Abuse claims and rape culture identified at 1,600 primary schools

[Diabladingo]

Posting in AIBU for traffic. I just think that all parents should know about this:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/602e2322-5012-4efc-b961-a501ae2faf8f?shareToken=6c9795cf780b8ee57ef55102b54f2b88

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700086

Why would anyone criticise you for that? I thought it was well known that statistically girls have better outcomes in single sex schools but boys have better outcomes in mixed sex. So if you have a girl, it's the logical choice if it's available to you, before we even get into the rape culture issues.

Eta- I didn't mean that as an interrogation, just a supportive comment.

Absolutely. These are children at the end of the day. They are growing up thinking its normal. Some, depending on their age, wont even have a proper understanding of what their actions or words mean. It's up to the parents to educate their children as they are growing up. Not sit back and then wonder what went wrong.

There's no point. Ita achieved. You need a current one.

I think many parents are burying their heads in the sand. Come on! The easy access many children have to the internet with little supervision and few restrictions, at younger and younger ages is obviously a big part of the problem. The internet is a marvellous invention but let’s face it, it’s a cesspit. If you don’t view it as primarily your responsibility to prevent your children viewing inappropriate material, not the ISPs, the app creators or the government, but your responsibility, you are part of the problem.

The sheer volume of degrading material online now wasn’t available to inquisitive children in the past. It’s not just the pornography. It’s online bullying, weird subcultures like gender ideology and pro-ana, strange challenges that lead to mysterious deaths, to name a few.

I think tired parents and lackadaisical parents use the internet as a babysitter and just hope their nice kids will avoid the nasty stuff. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, who knows, but other children will find that stuff or be introduced to it, and then pass on their knowledge.

Some of these children will be sexually abused children but not all. I bet there are lots of nice middle class mums embarrassed and possibly disbelieving when they are told of the ‘rude’ stuff their little cherubs have been saying/doing. It’s not only children from chaotic homes.

Parents need to step up.

Yes, absolutely. But very soon these parents will have been the first generation of children who grew up influenced by this online toxicity. Will they understand, or will it have been normalised for them?

I wasn’t aware of actual assaults but this type of culture was a big driver of us taking our children out of their primary.

8 year old boys asking little girls to twerk for them or offering money to see their non existent breasts. My DS was told to “lick out” his “girl friend” - he asked me what it meant because he is a normal child so would have no idea. He thinks kissing is disgusting (!) and he didn’t have a girlfriend he had a female best friend since nursery who he did things like play football and hopscotch with.

There were appalling behavioural issues too which really affected learning. Lots of these children were damaged (which wasn’t their fault) but the main problem was the school didn’t deal with it at all and the whole culture and environment for all the children degraded. The teacher thought it was funny and cute that the boys were joking about her thikk ghatt. There was a genuine ideological approach about how the disfunction, discrimination, bullying behaviour etc was good for resilience and inclusion; and a fake benevolence that the children with poor behaviours were beyond repair.

This is not a thing in the school we moved to. It wouldn’t be accepted. My children are having a normal healthy childhood and by and large all the parents are likeminded about what that looks like. Children make mistakes and do the wrong thing because they are children. It’s perfectly normal and healthy, but I have confidence that the school would respond appropriately if this happens. It is so much easier to bring things back when they go wrong if the norms of what’s acceptable aren’t completely broken in the first place.

Our school wasn't on it either, but to me that doesn't mean anything

If you extrapolate the stats on how many women get assaulted / raped etc and don't report it, it's probably similar in this sort of exercise. For every 1 story on there, there's likely 2 or 3 more that aren't, plus you have to know about the site to give your feedback.

We should be looking at this as an endemic issue and how we tackle it with appropriate parenting and teaching and pastoral resources in school

Stats from 2016 from the 'everyone's invited' website:

'One child is raped in school on every school day, and in primary schools alone three sexual assaults are reported to the police every school day (Women and Equalities Select Committee report, 2016)'

I had to give up swimming at 8 as I went into puberty early and had breasts. Boys who were brought into the changing rooms with their mums (7-11 or so) would openly stare and on a couple of occasions grab at my boobs when mum wasn’t looking.

I‘ve been told, on here, by mums of boys that this risk was worth taking to protect boys from greater risk of being in the men’s changing rooms.

With attitudes like that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this, I’m afraid. Mums of girls will be concerned and looking for single sex education but mums of boys will be aware that single sex education is consistent with negative outcomes for boys, and too many of them will fight tooth and nail against single sex education. The impact on girls will be considered less bad than failing a generation of boys, same way my experiences were dismissed on here.

And yeah it’d help if parents were more aware of what their kids were doing online but my colleagues and acquaintances all say they’ve given up trying as the tech is too complex and the kids can get around controls.

It’s horrifying and I’m glad I don’t have kids but I worry about the next generations becoming adults when they’ve been saturated in this poison from this young.

@fitzwilliamdarcy my son goes to a boys' school and I am very happy with that despite knowing boys outcomes are statistically worse in single sex schools. I'm glad the girls at the sister girls' school are not having teenage boys inflicted on them.

I’ve just found the list of primary schools on the Everyone’s Invited website and my daughter attends one of the schools.
What do I do now? Pull her out, not send her in on Monday and talk to head? What do I say? I’m feeling a bit panicky. Should I share on the class WhatsApp to ensure others are aware?
What are others doing if their primary school is on the list?
Edited to add - there’s a local school that definitely has places that’s not on the list.

That’s great, I’m pleased to hear it.

This is why they need to be banned for under 18s until someone can design a device that protects children from this rot. It is our duty as a society to protect our children and we are failing them at the moment

I expect every school will be on the list once people have heard about the website. This was the first I had heard of it.

Is you daughter happy at school? I think the point of the website is to make it clear how pervasive the issue is, not to make people think this is a school specific issue.

I agree. Everyone is up in arms about Andrew Tate and the like but by allowing children to have smartphones we are actually giving them access to our children.
^
I was disappointed that the lady in the article dismissed the idea of banning children from having smartphones. It's all well and good saying 'well you can police what your own child sees on their phone' but the fact that someone else might not means that they are all still able to see and share highly unsuitable things.^

Yes she is. But some schools do sweep things under the carpet. I imagine even worse than the shockingly low conviction rate of rape cases. And I want to know if the school does take the seriously, what are they doing to keep girls safe. Does this school have a greater rape culture than other schools in area? My mind is frazzled with different concerns.

No I mean there is definitely mixed messages about how boys are supposed to view girls. Pay to look at my photos of me half naked, follow me to see provocative photos of me. Oh but no you cant view me as a sex object. The rise of this male behaviour is also coinciding with a rise in more 'promiscuous' female behaviour. As grown adults we can see the difference in different types of females but to primary school aged boys or high school aged boys without the life experience I would imagine it's more confused.

A 10 year old kid I was giving a lift to started talking about Andrew Tate. Turns out he had untrammelled access to YouTube and his parents had no idea what he was looking at. YouTube is banned in our house.

Primary school girls are not selling half naked photos.

And 'different types of females' FFS. What, the Madonnas and the whores? It's funny how boys have no trouble discerning between different types of males though, isn't it? That they generally understand that premiership footballers and male teachers and their peers aren't all the same, yet apparently the existence of some women selling provocative pictures on the internet renders them incapable of treating the girls in their class as actual humans.

The existence of some women selling sexy pictures doesn't mean all women and little girls are fair game, or that how you should interact with them is confusing.This is misogyny.

I've just checked the list, the primary school where my DS's female friend was sexuallly assaulted by a classmate when both were in year 6 isn't on it. So you can't assume a school not listed is ok.

I didnt say primary school aged girls were doing that.

The fact so many young boys are being influenced by the wrong men would tend to suggest they dont see the difference in types of men either. That's why kids need protecting. They are only children!

@SallySand you are totally wrong about me and my beliefs as a parent of girls. It’s the inescapable truth that poor parenting ensures DSs don’t have appropriate boundaries. These boys are not born like this. It’s not entirely their fault at primary school. Even the law says they are not responsible fully. So it’s not any use vilifying primary pupils.

The clear and obvious route is parents. Or carers. Poor parenting needs to be honed in on much earlier. Yes, SS are overwhelmed. Just passing laws re phones will do nothing. Parents will hand over their phones. I am not apologizing for boys but a witch hunt of boys will make some double down. Schools know who the poor parents are. SS will already know the worst. We need more scope to teach parents and DCs appropriate behaviour but we tolerate awful adults and they infect children. A baby isn’t born interested in porn.

A lot of this intimidating sexualised behaviour is taking place in front of teachers who do nothing. In my daughter’s primary schools some of the boys were rubbing themselves on back of the girls chairs or making obscene gestures at the girls across the playground and absolutely nothing was done about it. Soon the physical assaults started with boys pulling girls underpants down by which time we cut our losses and moved schools.
Parents need to take accountability, they continue to send their kids to dysfunctional failing schools and then act confused when kids wind up self harming.

It's not just recent. I was assaulted as a child of 8 so this was the mid sixties, when there was no Tik Tok, no phones, no access to internet porn. I was assaulted by a boy at my primary school who dragged me to the floor and pulled off my knickers to 'have a look'. It was the first time I realised how much bigger and stronger a boy was than me and how fighting was pointless. I went to a single sex secondary school, thank God.

But my point is that this happened to me nearly sixty years ago. It may have got worse, but it was definitely a 'thing' even back then. I truly hate to say it, because I am a mother of boys (and girls), but it seems to be driven by males and their hormones. It may be exacerbated by online porn etc, but I think it has always been in them.