfeited their season since they were the ones that launched this initial investigation. However the remaining 4 sports that were running right now are continuing to run “business as usual” unless police uncover more victims and perpetrators in those sports.

Everything feels like a blur. You know how weird it is to see your small “nothing ever happens” town as the leading story on the evening news? It just doesn’t happen. No one besides the people from the bordering towns and high schools that we completed against ever heard of us and now everyone in the freaking Tri-state area has seen my former high school plastered across their screens. Its a mess, like how in the world did we go from a sleepy rural community to this? I feel so helpless watching this horror unfold around me with the inability to calm people’s fears and worries. I just feel so powerless and there’s nothing I can do to help.