I was 17, a (supposedly)smart kid from a small town in Northern New York, enrolled in a 6-week summer AP program at Cornell. I was lonely and had come home for the weekend. That night, the man across the aisle in the Greyhound bus taking me back to school calmly unzipped his pants and began to masturbate. The bus was pretty empty. I got up and moved to another seat. I was supposed to change buses in Syracuse, and while I waited in the bus station there I was approached by a policeman. Another girl, braver than I, had reported the offender, and I was needed to corroborate her story. By the time I got a later bus and arrived back to my dorm, I had missed curfew. Shortly thereafter, I had to tell my embarassing story to a discipline committee, which in the end decided to forgive me. I didn’t talk about it much. I felt vaguely dirty and guilty.
That was a long time ago. At the time, I thought I was alone.