He Witnessed A Rape In 1969. He’s Finally Ready To Talk About It

Don Palmerine was a 17-year-old senior at St. Justin High School in Pittsburgh when he witnessed a rape and participated in a sexual assault. After breaking his silence about that night, he says men also need to be a part of the

Courtesy of Don Palmerine

“I was both an observer and a participant in a teenage rape.”

That sobering confession is how Don Palmerine began to tell his story publicly for the first time, at age 67, in a Washington Post essay published earlier this month about the part he played in a sexual assault.

Palmerine was a 17-year-old high school student when he attended a party and, according to his account, watched through a window as a young man raped a young woman. That was in 1969. As he described the incident in The Post: