What should schools with pupils accused of sexual assault do?

[rosemary201]

I guess we've done to death the testimonies, now I'd like to explore from the best minds of Mumsnetters what should schools do now, in the medium term, and in the long term to deal with this.

I imagine the schools are reaching out to all sorts of consultants, advisors, psychologists, educationalists, PR experts, lawyers etc to plan their response and future steps.

Right now, of course schools are speaking with the authors of letters, inviting people to come forward to help investigations. Not sure how far these investigations will go given most testimonies are anonymous.

What else should the schools do?

There's a school flow chart for reporting crime, so something like a low level assault would not need reporting to cops if all parties in-house are ok with it being dealt with in school.
Serious offences, like carrying knives should always be reported to police. It's mandatory, whether there is a formal outcome or not.
I think, if I remember rightly, sexual assault is serious and must be reported by the school or if not, the parents.

Regard the accused as guilty until they can prove their innocence.

getting the police involved is all well and good, but it won't stop the problem from happening again, especially the microaggressions. I'd like to know/explore what schools can do to change the culture where children think these actions are okay. I imagine it involves some awareness and empathy training at an earlier age

Safeguarding would the course of action if it’s in school. I think these accounts are not on school premises so the normal channels are not open to schools. The accusations should be taken to the police. As they have been posted anonymously, I rather suspect they won’t be.

The schools will want to be proactive. They won’t want to be tarnished with this. They can exclude pupils who bring the school into disrepute. Harrow has certainly done this. So that’s one course of action for existing pupils. They can revamp their PHSE curriculum. I would advocate local schools working together on this so all pupils follow the same course.

I would also think they need to talk to parents about parties. One does assume this is a minority of pupils but parents need to be on board with the school and the actions that will be taken if there are allegations.

So the schools need to work on safeguarding, reporting, parental engagement and the curriculum and the ethos of the school.

Call the police

Start educating all the boys (and girls) on consent etc immediately. Including encouraging them to call out their friends for misogynistic behaviour and unwanted attention.
Encourage an atmosphere that girls (and boys) can report concerns and incidents.

At the same do the investigations.

I worry that compulsory police involvement re sexual offences might reduce reporting. No woman or girl is obliged to involve the police if she has been assaulted- it should be her choice with support given either way.

So many things are contributing to the current situation in schools. Partly it's a long-standing cultural problem. The whole way that teenage boys and some men talk about sex represents it as being a challenge- talking about conquests or sporting metaphors like "getting to third base". Girls' boundaries are a foe to be overcome or worn down.

The normalisation of porn is a massive factor. Teenagers don't have the maturity to watch a lot of hardcore porn without it affecting their attitudes. In fact, I'm not sure anyone does.

One constant in the reports I've read is that schools and universities try to minimise what has happened (this was also my experience as a teen) presumably because they find it too hard to deal with. And it is very hard to deal with. There's also I think a persistent attitude that "boys will be boys", you wouldn't want to ruin a decent boy's life over a momentary lapse of judgement etc. That needs to change. While I don't think that police involvement should be compulsory, as I've said, students need to understand that these behaviours are criminal offences and that perpetrators can face a jail term.

I agree with the post above about parties and some parents being far too hands off.

No idea. My DD was sexually assaulted at school by a male 'friend' who she immediately reported. He was temporarily excluded and spoken to by the police. He did it another 4 times before he was finally permanently excluded after attacking a girl in the woods on a school trip. He is now at another school in the local area and I can't see that the issue will have gone away.

He actually had charges pressed by the family of the girl of the worst assault and we were asked if we wanted to do the same but at that point he was already excluded and facing the charges from the other girl so we decided not to as DD was too fragile in her mental health at the time.

I watched an episode of Panorama about child on child sexual abuse. Iirc there is no requirement to record sexual assaults in schools in the same way that racist results are.
There were stories of girls (one in primary) and how their schools dealt with the problem and it was appalling. Basically the girls had to stay in the same class as the boy who assaulted them. They were told not to make a fuss or kept separate from friends when the boys are the ones who should have been segregated. I assume that if a member of staff was sexually assaulted on school premises that they'd not face the same treatment.

Here's a synopsis of that programme

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/frontpage/newsidd_7811000/7811468.stm

Families cannot “press charges”. The girls assaulted can help police with enquiries. Police gather evidence. When they judge there is sufficient evidence to stand up to cross examination, they present the case to the CPS. It is they who decide if a case goes to trial. Not a parent. Parents can encourage DDs to come forward to give evidence.

It is noteworthy that these crimes are reported without names. The incidents are historic and cannot be traced unless the women give evidence. All the sexual assault trials require this.

Schools AND parents educate. Any assault on school grounds or by a current pupil is a safeguarding issue. Robust policies exist to deal with this. At parties it is g the schools’ responsibility.

@RedGoldAndGreene

I watched an episode of Panorama about child on child sexual abuse. Iirc there is no requirement to record sexual assaults in schools in the same way that racist results are. There were stories of girls (one in primary) and how their schools dealt with the problem and it was appalling. Basically the girls had to stay in the same class as the boy who assaulted them. They were told not to make a fuss or kept separate from friends when the boys are the ones who should have been segregated. I assume that if a member of staff was sexually assaulted on school premises that they'd not face the same treatment.

Yes I agree it is terrible - my DD was scared of this boy but he was still allowed to hang out with his friends (same group as DD) so she spent lunchtimes on her own until I found out and went mad at the school

@PresentingPercy

Families cannot “press charges”. The girls assaulted can help police with enquiries. Police gather evidence. When they judge there is sufficient evidence to stand up to cross examination, they present the case to the CPS. It is they who decide if a case goes to trial. Not a parent. Parents can encourage DDs to come forward to give evidence.

It is noteworthy that these crimes are reported without names. The incidents are historic and cannot be traced unless the women give evidence. All the sexual assault trials require this.

Schools AND parents educate. Any assault on school grounds or by a current pupil is a safeguarding issue. Robust policies exist to deal with this. At parties it is g the schools’ responsibility.

Ok well I got my wording wrong but we were asked if we wanted it taken further and with the other girl there was definitely a court case. I assumed her family had pushed for this but clearly not.

Regard the accused as guilty until they can prove their innocence

Really, bigfatliar?

I think that any change in approach needs to start in primary schools too. While it is difficult to think of primark school kids carrying out sexual assaults, they do.

I'm worldly enough to know that my kids will act differently at school and when with friends out of school. I'm pretty confident that my son wouldn't sexually harass girls (eg ask for a nude or make sexual comments) but I can't be definite. I can hear him chat on gaming headset and see his social media which includes friends posting memes with sexual content but that's a limited snapshot really. How can parents of teen boys keep an eye on things? Apps like Snapchat make it hard to keep an eye on things and there comes an age where you can't monitor phone messages any more.

There needs to be a clampdown on more minor sexual behaviour.

Eg If boys are at the bottom of stairs piercing on girls with short skirts walking up, the boys should be in trouble rather than the girls told to wear long skirts to deter them from doing this.

I was privately educated and took several exams for Sixth Form entry. I remember a girl at one exam talking about how they were going to pick a girls school because the boys schools with mixed sixth forms were awful. Their sister walked into the form room on day 1 and the boys were calling out marks (out of ten) for each of the new girls. (This is a very famous school btw) They went on to say that their sister faced 2 years of sexual "banter" and the school culture didn't stop the boys from doing it. With teens there's a culture of snitches getting stick so people not reporting assault.

Do boys who sexually assault start off with more minor red flag behaviour? I know that in the case of murderers there are often red flag events earlier on in life like cruelty to animals (or is that a stereotype?)

The schools that are being named and shamed are announcing reviews. But I feel there should be clear official advice and training as to how schools should handle these situations. Girls seem to be expected to put up with situations that we would never expect women to tolerate at work.

I think a good start would be to clearly define what constitutes a sexual assault and sexual harassment and talk about it in PSHE. Seems obvious but I don’t think everyone would agree what’s included. I read recently that 25% of men think that asking a women if she wants to go for a drink/coffee constitutes sexual harassment. In the state of California the consent laws require that consent is required every time and at every stage of a sexual encounter - even if you are married. It also states that if you have been drinking then consent cannot be given - having sex with someone who has been drinking or under the influence of drugs is considered rape. The laws are different in the U.K. and there is a real grey area around whether not saying “no” implies consent or if it’s ever ok to make the first move without explicitly asking for permission?

@GrownUpBeans

The schools that are being named and shamed are announcing reviews. But I feel there should be clear official advice and training as to how schools should handle these situations. Girls seem to be expected to put up with situations that we would never expect women to tolerate at work.

I agree

A good starting point would be to look at how the school would deal with a staff being a victim of sexual assault/harassment and apply that to pupils who are a victim too.

The impression I get from the little I know is that no adults (school, police..) take responsibility for managing sexual harassment/assault that occurs off school premises (eg on the way or way home from school). I'd like those incidents to be treated as seriously as ones on school premises.

@rosemary201 the schools don’t need society to review the rules to be able to talk about them. Getting boys and girls in a room and discussing various scenarios and what is acceptable and not acceptable would be a good start. Understanding why one pupil might like it if a boy they liked tried to kiss them while another would feel this constitutes assault is a good beginning....any maybe agreeing what actions you might take to allow young people to explore their sexual feeling without hurting others? Perhaps they could draft their own school charter documenting how they want each other to behave. Rating each other out of 10 isn’t a crime but perhaps the school’s own culture and values might explicitly agree and accept this to be a violation of their own code of conduct. It think the kids need to be part of this otherwise it won’t work. It’s much easier to call out a behaviour if we have all agreed it’s unacceptable within our “culture”.

Regard the accused as guilty until they can prove their innocence

Really, @bigfatliar?

Apparently the theme of some of the schools' responses has been to uphold the reverse tenet of the British legal system. That does seem to have inflamed tempers but surely that's fundamental?

Schools have to take any reporting seriously. But really it's not a school's place to deal with any kind of illegal behaviour by its pupils. The school has only one choice and that is to refer all such allegations to the police.

In terms of dealing with unacceptable misogynistic/racist/sexist/homophobic behaviour by its pupils - a school has to make reporting allegations straightforward, and has to have a clearly defined policy which it follows regarding the punishments each would result in.

All schools have strong PSHE programmes and these have to be developed and updated regularly to ensure they are still fit for purpose.

@Jamiebond789

So difficult even for adults to agree on those sensitive issues, how can teenagers how where the lines are drawn?

I cited above the Brett Kavanaugh case which in the end did not result in any conclusion.

Schools can't change these things. What can they do to reduce their chances of appearing on the press for sexual assault again?