Sexual harassed DD6 in unisex toilet

Unfortunately many children will have been exposed to abuse, dv, and inappropriate media by this age.

It's not that their motivation is necessarily sexual gratification, but it's certainly an intent to transgress boundaries, intrude, coerce and humiliate.

The behaviour is the issue, rather than the motivation, partly because of effect on the victim and partly because its a red flag for the children perpetrating the acts.

An act can be sexual harassment without being sexually motivated.

White van man shouting "get your tits out for the lads" at a female runner has no expectation that she will actually take her top off. Sexual harassment means weaponising her sexual characteristics (i.e. vulva or breasts) to humiliate her.

Didn't the OP say the boys were 6 years old? I don’t see how a 6 year olds behaviour can be sexually motivated. Do 6 year olds even know what sex is?

Anyone who knows anything about safeguarding knows that inappropriate behaviour by children CAN, not always but sometimes, be a sign of abuse or exposure to inappropriate behaviour or material elsewhere/in the home. It should always be taken seriously.

I just wanted to bring this article to the thread, I hope you don't mind, OP.

A very sad and shocking case involving CSA over two generations, but this part jumped out at me and seemed relevant to what has been discussed on this thread:

'The report highlighted that in 2016 police did not look into the allegations of sexualised behaviour because the children involved were under the age of criminal responsibility.
It said: "This deflected the professional child protection network from a more fundamental question: 'Where had the children involved learnt this behaviour?'."'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-68629466

Yep.

If the boy had opened the door once and been on his own that would have been bad enough.

But the fact that he deliberately opened the door twice and did so to an audience of several other boys takes it to another level.

I hope you can get the school to start taking this seriously OP.

I think 6 year old boys are more than capable of premeditation. My older brother would catch spiders or find other 'creepy crawlies' and then happily wait in hiding for ages to throw them at girls when he was 6ish.

Oh, might this be the issue for some people? A sort of variation on the 'this never happens' theme? It wouldn't surprise me.

We can't know whether this behaviour was premeditated, nor can it ever be proven. But I find it difficult to believe that six-year-olds could be quite that analytical, particularly as regards the possibility of the lock having been deliberately broken and the later waiting for an opportunity to arrive. They don't tend to have such a developed a sense of cause and effect at that age.

That it was bullying with a sexual undertow is quite worrying enough. If there's any question it was premeditated then this is far more frightening and sinister.

An even more frightening issue is the school's apparent determination to stick their fingers in their ears and shout 'la, la, la'.

Someone said earlier that the fact it's a unisex toilet is irrelevant. I disagree.

As Dumbo12 pointed out, the evidence suggests that this was premeditated. It sounds highly likely that the boys were already lurking near the toilet with the broken lock and already had the plan to pretend to be helpful by holding the door closed.

Had the toilet been in a separate girl's block, they wouldn't be able to lurk there. They also wouldn't have been able to either break the lock, or to have realised it was already broken (if it wasn't them who broke it).

There's a reason why sexual assaults are nine times more likely in unisex toilets - if male people have access to a space where women are vulnerable then that massively increases the likelihood of an opportunist doing something dodgy.

Absolutely this. It's all about 'Not my Nigel', a close relation of 'Not All Men are Like That'. Of course they're not. And we want to believe it's one of our own even less. We all have fathers, husbands and sons we love.

But one thing's for sure and it's this: it's someone's Nigel. It isn't a rare minority of men. It can't be, because practically every adult female you talk to has stories - that's in the plural and sometimes many - ranging from low-level, casual, persistent harrassment to rape. I've been victim to this behaviour repeatedly. I know that I'm not alone. It's not only endemic, it's a behavioural norm. It's de facto legal. And it's society's eagerness to enact DARVO on a mass scale - transposing women from our status as the overwhelming majority of victims into the aggressor for daring to question or challenge it, which in no small part is to blame.

Just look at the thread in which an OP dared to object to an aggressive, intimidatory email in response to a very reasonable gesture made to protect her physical boundaries. She did not consent to that contact. She doesn't have to accept it. The dick-pandering responses on that thread, and censure of her eminently reasonable behaviour, make me sick, as do some of the responses on this thread.

FFS, let's call it what it is. There might then be the smallest hope we can then make some headway. But this can't happen as long as social norms collude with it, rugsweep it and make excuses for it.

This thread is very interesting in that it shows how we are conditioned to turn a blind eye to sexually abusive male behaviour and how this shows up in how we deal with early examples of it in childhood. There is still so much reluctance to name the behaviour that the boys are engaging in, to acknowledge that they are using the girl's female body to humiliate her, and therefore a reluctance to educate them accordingly. The PP who said she would refuse to engage with any such complaint against her son is shocking. But then, maybe it shouldn't be shocking, there are enough adult male predators who were clearly not stopped in their tracks before it was too late.

The boys are 6. They don't know how to operate in society and which boundaries can be pushed - and which can't. Pretending that this is non-sexualised bullying or that the nudity was an irrelevant part of it won't help them and it won't help the next generation of girls.

This was a premeditated assault. The boy offered to hold the door, he could not then go and fetch his friends, they must have been in cost proximity, waiting for a vulnerable victim.

This is a very good point.

I wonder if they noticed that there was a broken lock - or indeed, if they had broken it?

And as I've said more than once, it isn't about retribution, this is red flag behaviour that could signal that the boy/boys involved are at risk and need help themselves.

It isn't a question of shaming, or of disciplining, but of the right kind of fully professional treatment and intervention by the appropriate child experts

Absolutely. I note people feel they need to use words like 'frothing'.

The NSPCC guidelines are pretty clear on what this is; I assume relevant safeguarding professionals would also be clear on a good course of action that will help support OP's DD and also deal with the boys' behaviour.

Disgusting as they are, I'd like to thank all the apologists for inappropriate sexualised behaviour from boys. We see you.

This was a premeditated assault. The boy offered to hold the door, he could not then go and fetch his friends, they must have been in cost proximity, waiting for a vulnerable victim. I would want the school to have a very close look at the boys background. That is not normal "silly" behaviour, it is sexualised bullying, learnt somewhere by this boy and then further facilitated by the schools appalling response. I would question why the lock failed to work, either very poor maintenance or deliberate sabotage perhaps.

NOTA and other charities who deal with rehabilitating sexual offenders would see this very differently: and they are the ones who know what they're talking about.

The research suggests that sexual offending is pretty well entrenched by the time a man (it's almost always men) reaches adulthood, but if the amber and red flags are caught soon enough, it can be successfully treated in childhood. I'm sorry - it's a long time since I worked with them and this isn't an area of expertise - but the colleague who headed the MAP initative I was with showed me the peer reviewed papers at the time.

Of course, the amber and red flags would indicate an issue where there is a pattern of behaviour clearly needing intervention. But these boys' behaviour would likely be viewed as an instant red flag.

What this means is that parents who are set on denying that their sons would ever behave in such a way are doing their children a grave disservice. Of course no one wants to believe their sons would do such things, and when they do, it's natural that many parents will want to minimize it with a response along the lines of: 'they're only children, you're sick!' But by failing to interact with the professionals if a flag is raised, they are also failing to protect their sons when they bury their heads in the sand. It isn't a question of shaming, or of disciplining, but of the right kind of fully professional treatment and intervention by the appropriate child experts.

The research was clear. Were this my son, I know that intervention in childhood might, just might, prevent him from growing up with an escalating pattern of similar behaviour that could see him morph into a sex offender. No one, but no one, wants to see that happen to their much-loved sons. Early intervention prevents more serious harm to them, and could also prevent harm to someone else's daughters.

The parents bent on denial need to think about this.

I dont currently have young children, mine's grown. Not only are these kids 6 but possibly in an SEN school, that's not clear. If the girl stayed sitting on the toilet they didnt "ogle" anything, they were laughing at her being embarrassed.

No-one, apart from the school, has suggested that the behaviour should not be challenger or the boys punished for it. But frothing over sexual harassment is not the right way to ensure that.

Of course it's sexual harassment. What do the PPs who think it's not SH think they do in other case of SH - measure the size of erections to prove the males are turned on? No. Sexual Harassment is just sex-based harassment, a group of boys conspiring to ogle a girls genitals against her will absolutely counts.

Being 6 means they should get age appropriate discipline. It doesn't mean they should be let off the hook or that we should be in denial about what they have done. They still need to learn that its unacceptable and different to non-sexual teasing / bullying.

Consider how revenge porn might not result in the perpetrator being turned on, they might just do it to make their victim lose their job or to upset them. Yet it's still a sex crime because it's still abuse that leverages sex to humiliate the victim.

A group of boys mocked a girl using the toilet, and you don't regard this as sexual harassment? Do you really think it was mere bullying (which would be bad enough)? Do you think that they would have done this to another boy?

How do you think this girl feels? Just put yourself in her position - half way through a wee and a gang of men burst in and start making fun of you performing a private function?

Of course it's sexually harassing!

Because toilets are places in which our biological/sexed body is relevant, and in which girls, in particular, are vulnerable to types of behaviour which are designed to embarrass and shame, and in which the boys demonstrated power over her.

Boys trapping a girl, manipulating and lying to get her into that situation, forcing their way in, and looking at her undressed, then mocking and laughing - the whole situation is a clear illustration of many aspects the power imbalance and non-consensual behaviour that is the foundation for sexual assault and abuse

Absolutely this!

When we teach children about consent, this is absolutely where it starts, in fact younger.

We teach children boundaries and consent in an age appropriate way.

The adults responsible for children need to maintain these boundaries in an age appropriate way.

The situation needs to be handled in an age appropriate way.

The issues here are consent, respect, and boundaries.

So much of the focus is on the boys, what their motivations were.

What about OP's daughter, how she feels?

Boys trapping a girl, manipulating and lying to get her into that situation, forcing their way in, and looking at her undressed, then mocking and laughing - the whole situation is a clear illustration of many aspects the power imbalance and non-consensual behaviour that is the foundation for sexual assault and abuse.

If it makes you feel better, call it 'problematic sexualised behaviour'; you can see it on the scale in the NSPCC links. It is a scale of behaviour and these boys are young. Children are learning from birth.

The fact that so many people find this too uncomfortable to even consider is very frustrating.

Girls deserve better. Our girls don't and will not learn to blame themselves, learn to be more vigilant, 'get over it'.

Our boys will learn to respect boundaries, learn the principles of consent, and consider others' feelings.

This incident was a boy coercing and manipulating a girl into a vulnerable situation, then deliberately intruding on her, mocking and ridiculing her, involving others in that ridicule.

How on earth do you think abuse starts?

Why is he doing this? It's absolutely nothing to do with 'curiosity', he knew it was wrong.

He's testing a boundary. He knows he shouldn't intrude on a girl in a state of undress. But he's doing it. Why?

Do you suggest we should wait until he is satisfied that he's not going to have his behaviour confronted.

So he will push a bit further.

When do adults step in?

The 'pants' rule is clear and straightforward:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/

Privates are private

Your underwear covers up your private parts and no one should ask to see or touch them. Sometimes a doctor, nurse or family members might have to. But they should always explain why, and ask you if it's OK first. Remember, what's in your pants belongs only to you.

Your body belongs to you. No one should ever make you do things that make you feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. If someone asks to see, or tries to touch you, underneath your underwear, say 'NO' – and tell someone you trust and like to speak to.

No one has the right to make you do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. If somebody does make you do something, it is never your fault. Even if the person who has made you feel uncomfortable, has told you it is your fault.

No means no and you always have the right to say ‘no’ – even to a family member or someone you love. You’re in control of your body and the most important thing is how YOU feel. If you want to say ‘no’, it’s your choice.