Girls assaulted by teenage boy in mixed sex school toilet in Essex school

[Clymene]

Repost as my previous thread got auto hidden for including an archive link

Four girls assaulted by a predatory teenage boy. Four girls whose lives have been ruined by this evil misogynist ideology.

Link to article here: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/28/essex-schoolgirls-sexually-assaulted-gender-neutral-toilets/

And also on archive

It says later in the article that they school has sets of toilets that are designated for “boys” and for “girls” and then one set of toilets that are “gender-neutral” so unless they are deliberately letting students who identify as trans access the opposite sex toilet they would probably be considered to be covered in terms in their statutory duty to provide single-sex toilets, even if they don’t have a written policy.

And since they haven’t created a written policy on the matter they probably don’t need an equality impact assessment either.

This is an awful case and I do believe mixed sex facilities like these increase the odds of sexual assault. But schools across the UK are terrible on sexual assault whether or not they have a set of unisex bathrooms and long before Stonewall persuaded them to thrown their girls to the wolves. 2 rapes a week in schools. It’s shocking and has been for a long time. That doesn’t seem to have resulted in them being held hugely accountable in civil court. So, sadly, I highly doubt parents would get anywhere suing.

And, again while I do think the gender-neutral bathrooms were likely contributory to providing opportunity, they weren’t the only place this boy sexually assaulted girls. I think the school has even more troubling questions to answer around how the same boy was able to sexually assault FOUR times. I mean, WTF? Is the school so misogynistic that the girls felt it was pointless to report? Or did they report and the school just didn’t act?

Yes, fair points - it would not be that simple.

This should never ever have happened: it was indeed entirely preventable. Those poor girls.

dimorphism · Yesterday 23:14

The toilets should have been single sex, and I believe the law says this too.

If I recall, they can have a mixed sex toilet, as long as they also have single sex toilets. What these ideologues seem to to, from previous reports, is to put a small girl's toilet in a far flung part of the school, on a top floor.

That way, they have followed the law, even though it's not in the spirit of it.

They seem to be determined to do this, in spite of predictions and evidence of assaults in similar mixed toilets. The heads who have arranged these really ought to be sacked and driven out of education, because the warnings have been out in the open for some years, but they simply don't care; getting a Stonewall badge is all that matters to them.

Agree with you especially your final paragraph @SinnerBoy

According to Glinner on twitter that school has been advised by a company called Outhouse Essex?

If you lived in the local area you’d know. This will be all over the local Facebook pages

have we reached n yet, where n is the number of women and girls who have to be harmed before people figure out that mixed sex provision is a bad idea?

Everyone knows that n always equals n+1

Come on everyone, shut eyes, fingers in ears, shout.
IT NEVER HAPPENS

Sure.

It was discussed in Parliament that someone is raped within a school premises EVERY school day back in 2015. These are the figures that are reported.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34138287

The example given by a brave girl was that she was pushed into a store cupboard.

It is obvious that providing lots of non-visible enclosed places will lead to more undesirable and criminal behaviour such as drug taking, self harm and sexual assaults.

EVERYONE (even the devotees to ‘mixed sexed toilets) seems to know that there will be problems with voyeurism, so doors are full length, without gaps at the bottom for safety. Visibility is fundamental to safe guarding.

These poor girls.

Unfortunately the next reveal will a dead/seriously ill child who has collapsed behind one of these full length doors and no or has noticed until it is too late. There are thousands of children with epilepsy in this country as well as strokes, diabetes, heart conditions. It’s another preventable situation waiting to happen.

I hope so too. But they must be idiots - if you decide to ignore the fundamentals of safeguarding, then of course there will be consequences. I’m also angry that Ofsted hasn’t stepped in before now - part of their remit is to evaluate schools on safeguarding, so why haven’t they flagged that some schools are breaching statutory guidelines and downgraded them accordingly?

They always know who the girls are for sexual assault purposes.

DworkinWasRight · Today 08:58

I hope so too. But they must be idiots - if you decide to ignore the fundamentals of safeguarding, then of course there will be consequences.

It's my opinion that these tossers know the risks exactly, but they simply don't care, because it's their ideology and nothing can be allowed to get in the way of it. I doubt that the head will be having a sleepless night because of the three girls who were assaulted; maybe worried about negative attention, but completely uncaring of the girls' fates.

Yes. They do.

This is an absolutely awful story, and shocking that he managed to assault 4 girls before anything was done. Sexual assaults in schools are a generally under-reported and under-tackled issue (see the Everyone's Invited scandal and the subsequent Ofsted focus).

Seeing as the focus here is on the toilets being gender neutral, I'm wondering what the set-up was that enabled the assault. My school has mixed sex and single sex toilets but all of them are cubicles opening onto the corridor (with CCTV) so it, tbh, would be just as easy for a boy to get a girl into a single sex cubicle as a mixed sex one. If we were told that mixed sex toilets were no longer allowed and we put signs on the individual cubicle doors saying girls only or boys only, I don't think that would change anything to make them 'safer'.

I thought the 'opening onto the corridor' model of school toilets was the standard these days, not sure what this school does.

”Schools are required to provide separate lavatories for children aged eight and over, but a recent report by the Policy Exchange think tank found that 28 per cent were failing to do so.”

28%?!

They'd better fucking sort it out then.

Shame on every person in a position of responsibility who pushed this bullshit through.

You were told. We warned you.

You bear responsibility for this and every other attack.

And FUCK OFF with your bullshit 'logic' about 'cis' men.

Girls and women need single sex spaces. It's not rocket science. We remain the sexually dimorphic mammals we have been for quite some time now. Women remain vulnerable to male violence .

Fix this shit. Now.

@noblegiraffe the key is visibility but toilet doors should not be full length down to the floor for safety reasons. The standard should be single sex toilets within a room. Like most hopefully still are. (See my previous post). my Dd would not have been able to attend school safely otherwise.

If you have cctv pointing at the toilet doors that reach to the ground that are mixed sex then they are there for a reason surely ? Is there something about enclosed cubicles that have no gap that are for mixed sex use that required this extra supervision?

Plus who's watching the cctv...

The standard should be single sex toilets within a room.

But there's a reason why schools are opting for the 'open to corridor' model, and it's because rooms where pupils can congregate out of sight of teachers are not safe, even if all pupils are of the same sex. The lack of visibility to teachers meant they were where bullies congregated, vandalism, fights and smoking etc happened.

If you have cctv pointing at the toilet doors that reach to the ground that are mixed sex then they are there for a reason surely

We have CCTV on the single sex toilets too, because girls also behave badly in toilets (vaping, vandalism, drug dealing, or simply just crowding in 10 to a cubicle to bunk off lessons).

Oh, and no one's watching the CCTV. If there's an incident, then SLT can access the CCTV to see who was around the toilets at the time.

We have CCTV on most unsupervised areas of the school.

Girls are being let down by inclusivity policies.

They pander to loud mouthed fashionable groups, but fail to include 'female' as a category that is worthy of protection.

Oh well the handmaidens and the ones that tell us to be kind to people who are trans/Q/? etc are the ones to blame for the increasing encroachment on women and girls safe spaces. What do they have to say or don't they care? Pandering to the men and boys again.

So its not really preventing anything then. Just helpful if something does happen.

So in that case they arent really any safer for having them there kids will likely forget there are even cameras.

So again why add the increased risk of a fully enclosed space even if it is onto a corridor. How does that fit with a risk assessment fir say kids with asthma epilepsy ,allergies , who could collapse /fit and not have their feet seen under the door