To be concerned about a new fresh hell for female school pupils?

[Villamariawine]

I’ve name changed for this as I don’t want the assumption to be I am one of the parents. I’m not. But I am the mother of a 6th former DD.

From The Times today - it is behind a paywall so I’ve included some of the salient points. I’ve removed the poll because frankly I’d be aghast if anyone thinks I am being unreasonable.
Two private schools are at the centre of a criminal investigation into the alleged making and sharing of deepfake pornographic images. Police are investigating claims that the deepfakes were created at a boys’ school by someone manipulating images taken from the social media accounts of pupils at a girls’ school.
The schools are in the same area of the country. Detectives became involved seven weeks ago when staff at the girls’ school alerted police and social services to reports that deepfake images and videos were in circulation at the boys’ school. About a dozen girls are thought to have been victims.

The report goes on to say:

Both schools are spending tens of thousands of pounds on crisis management PR firms and London law firms to manage the fallout. It is understood police asked the schools not to undertake internal inquiries or disciplinary measures during their investigation.

And

Police declined to comment on claims that they had been unable to recover phones and computer equipment of potential value to the investigation.

And

A spokesman for the boys’ school said: “Were any allegation to be received, the school would always take all appropriate steps to ensure the matter was fully and thoroughly investigated, including through making reports to, and taking advice from, the relevant external agencies and authorities. The school will always fully co-operate with any police investigation or directions.”

I’m not interested in which schools these are (The Times has not named them) and for the sake of the girls, please don’t name them. I’d wager that the lack of progress into some sort of justice for the girls is why The Times knows about the situation.

My AIBU is that this apparently happened at the start of May. Exams will have taken place, pupils will have left, important choices will have had to be made and these poor girls have had to deal with this on top of everything and the perpetrators are seemingly facing no consequences almost two months on. The Police have moved very quickly on other matters, why not this one? It is a criminal offence to even make deepfake images of a child, let alone distribute them. If there is nothing amiss, why are PR firms and Law Firms involved? Why would the girls school need to hire them? Surely their first thought is for the welfare on their pupils who are involved through no fault of their own? These images could follow them around forever if they were created of the girls when they were over the age of 18. Was nothing learned by schools after ‘everyone’s invited?’ about trying to cover up bad behaviour?

I’m dismayed that girls and their parents are being subjected to this new fresh hell.

I specifically said girls are not perfect believe
me we have direct experience of
vile 13 year old girls. But it’s not comparable in scale or sexual aggression.

Remember the Warwick university WhatsApp group chat? Those young men got booted out of Warwick appealed and the university were going to let them back until the majority female English department threatened to go on strike.

This has been coming for a while now and there have already been major issues in parts of Spain for example. Every woman is vulnerable to this as some men will use a photo of pretty much any female they know regardless of attraction and mock it up into porn as soon as this tech becomes accessible to them they will do it for sexual purposes and for their amusement. Many of these men and boys won't even understand how much harm they are doing because they don't see women as properly human.

I don't know what the answer is, there is a lot of push back against the accessibility of porn and how it has popularised practices like choking and negatively affected the sex lives of both men and women but nothing gets done about it and it only seems to grow and become more available taking over more of our culture.

I would be very wary of posting images of myself or allowing images of my daughters online. A friend of mine who worked for a while with police unit which tackled child abuse and CP told me that most abusers of children do not access child pornography at all, instead they use images of the children of friends and family from sites like Facebook to construct their fantasies around. I don't post any images of my kids online and don't allow anyone else to. Obviously when they are older it will be up to them and I am hoping things will be better by then but I don't have a ton of hope.

This is why I hate schools using platforms like twitter to share children’s photos.
I had a real fight with my children’s school not to put my children’s photos on there, they really guilt-tripped me and told me how difficult it would be for them to take photos of the other children and made me feel like ‘that parent’.

You are right. My teens are so careful. Their SM accounts locked right down friends only. Agree shocking schools more cavalier about sharing images online than the savvy teens themselves.

Same here, I was ‘that parent’ for a bit. They’d email when it was the school play to ask what I wanted them to do about photos and make me feel like a dick. I gave up in the end. I feel sorry for the school having to promote themselves constantly but that definitely comes first any there isn’t much thinking about childhood privacy or safeguarding.

My DC, one DD and one DS in their teens don’t have any images on SM for this very reason and I agree about school SM.

I work in that area and schools don’t have a clue. I object to some of the Ed tech stuff they use as they don’t seem to understand data protection laws. It is very worrying that they don’t see it in the same light as safeguarding. In my professional capacity it is mostly an uphill struggle with staff, particularly staff who are teaching my rather than support staff.

Thank you for a very well reasoned post.

I worry about my DD's and DGC's as it does seem to be that more than just Incel groups don't see women as properly human. I don't know how we change this perception

This is appalling. Those poor girls. I hope the Police prosecute.

I agree 100% but at the same time I’m a little depressed that the consensus on here is focussed on girls not posting to social media.

Surely the answer is in parents of boys making them very aware that this kind of thing isn’t harmless fun it’s a serious crime.

Eww, gross and sleazy. The problem with private schools and even high performing state schools is that they care usually more about their reputation with prospective parents than the rights and dignity of their community. So the private school going into damage control is only to be expected.

This is a technology, lack of values/morals and lack of parental supervision problem but girls are just as bad as creating offensive and violent content as boys. In a local primary school two 10 year old girls created deep fakes with photos stolen from the state school' social media. How would they have known how to do this you ask? From tiktok, silly! The 2 girls are causing so much trouble as their parents allow them on social media without any parental oversight. Get your dc of TT. It's vile.

To keep your own children safe, boys and girls reconsider your permissions for their pictures to go on your school's social media and teachers your dc to be very, very savvy about their online presence. The digital footprints they leave can never be undone.

The tech is miles ahead of us. This is the tip of the ice berg that is slipping out into the mainstream.

Maybe the only answer is to teach our girls disdain and to be hardened against it? A “that’s not me you sad twat” attitude. I don’t know it’s all so depressing

Frankly feel sorry for schools of whatever type - they are at the coal face having to deal with societies issues.

Why would you assume women or girls would be doing it? I never said that.

The one upshot of these deepfakes is that sooner or later every ones going to stop believing any of them

Once everyone knows how easy it is to create a fake nude, then every one is just going to assume that even real explicit photos have just been faked.

For now, it's horrible for these girls, because people assume the pictures are real, but one day the reputational damage just won't exist in the same way it does now.

Its a hell of a dark "bright side", but it exists none the less

Our local private school is currently dealing with a scandal...year 9 filmed himself having sex in the toilets with a girl from year 8 and has circulated it.

No need for deep fakes. The real thing is rife in private schools.

@Willyoujustbequiet Thats made me feel physically sick.

I know, it's absolutely horrific. I couldn't believe it when I heard.

Oh I could. Grim stuff has always gone on amongst teens - just now it’s filmed and circulated 🤮

In my eight years as a governor I saw this ‘secrecy mode’ happen time and time again.

On occasion, there were leaks…

Well it tells you contrary to the porn is harmless narrative that both men and boys use it to diminish women and girls. So they know it causes emotional harm, and mean it as such. This motivation is to do with power and cruelty: like a lot of sex offending.

Because of the effort, intention to hurt and manipulative nature of this I would like people who do this to get criminal records. The public deserves to be protected from them.

Its not a new phenomenon, just a new technological take - eons ago in the 80's when I was at school a couple of ingenious lads used the school darkroom out of hours to (quite convincingly) graft the head girls head onto a page 3 girls body.

Trays of developer and fixer, and actual skill replaced by software, there's progress for you!

It’s not funny @PropertyManager . It’s actually now classed as a sexual offence to make images like these.

Hopefully the perpetrators will go on a sex offender list, the law must catch up and quick. Universities and employers should habitually ask applicants to disclose whether they have eve been involved in inappropriate online behaviour. There need to be tangible and painful repercussions for children and their parents.

Editing to add: schools and universities should have to disclose the number of complaints they have received from students and whether complaints has been upheld as part of a transparent culture. When it affects students and their families' as well as schools' reputation, they may take this more seriously.

Those who temper with other people's images are nasty bullies.

*tamper