Bad press for Eton, St Paul's School and Latymer Upper

[Siblingrivalries]

The Telegraph is carrying a horrible story about “Eton College, St Paul's School in Barnes and Latymer Upper School” having a culture of sexual assault.

St Paul’s of course has been through this before and is now paying compensation after tutors were found guilty.

This seems to involve pupils and the allegations were posted on Instagram. No doubt more will come out in time.

Would you consider sending your child to these schools?

But they might make up stories about other schools?
Anyway, hopefully these schools have reached out to their alumni who have posted on these websites and encouraged them to get in touch otherwise how can they help change things. I’ve had a look at the posts and in the vast majority of cases the pupils have left the schools involved so it’s hard for the schools to do anything about specific cases if the ex pupils don’t get in touch.
I have friends who teach at schools all over the country and in state and private. It’s the same problem in every single school and to somehow suggest that it’s an elite London centric problem is very unfair. My DCs have friends at all sorts of schools in SW London and parties etc are full of private and state school children.

The testimonials on the link provided are very sad. All of them sound so very sad. Heartbreaking.
It makes me very frightened for my young daughters.
I am 50, and grew up in a society and time where dignity was expected from men, young, old and in between. I was in many youthful situations where things could have happened but did not. I was just lucky I know but I also feel it was not in anyway "acceptable" then. The goal posts have shifted somewhat in todays culture I think.

@Harriedharriet

The testimonials on the link provided are very sad. All of them sound so very sad. Heartbreaking. It makes me very frightened for my young daughters. I am 50, and grew up in a society and time where dignity was expected from men, young, old and in between. I was in many youthful situations where things could have happened but did not. I was just lucky I know but I also feel it was not in anyway "acceptable" then. The goal posts have shifted somewhat in todays culture I think.

I’m 51 and to be honest the testimonials don’t sound particularly different from what went on ‘in my day’ but we didn’t have the phones etc then. But I do think girls today are way more aware of what is acceptable and what isn’t. Listening to DD and her friends is very enlightening.

@XelaM - the whatsapp group my son is in received a screenshot of another chat, between non LU boys, where these boys were talking about posting fake reviews and then rating each other on how 'hilarious' what they had come up with was. My point, therefore, is that not all the testimonials can be real, making it even harder for us to identify the actual victims and the issues at play.

I have printed the screenshots off and already posted them to the school. The can do with them as they see fit. I don't want my son linked to this, as he, like 99.9% of the kids at LUS are mortified by all of this and have nothing to do with any terrible assaults on the victims.

@gatewaysands - No one that is genuinely reporting is lying. The poor girls that this has happened to should be heard. The problem is that there are clearly kids that are making these testimonials up for a laugh, and i have screenshots of boys, posting as girls, who don't even go to the school, to see this clear as day!

This whole awful debacle needs a unified approach, so we can deal with the core issue heres, hep victims and stop this happening across the board with young people.

The schools have a bad reputation regardless of who is involved. St Paul’s had already, Latymer will now. Of course no school can treat this as if some reports are made up. One starts from the standpoint of them all being true.

I think this is an issue like bullying. If you go on a school visit and Head says they do not have a bullying problem, then you know that they have a bad one. Every school has bullying and in the same way I firmly believe every school has boys with this kind of culture.

It just happens that this website was started by somebody connected to these particular schools and it has grown rapidly over the last few days and therefore testimonials are focused around the London School community. Like #MeToo, I am sure it will spread and we will see how wide a problem it is and hopefully it will prove useful in beginning to address it.

I'm of a similar age and agree with you @itssaturday. Socials between the younger boys at my school (13-16) and nearby girls' schools were known as Fuck Trucks (because the girls arrived by minibus). Misogyny, bullying (particularly of the sixth form girls), rape culture, sexual harassment and sexual abuse was rife in the school amongst pupils and staff. I know plenty of women who went to similar schools who had the same experience.

Your son must be on a pretty vile WhatsApp group if these boys think posting fake sexual assault reports is funny

@gatewaysands I think you’ve missed the point again. The poster is saying her son‘S friends have been sent evidence in the form of screenshots, from others, that there are other boys out there posing as girls and posting fake testimonials. The poster’s own son is not engaged in it or related to it in any way. You need to read posts thoroughly before commenting.

@gatewaysands

Your son must be on a pretty vile WhatsApp group if these boys think posting fake sexual assault reports is funny

The poster has explained several times that her son’s WhatsApp group received a screenshot showing boys from another school finding the whole thing hilarious. His group were not finding it hilarious.

@gatewaysands He’s hardly responsible for the contents of a group he is on, hopefully he did the responsible thing and reported the group to school so they can educate the group in the seriousness of what they are doing.

But obviously if this is the culture of Latymer, that the pupils find sexual assault and rape funny and will lie about it, it is a very serious issue. The police ought to talk to the school about how this interferes with their work and it may even be a criminal offence.

The poster has explained several times that her son’s WhatsApp group received a screenshot showing boys from another school finding the whole thing hilarious. His group were not finding it hilarious.

Well according to the poster she had to interrogate her son before he showed her what he and his friends were at on their WhatsApp group

The events happen at parties where some London children go. Not a st school -St paul’s os sll boys. There will always be a be a contingent of people like that at any school. But the schools named sell more newspapers by making better headlines than Croydon High School Community Comp -who would bother reading that?

@nimbuscloud

The poster has explained several times that her son’s WhatsApp group received a screenshot showing boys from another school finding the whole thing hilarious. His group were not finding it hilarious.

Well according to the poster she had to interrogate her son before he showed her what he and his friends were at on their WhatsApp group

If posters on here can't read and understand posts how do we expect our children to. The poster clearly said that her son was on a LU chat group on which someone had posted a shot from non LU boys who found the whole thing hilarious and she has since reported this to the school. Nowhere did she say her son found the whole thing hilarious- in fact she said he is devastated about the whole thing.

But people are happy to pay for their kids to attend uni's that have had bad press for having a rape culture?

Gosh. I think all this proves a valuable point... you can’t trust what you read on the internet.... mainly because no one can be trusted to read the internet properly before commenting themselves!

I don’t think this issue is limited to LU or any other private school, it’s clearly a society wide issue, quite rightly raised to the top of the National agenda, and now we must work to address it.

Why do people think it happens everywhere? Surely then parents of children at other schools would be saying so, even if the media didn't pick up on it.

My DD is a pupil at LUS and this was all news to her. She said neither she nor her friends had encountered any sexual harrassment at school.

Is the age of consent too young? Whenever I read stuff like this I think there is so much confusion out there around what is normal and young girls believing that having sex is somewhat “expected” in a relationship at a certain age - reading some of these posts it’s very clear to me that most of them just aren’t emotionally ready. It’s easy to call out the hard boundaries I.e. when a girl says “no” and boy ignores her or taking advantage of someone who has passed out but the more subtle coercion is trickier (I.e.being told by your boyfriend if you don’t relive him he will get blue balls and therefore you agree to give him a hand job; letting a boy touch you because he tells you he is giving YOU pleasure). Perhaps if we moved the age of consent it would provide a bit of breathing room for girls to work out how to react in these situations?

@NOTANUM, I think you’ve made a really good point. The problem we see today, in this revelation, is that this website, filled with the horrific tales of the victim is a surprise to the vast majority of us. I think if Latymer Upper, for example, was/had been receiving such testimonies directly, they would be acting on them with great vigour. They wouldn’t be ignoring them, they simply can’t. It would land them (& any school) in the most horrendous s**t if they simply ignored them, it would destroy their reputation and ruin what is essentially their charity/business.

Most of these testimonies seem historic and outside of the schools. I think sadly, for whatever reason, they weren’t reported and so weren’t dealt with. What we need to do going forward is make sure young people know how to behave appropriately with each other and afford them the confidence to speak up, in a safe place, if they need help .

@pico1234 They are ignored at some schools. Fifty years of abuse at St Paul’s and people said afterwards when it all came out that there were always rumours 😱

Look at Saville and the rest. People ignore it. People still fight to get into the schools because a prestige school is more important to them and they think it won’t happen to their children.

As it says here “sexual abuse appears to have been “known and tolerated by staff” at the school.”

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/13/review-reveals-scale-of-abuse-scandal-at-london-private-school

@WarrenBird so you’re saying your son and his friends were laughing at these accounts of sexual assault? I’m sorry but regardless of wether or not they are true, (and I think they are true) that’s kind of worrying behaviour. Who reads those dark things and laughs at them? The boys that laugh at things like this are part of the problem....

[quote Ella4556]@WarrenBird so you’re saying your son and his friends were laughing at these accounts of sexual assault? I’m sorry but regardless of wether or not they are true, (and I think they are true) that’s kind of worrying behaviour. Who reads those dark things and laughs at them? The boys that laugh at things like this are part of the problem....[/quote]
Please, please, please read the previous posts properly before commenting on someone's child

@Ella4556.
Read the post.
Properly.
Request to delete your reply.
Then maybe give yourself a break from forums.