‘Teach boys about relationships, don’t scapegoat them’: Plea for tolerance as school sex abuse site deluged with complaints
Headteachers told today how they are trying to tackle sexual harassment and support pupils amid a surge in the number of sexual assault allegations made online.
Some of London’s top independent schools have been named on the Everyone’s Invited website, set up for students and former pupils to report claims of sexual harassment. Almost 5,000 testimonials have been published on the site.
Some schools have informed police of the online allegations, which are published anonymously and name the school which the perpetrator attended.
Experts said there is a “groundswell of anger” among young women who feel they have been marginalised, discounted, “slut-shamed” and ostracised by speaking about their experiences in the past.
At the same time, some boys are distressed to hear the allegations, and there are some fears for the mental health of innocent boys who are anxious they will be wrongly implicated.
The site was set up last June by Soma Sara, 22, who said: “We have to expose it before we can change it. We are trying to educate our generation and the older generations at the same time.” Many schools have drafted in experts to speak to pupils about consent, pornography and lad culture.
Alun Ebenezer, head of Fulham Boys’ School, said: “If our boys, and all boys and girls, have behaved in a way that is wrong it needs to be faced up to and dealt with. I do not think trial by social media is the right way to do this.”
Gill Cross, deputy high mistress of the all-girls’ Streatham and Clapham high school said: “It worries me that boys will feel targeted, or there will be a backlash which suggests that girls are moaning about things and exaggerating the issue. It is also a worry that boys will face another anxiety at a pivotal moment of their development and we don’t want them feeling guilty for the behaviour of others.
“That’s why it is so important that schools help boys to have healthy and respectful relationships with girls and with their ideas about how to treat girls or their sexual partners.”
Mr Ebenezer added: “No one is named on the website. There is one paragraph that says Fulham Boys School, and that’s the problem with it all because if you say that, everyone is implicated.
“It’s very hard to unpick but it does raise the issue that we have to address these things and take them very seriously.”
Eton College said pupils have been encouraged to report any concerns they have about what has appeared online “so that proper support can be put in place through our well established pastoral provision”.
Deana Puccio, co-founder of the Rap Project which runs training about rape and sexual assault at some of the schools named on the Everyone’s Invited website, including Eton, St Paul’s School and Latymer Upper School, said: “The majority of boys are absolutely lovely so it’s a really difficult time for them as well.
Site ‘to share pain not blame
Soma Sara, 22, set up Everyone’s Invited last summer as a way to allow young women and men to share traumatic incidents they have experienced.
There are now almost 5,000 testimonies on the site, written anonymously and naming the school or university of the perpetrator. They include harrowing descriptions of11-year-olds being forced to send nude photos to older boys, 13-year-olds molested in parks in front of cheering pupils and young women being raped.
Few of the girls thought they could go to their parents, teachers or police and many speak of feeling ashamed that they may somehow have been complicit. Many well-known private schools are named on the website, as well as some grammars and state secondary schools and universities.
Soma went to Wycombe Abbey, a girls’ boarding school in Buckinghamshire, and spent the holidays in London social circles.
She is now a student at University College London. She said she set up the website after realising girls had many experiences of rape culture they had hidden from friends and family.
She said the website team makes sure posts are genuine and that there are no names. She said she doesn’t want to foster a “cancel culture” or single out an individual or institution.
“They get made fun of and bullied if they show a sensitive side, or possibly worry about standing up for a female friend. It’s not easy out there — they are confused.”
Ms Puccio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in New York, added: “It’s really important we respect young men’s mental health and how they have been victimised by things like pornography. It’s not an easy time for any of them — it’s about recognising we need to help both young men and young women.”
She said young men are being “manipulated” by the pornography industry which is trying to get them addicted.
Sex Education: compulsory lessons lessons held up by pandemic
Sex education was made compulsory for schools in England from September 2020.
But because of the pandemic schools have been allowed to push this back to summer this year.
From then, secondary schools will have to provide relationships, sex and health education, and primary schools will have to provide relationships and health education.
In countries such as Sweden sex education has been compulsory in schools since 1956.
Lucy Emmerson, director of the Sex Education Forum, said: “There is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make relationships and sex education live up to the expectations we have of it, now that the subject is finally statutory. Part of that is about fostering respect and gender equality and supporting children to understand power in relationships. We can’t abandon children to look for answers from the internet and pornography.
“All these issues can be discussed responsibly in relationships and sex education. Research shows that this changes behaviour and helps prevent harm, but studies show that teachers need rigorous training. We need to take parents on a journey too.”
Government guidance states that schools should be “aware of the importance of making clear that sexual violence and sexual harassment are not acceptable, will never be tolerated and are not an inevitable part of growing up.”
She added: “The average age they are exposed to porn is 11. What they are being exposed to is misogynistic, it’s promoting rape culture, it’s violent, there is no mutual consent, no mutual respect, no pleasure for the woman in any of this.
“If we don’t have these conversations with them what do we expect them to think? They emulate what they see. We expect them to know all this stuff but obviously they don’t.”
St Paul’s School said it “completely condemns” the actions described on the website. It added: “The majority of our pupils are kind and respectful.”
