'Our kids were raped by classmates. DfE won't listen'

[VickyEadie]

This is shocking. And demonstrates clearly that safeguarding is not deemed important.

www.tes.com/news/our-kids-were-raped-classmates-dfe-wont-listen

I want to weep.

This is horrific and heartbreaking - I cannot believe this is the U.K. in 2018. This is not how a civilised country treats its most vulnerable citizens. Those girls have been let down by every institution involved, from teachers to the police to the justice system to the local council and on and on and on.
It’s a fucking disgrace and if those parents can’t tie themselves to Westminster for the understandable fear of revealing the victims’ identities, then surely we all can on their behalf.
And those boys should be on a sex offenders register. They will do this again. If the law isn’t fit for purpose and rapists under ten aren’t recognised then the law need changing.

Thats horrendous.
God love that wee girl. But where did the boys get the idea from? Are they being abused elsewhere??

I know of a teenaged boy who sexually assaulted teenaged girls in his school by touching them in the dinner hall / corridors etc .

The police were called, witnesses and victims were interviewed by the police and supported by the school. Offered external counselling . The boy was permanently excluded and charged by the police.

So it can be done .

The school was not in England.

if those parents can’t tie themselves to Westminster for the understandable fear of revealing the victims’ identities, then surely we all can on their behalf.

I would like a clear plan of action.

I would like Women's Equality Party, FPFW, and WPUK to speak up and tell us how to organise to get our voices heard.

This is horrific and heartbreaking - I cannot believe this is the U.K. in 2018. This is not how a civilised country treats its most vulnerable citizens.

This. I feel physically sick. I want to move far away from this country.

The boys who raped the 6 year old girl were under ten!?! What madness is this?

But where did the boys get the idea from? Are they being abused elsewhere??

Not necessarily. They do it because there are no legal consequences. They do it because all too often they won't even be reprimanded by the school and will even continue to be in the same class as their victim/s.

This happened when I was a child decades ago. We have made no progress in safeguarding.

The Women's Equality Party - just when I was beginning to wonder if, faute de mieux, I should have continued to support them because there is no-one else to speak up for women and girls.

Women's Equality Party's tweet about this heartrending topic?

A devastating and compelling read from parents whose daughters were raped at school. The educationgovuk and DamienHinds must stop stalling and make #RSE compulsory without exception

twitter.com/WEP_UK/status/1040158793026482177

RSE is not going to solve this, WEP. I'm shocked by this trite response.

I was sexually assaulted at a mixed primary by older boys and moved heaven and earth to get into a girl-only school, including taking the 11+, refusing to let my parents put a mixed school on my selection form, threatening to run away from home if I was sent to a mixed school, and threatening suicide when my parents said that if I ran away they'd find me and bring me back. And I wasn't joking or exaggerating with those threats. I desperately did not want to endure such mistreatment, that I didn't even know was a crime let alone how to report it (I just thought that's how boys were), ever again.

I'm increasingly certain that single-sex education is the only safe option for girls. And Mermaids don't even want us to have that any more, with their "trans girls".

My eldest DD has just started primary school. This makes me feel physically sick. If I can't trust the teachers to keep her safe at school, where do I turn as a parent? I don't have the option of home schooling, I have to work to afford to keep a roof over her head. I expect school to be looking out for my DD's welfare and not to victim blame if the worst should happen.

arranfan

That's an especially ironic tweet when you see the kinds of SRE some of the 'interested' organisations are pushing.

That's an especially ironic tweet when you see the kinds of SRE some of the 'interested' organisations are pushing.

Sadly, you're wholly correct.

Is there something practical and effective that we can do?

I think we all need to respond to the PSHE consultation - I've got it in my diary to do at the weekend.

If the DfE have shrugged it off onto schools, we could become governors.

It needs something more systemic than just approaching this in schools tho' that is useful.

This happens in schools and has done for a very long time. We need to understand why. While we're learning why, we need to be able to safeguard children.

There are health observatory that scan horizons (so to speak) on a number of health topics.

www.makingthelink.net/public-health-observatories

There is a global one for the consequences of sexual violence for girls and women - or victims more widely. www.who.int/gho/women_and_health/violence/en/

NHS England has announced Lifetime NHS mental health care for sexual assault victims

www.england.nhs.uk/2018/06/lifetime-nhs-mental-health-care-for-sexual-assault-victims/

But, I'm failing to discover an appropriate level of NHS support that accepts young children of the sort victimised in the TES article. I'd be very grateful if somebody else would let me know of one.

It's worth remembering that in many schools, aggressive behaviour - of any kind - is often regarded as being a form of SEN. The specific category is called "Social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). This creates huge pressure not to exclude such pupils, no matter what they have done, because they are regarded as being vulnerable pupils in need of support. There are a lot of people out there - consultants, psychologists, teachers - promoting this idea. And a lot of pressure not to exclude such "vulnerable" children, including campaigns to make it much more difficult to exclude children permanently than it already is. References to the "school exclusion to prison pipeline" for example.

It's a difficult subject, but the bundling of essentially criminal behaviour into "SEN" makes it even harder to address, because that's not what most people think of when they think of SEN, or see the exclusion figures for SEN pupils.

I was sexually assaulted in primary school at age 7 or 8. A boy in the same class as me attempted to rape me. His younger brother also used to act out sexually so I can only imagine what they had been exposed to. I kicked him in the nuts and escaped but I didn't tell anyone what happened to me.

I can still remember everything about him and the details of when and how it happened. I buried it in my subconscious until it was unleashed by antenatal depression 25 years later.

Now i have a child in primary school and I am shit scared for her.

VickyEadie Ooh, where is that consultation?

[eyerolls] at WEP. Teaching kids not to molest is only part of the answer. If every peer boy who was caught with his hand up a peer's girl's skirt was put in isolation, his parents told, and the police involved if he's over ten, the boys would stop doing it. When playground supervisors spend the whole lunch break chatting instead of patrolling and blame the victim instead of the perp when a boy assaults a girl right in front if them, the boys will keep on doing it because they've been given permission. The behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you accept.

I remember at secondary school doing a project about playground bullying and reading a report that mentioned how teachers have a legal right to lunch breaks and so the school hires these untrained, usually female, playground supervisors who (I actually remember this wording) "tend to stand in clusters facing each other" and how this facilitates bullying because the supervisors aren't watching the yard. That was over 20 years ago and nothing has changed.

I think you've hit on the nub of the problem, Kesstrel. The boys who perpetrate the assaults are accorded the same "vulnerable" status as the victims. And this is totally arse-about-face.

There comes a point where you have to say "yes, I get what you're saying about exclusion to prison pipeline - but that's for minor offences like graffiti, vandalism, shop-lifting. When you get to the level of committing sexual assaults, that's it - the kid is on the prison trajectory, regardless of what is done by way of attempts to rehabilitate them. It's gone too far. We should be into 'greatest good for the greatest number' territory at this point, and that means reform school/borstal and get the little fuckers out of contact with their victims, and make school as safe as it can be for the victims."

Sex offenders have some of the lowest rates of "turning things round" and the highest rates of re-offending going, and we need to accept that this applies regardless of age. Sadly, when it comes to sex offenders, we are in the business of warehousing them where they can't damage other people, rather than trying to reform them. Because trying to reform them is a lost cause.

My closest friend at secondary school was sexually assaulted by several boys on the way home from school.

She only disclosed it to me when we were in our 30s, because it was such a traumatic experience for her. I have to say that it's massively affected her whole life, especially her mental health.

I've posted this on several forums - it's already dropped off the front page of AIBU, where one poster's reaction (which I described earlier) was to home in on my 'hyperbole' about girls being more at risk than ever - no comment on the actual issue.

Same poster is railing on another thread about "goady anti-trans posts". Strange to see the same poster not appearing to care about little girls being raped and making references elsewhere to "goady anti-trans posts".

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/relationships-and-sex-education-and-health-education

It's worth remembering that in many schools, aggressive behaviour - of any kind - is often regarded as being a form of SEN.

The violent brats are going to get the shock of their lives when they turn 18 and find that the Equality Act specifically excludes tendencies to violence, sexual crimes, and arson from the list of thinga that count as disabilities.

It does actual SEN kids a huge disservice to be lumped in with violent sexual offenders.

References to the "school exclusion to prison pipeline" for example.

If the little brats are rapists, how is a "school exclusion to prison pipeline" a bad thing? I don't want rapists walking around free thank you very much!

I think you've hit on the nub of the problem, Kesstrel. The boys who perpetrate the assaults are accorded the same "vulnerable" status as the victims. And this is totally arse-about-face.

^^ Yes!! FermatsTheorem and Kestrel. The boys who assaulted me to the point of concussion, fractured my skull and ribs were already in the realm of Social Services. Their parents tried to deny their sons' involvement even when the boys were saying, "I hit her with a brick but I never put the boot in". The school did nothing.

However, yes - as soon as the boys aged into it, they were all in Approved School then Borstal. (Unrelated to the incidents with me.) And one was imprisoned for attempted manslaughter as soon as he aged into it.

Not one of them spontaneously changed their behaviour.

I've bumped the AIBU thread by the way.