Times: Girls aged 14 now make up the most common group to report rape to the police

[RedToothBrush]

Matt Dathan AT matt_dathan

Excl: Girls aged 14 now make up the most common group to report rape to the police.

In an interview with thetimes, Yvette Cooper says the "incredibly disturbing figure" is a sign of how violent pornography is “fundamentally changing” the views of young boys about sex:

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/violent-porn-warping-young-boys-attitude-to-sex-warns-home-secretary-cxqt79xpd

Beth Rigby AT bethrigby
Shocking & deeply upsetting. Nearly a third of female rapes reported to police involved girls aged 18 & under in yr to March. Data on female rape victims disclosed by 31/43 police forces in Eng & Wales show 1,458 girls aged 14 reported a rape in 2023/4, more than any other age gp

I have not got a Time Subscription so can't read the actual article.

From what I can tell this is a big increase but the article doesn't explicitly say the age of the perpetrators. The suggestion is article implies it's teenage boys but doesn't say it but other are saying the data shows many are much older.

Either way a sudden rise in reporting by 14 year olds is concerning. Is this a change in the pattern of crime or are more 14 year olds merely reporting? Unfortunately it would seem more likely to be the former.

Either in the context of this, it makes you wonder about the erosion of single sex facilities and services that these girls are exposed to and then subsequently have to deal with.

None of these individual issues are good and collectively add up to something which is particularly awful to think about.

That is horrifying, I don’t really have any words

Share token for this awful story. We've failed as a society in my view.

Girls of 14 most common group to report rape, home secretary reveals.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/e362f924-d812-44fd-9b54-526ee09438fd?shareToken=eea96272ac2953dfe1d2be3ae06c731dd_

Heart breaking. The government says it cares about women and girls. Maybe they should do something about the rise of violent porn?

I remember when that 14 year old girl was gang raped in the US her ordeal was posted to Pornhub and even though she begged them to take it down they wouldn't because it was so popular and brought in so much revenue. In the end they just kept moving it to their other sites. At one time one in 5 men in the US had searched for it - possibly an even higher percentage of men and boys have watched it now.

I read it too and did wonder how they’d jumped to teen boys being the perpetrators. It was sickening and the fact the age had dropped by a year was sickening and I wondered why that was happening. Have rapes dropped in other groups or have they stopped reporting? Where are these children being raped because it reads like they are being considered women and this is the rape of children surely?

It does sound like they are inferring that the perpetrators are younger boys. Don't the vast majority of rapes happen in 'relationships' or at least to women known by the perp? I suppose some could be commited by older men who have groomed the girls. AFAIK random jumping out of the bushes type rapes are relatively uncommon so this leaves only 2 other options of grooming or partner violence. Horrifying. I hope my DD is gay because I don't want her anywhere near the young men that are being raised now.

I work in schools law and am horrified that I am not even surprised. DSLs are supporting victims of race and sexual assault and the alleged perpetrators. From what I have seen this isn't older men, it is in their peer group.

As a mum of girls this makes me feel sick.

I hope that part of the increase is girls feeling more comfortable about reporting. As a 90s teenager I know lots happened that parents and the police would never have been told because we thought we’d get into trouble.

I think guessing that it’s other teens is unhelpful. We need to know where the threat is in order to address it.

Speaking as the Safeguarding Lead in a secondary, I wouldn't say this is a new or sudden change. The change came with Me Too and (more relevant to the agegroup) Everyone's Invited, which was just before Covid.

I'd say the age is spot on. Anecdotally, I see most reports of rape and sexual assault in Y9-Y10 (13y-15y) and most reports of sexual harassment and unwanted touching in Y7-Y8 (11y-13y).

In my view, the contributing factors are

• The 'manosphere' - social media algorithms exposing boys to toxic masculinity and misogynistic ideals.
• Access to porn without adequate education and duscussion. Porn in itself is harmful. But such easy access alongside no discussion that it isn't real is especially harmful
• Girls knowing that every report they make will be actioned.

The last one, while necessary and with no alternative responce reasonably possible, is not as helpful to the cause as you may imagine. I see more than half of reports made by girls end up being malicious reports, a form of bullying the accused. This aspect isn't an easy fix, because schools will always believe the victim and will always action the report.

The malicious reports have a profound effect on the reported boy. Amongst many outcomes, also factoring into this is an aspect of cancel culture, the mob-mentality to see only black-and-white, and (for want of a different expression) pearl-clutching. So you could get a Y7 girl accusing a Y7 boy she has history of disliking of touching her leg. He says it mightchave happened but was definitely accidental. Girl says it wasn't and she's uncomfortable. School automatically belive girl and put in risk assessments for both. But then for the rest of his school life the boy is labeled "peado" or "rapest" or "kiddy fiddler" or whatever. These lables stick.

Going back to the article, I recall from a training I did that 70% of sexual abuse reported to police is child-on-child. So your question about the age of boys is likely to be answered as also a child.

Malicious reporting by girls is only part of the bigger issue. A bigger part is tackling the development of toxic masculinity and access to porn in boys.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/17/toxic-online-culture-fuelling-rise-in-sexual-assualts-on-children-by-other-children-police-warn

81% increase of incidents on school property so sounds as if it’s all interlinked

archived Times item: https://archive.is/91LVo

On Saturday Cooper will announce support for the National Centre for Public Protection, set up in the past year, which she wants to help her mission of “ruthlessly pursuing” perpetrators of violence against women and girls across the country to tackle what she describes as a “national emergency” of domestic violence and sexual offences.

I see more than half of reports made by girls end up being malicious reports, a form of bullying the accused. This aspect isn't an easy fix, because schools will always believe the victim and will always action the report.

It would be interesting to have more data on that. I recall this thread about the anguish of parents who can't get schools to pay any attention to the assault, harassment, or rape of their sometimes very young daughters and adults permissive support of sometimes very young boys.

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/our-kids-were-raped-classmates-dfe-wont-listen

In the first incident, a staff member saw the children in the corner of the playground – but then proceeded to tell the girl off.

“She was told off for having her knickers and her tights down around by her knees with one of these boys behind her,” Anna said.

On a second occasion, another member of staff saw one of the boys with his head up her skirt. The assistant told off the girl for letting the boy stick his head up her skirt, and the boys were just told to “run away”. The girl was not talked to separately, asked what had happened or whether she was OK.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3364173-Our-kids-were-raped-by-classmates-DfE-wont-listen

“The malicious reports have a profound effect on the reported boy. Amongst many outcomes, also factoring into this is an aspect of cancel culture, the mob-mentality to see only black-and-white, and (for want of a different expression) pearl-clutching.“

Pearl clutching, eh?

In other words: just a bit of touching, no harm done, get over it girl, think about the poor lad’s reputation. From a school safeguarding lead.

It’s never more than two pages before a ‘but what about the men/boys’ post crops up on any discussion on here about sexual violence against women and girls.

Violent pornography is “fundamentally changing” the views of young boys about sex, the home secretary has said as new figures reveal police are receiving more reports of rape from 14-year-old girls than any other age group.

In an interview with The Times, Yvette Cooper said the graphic nature of material boys are now exposed to is influencing the way they treat girls and women. She said schools and parents were failing to teach young boys what sexual behaviour was acceptable

And

The centre [The National Centre for Public Protection], led by Maggie Blyth, deputy chief executive of the College of Policing and the national police lead for tackling male-perpetrated violence towards women, will use counter-terrorism style data analysis and covert tactics to target the most serious offenders.

It will start by identifying and targeting the 1,000 men who pose the greatest danger to women and girls across the country and provide police forces with the specialist training, expertise and technical capability needed to improve investigations into violence committed by men.

Cooper wants the centre to help forces get much smarter in identifying, monitoring and targeting high-risk offenders. This will include a new national standard for using predictive and proactive technology.

And

In a speech to the Labour Party’s women’s conference in Liverpool, Cooper will say: “On my watch, if you hurt and abuse women, the police will be after you. The era of impunity is over. I want police officers to use every tool in their arsenal. And to strain every sinew to keep women safe.”

This reads as part of a planned big crack down on social media companies.

In the last week on MN there's been two threads on MN that made my eyes roll. The first was a Dad with a 12 year old autistic boy who was in some sort of chat where inappropriate images had been shared. The kid had previously been sent inappropriate images by an adult, yet Dad had no idea who the people in this second chat were. The second was a 10 year old boy on tiktok.

Now these could well have been trolls but speaking to friends who work in yr6 classrooms, this doesn't seem to be uncommon.

There's a massive lack of parenting going on. You can crack down on social media companies all you like but I don't think it will solve the core issue really cos Pandora's box is open and the sheer amount of stuff out there means it's everywhere. Its an issue within gaming and internal communication systems - it goes way beyond social media.

The other thing I find on the whole problematic is she's going to do a speech saying 'the police are on your side and will deal with this'. In the last week we've been told there's an institutional level issue with the police being perpetrators of domestic violence and turning a blind eye to the abuse of women especially if it involves one of their colleagues.

Again there's a recent thread on MN which reflects this. The thread about 'which profession would you never date' was appalling. Numerous accounts from women saying how they'd been treated by a police colleague or had a close friend or family members who had suffered.

How on earth are they going to improve things without first dealing with the institutional attitudes within the police itself?

And then to not support single sex facilities and making it explicit in law?!

Transactivism in its virulent form which we know is a problem, has arisen at the same time in parallel with incelism. This is not a coincidence and it's about time there was a wake up call about this. It's happened at the same time because it's part of the same movement. It is just a different manifestation.

It's all massively and utterly depressing.

I think the move to try and put some of this on a par with terrorism is good, BUT I think there's also going to be some massive issues with that too.

You've also got massive issue with the sentencing and reasoning behind sentencing when it comes to rape cases and child sex abuse cases. We've seen many statements from judges which frankly are jaw droppingly awful.

Even stuff like attempting to use status as 'otherwise being an upstanding citizen' as part of a defence / mitigation against sentencing needs a good harm look at.

I can't help but feel there's a certain amount of cats falling here, and pissing in the wind, with the approach being suggested. It's not consistent and it's not considered in significant areas.

Online violent Porn. Smartphones. We have failed to protect both boys and girls.

Absolutely.

If the issue is IN schools then yeah why aren't schools keeping the girls safe? Where is this happening in school grounds? Why is supervision that poor?

Before I wouldn't have believed it, but I know of a primary aged girl assaulted at school and the schools response has essentially been to put the various needs of the the boy front and centre and to tell the parents and child they are being dramatic and to get over themselves because children need to learn that sometimes people do things they dont like. Boys are being taught from primary age that they can act with impunity.

Touching a leg is not rape.

I hope this helps your understanding of the subject.

Is the suggestion that rapes are happening on school grounds? Sexual harassment is, its a really big problem and a constant battle.

I firmly believe its from social media toxic masculinity algorithms. These young boys are almost 'taught' to objectify women. Then they find porn and it all gets worse.

@Pterodacty1 link I posted above says 81% increase of incidents on school property.

This reads as part of a planned big crack down on social media companies.

I thought that too.

There's a massive lack of parenting going on. You can crack down on social media companies all you like but I don't think it will solve the core issue really cos Pandora's box is open and the sheer amount of stuff out there means it's everywhere. Its an issue within gaming and internal communication systems - it goes way beyond social media.

Parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Parents who try to avoid giving their children a smartphone or access to the internet are undermined by everyone around them - including the schools themselves, which make the use of apps or an online platform the only way for parents / pupils to interact with school systems.

Red - thank you for the summary of the angry thoughts that were passing through my mind on reading that piece and the "pearl clutching" item. I agree about this feeling like a shield for a social media crackdown and I'm almost speechless about the notion we should feel protected by Police activity (like you, I think about the tolerance of domestic abuse within their ranks).

For other items (Ptero):

• in the Times piece, there's no mention of the setting for the rapes the young girls and women report.
• I mentioned the TES piece and thread about schools in response to the "pearl-clutching" and "malicious reports" comments. If there are national data, and I should think this is a major evidence gap if there aren't, then this would be compelling.

Perhaps the school’s safeguarding lead got their training from poster upthread who made the “pearl clutching” comment and says they are a secondary school safeguarding lead.

Well said LoobiJee

Heartbreaking. I want to see Government tackle pornography. Anyone who has spent just two minutes on sites can easily see that the bulk of porn with high viewing numbers is now extremely violent, racist and misogynistic. Its so readily accessible. Gone are the days when you had to slip to the back of your local sex shop to access something beyond 'vanilla' (I hate this phrase - promotes the idea that extreme acts of sex are fun- and loving sex is boring - but useful shorthand I guess)

The violence - verbal, physical is off the scale in porn. Consent from performers can not be assumed - you only have to read the countless accounts of performers and ex performers and their detailing of pressure to perform acts they had stated as red lines, otherwise payment is withheld. The sites are full of abuse videos - not some act - but real unconsented abuse in many instances.

I feel uneasy with Coopers insistence that parents and communities have failed children, young people and women. Yes this will contribute but to my mind radical steps need to be taken to limit access to pornography and a new far reaching state regulation/intervention is required. In fact I'd suggest this require cross cooperation across the globe from governments. But I doubt there is the appetite. Its a crisis and government and society is failing to protect children and women.

The police taskforce seems to have worth - but this is not rooting the problem out at the source. We seems to fail to understand time and time again that prevention is better than attempting a half arsed cure. I'm furious as to what porn has done to us across the generations.