Shannon Rooney, now 21, of Bonnybridge, Falkirk, has bravely recounted her harrowing ordeal to Fabulous Online after startling statistics revealed 5,500 sexual offences, including 600 rapes, in UK schools were reported to police in the three years to July 2015.
Shannon, who has bravely waived her right to anonymity to share her story in the hope it will help others who have experienced a similar ordeal, was not friends with her attacker but shared several classes with him.
On the day of the assault in January 2013, the pair had just finished an exam and Shannon went to the music room to print something off to give to her teacher.
"I didn't think anything of it when he followed me," she recalled. "But then he talking to me very strangely – he knew I had a boyfriend at the time and he was asking about my relationship. Then he came over and started trying to kiss me.
"I told him no and that I wasn’t interested, then left the room and thought that would be it. But he stopped me and asked if we could talk about what happened. I said no, to which he grabbed my arm and pulled me inside a cupboard, bruising my wrist.
"He stood in front of the door and told me I wasn’t allowed to leave until I had performed a sexual act upon him.
"I said no and pulled my phone out saying I’d phone my mum or the receptionist for the school to get someone, but he pulled it out of my hand and put it up on a shelf.
"I tried to pull him away from the door but he just pushed me against it and touched me inappropriately. He tried to unbutton my shirt and pull my tights down.
"I kept trying to push him off me, but he’s a much larger person than me so I didn’t have much luck fighting him off. He ended up touching himself and tried to force me to kiss him.
"I was pulling at his hair trying to get his head away from me, but I couldn’t do anything. In the end he ejaculated on my tights. Then he just stopped and zipped up his trousers. I grabbed my phone, said he was disgusting and left."
Desperate to get home, Shannon got on the school bus and, in tears, confessed what had happened to her best friend, who encouraged her to report it.
She phoned her brother when she got home and put her clothes in a bag as evidence.
"I think I’d watched one too many NCIS programmes," she said. "My brother was really angry but he said I had to go about this the right way.
"The next day I took my clothes into school and told the school police officer, who was bewildered.
"He called my mum and she just burst into tears when she heard what had happened.
"The police took pictures of my wrists where I had bruises and they wanted to examine my body as well."
Shannon said it took a long time for what had happened to sink in – made worse by the court dismissing the case as a "romantic fumble between two teenagers" a year after it had happened.
"I couldn’t bring myself to go to the appeal – I was so scared he was going to get away with it," Shannon confessed.
"I got really depressed. For a long time I stayed in my bedroom with my mum, not wanting to step outside because I was anxious something bad was going to happen if I did.
"I wasn’t eating and ended up getting gastritis and lost quite a bit of weight.
"I lost so many friends and that made it so much more difficult. A lot refused to talk to me. As well as feeling I’d been violated, a lot of my mates didn't even believe me.
"It dragged on for so long, that was the worst part of it. Not having it lingering over my head and people questioning me for so long would have made it a hell of a lot easier and allow me to get on with my life.
"I'll never get that time back, spent sitting in my room worrying, getting threats, people putting things all over Twitter and Facebook, saying horrible things."
'A rape each term day is occurring in schools'
Shockingly, following its dismissal in court, Shannon told how she and her parents were called into school by the headteacher to see how they would feel about the boy returning to school.
"I didn’t even have words at that point, I was just so shocked," she said.
"My mum was like, ‘You’ve got to be having a laugh right?’ But he was completely serious. I said if he came back to school then I wasn't going to be there because I couldn't deal with seeing him in the corridor or sitting in a classroom with him across the room from me."
Shannon's family appealed her case and it went to the High Court in Glasgow in April 2014, where her attacker received community service order and was placed on the sex offenders register.
Following her ordeal, Shannon struggled to form relationships and have sex.
"In the back of my head I was worried I was going to experience something similar, or that people would view me differently because of what happened," she said.
"The very first couple of times where I did end up experiencing sex, it was very strange and took quite a long time to get myself in the right headspace. But I now have a new partner and have moved on with my life."
Worryingly, Shannon, a sales executive, thinks that her assault was far from a one off. She fears the attack is part of a culture that means young men have a warped idea of what sex should be. She said better sex education is needed to teach young people about consent and respect.
"A lot of boys go down the wrong path because they think they’re entitled to do what they want and don’t have respect for women," she said.
"Being sexually assaulted is not something you expect when you go to school," Shannon added.
"You don’t think something’s going to happen there that’s going to alter the course of your life."
We previously told how a woman who was raped by her babysitter bravely waived her right to stay anonymous to encourage other survivors to come forward.
Meanwhile, Phillipa was drugged and gang-raped at a party at 14 – and some of her attackers are still free.
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