He said he was too “afraid and ashamed” to speak up after the incident happened, and when The New York Times approached him in recent days with questions about the case.

“I tried to seek justice in a way that made sense to me at the time because I was not ready to deal with the ramifications of my story becoming public,” he said in a statement provided to The Times. “At the time I believed there was still a stigma to being in the situation as a male in our society. I didn’t think that people would understand the event that took place from the eyes of a teenage boy.”…

“I did not initially speak out about my story because I choose to handle it in private with the person who wronged me,” he said. “My trauma resurfaced as she came out as a victim herself.”