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.

I’m talking about the original report in The Times thar started the thread

Data on female rape victims disclosed by 31 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales show that 1,458 girls aged 14 reported a rape to the police in 2023-24, more than any other age group. The figures suggest that rape victims are getting younger, as in the previous year the largest group reporting the crime were 15-year-olds.
Of the total 31,603 rapes reported by victims to the 31 police forces, 9,928 involved under-19s.

Hello Yvette

Thank you for your work highlighting how 14 year old girls are the most common age to report rape. Please can you have a word with the Department of Education about this and get them to change the new secondary school toilet designs. They are dangerous. And specify door gaps in Document T too.

I wrote to the Department of Education discussing the 2015 statistics of at least one pupil per school day getting raped in British schools (discussed by the BBC and in Parliament). I told them the example given was of a broom cupboard - a private space both sexes have easy access to, with no witnesses. Since then, there has been a reported rise in different toilet designs in schools, particularly mixed sex designs. I am not surprised that the Observer (17.02.24) stated they had uncovered an 81% rise in reported incidents that took place on school property since the pandemic. Though it is not specified where the incidents took place, it is clear the number of mixed sex, private spaces should not be increased.

In every Department of Education document, the common thread is safety. It underpins everything. Indeed their recent December 2023 Document ‘School output
specification Generic design brief’ the six overarching principles for ‘Building Good Schools’:
a) healthy and safe environments [PM3510]
b) standardised approach [PM3510]
c) sustainable design and construction [PM3510]
d) functionality [PM3510]
e) future proofing [PM3510]
f) long lasting. [PM3510]
It goes on to say the layout and design…shall provide a safe and secure environment for pupils and staff. People with disabilities…shall not be placed at a disadvantage by the design of the Buildings or Grounds.

BUT you get to the toilet section and it no longer mentions health or safety. Those words are mentioned zero times. Privacy is mentioned 4 times. The designs for secondary schools have private enclosed cubicles with no door gaps and doors that can be opened outwards from the outside, even when the pupil thinks they have locked the door (because of the risk of a body being trapped). A perpetrator can hide in the next door cubicle and let themselves in with the knowledge they can get away with it as there are no witnesses.

The Department of Education’s reply was ‘Our generic brief states that in secondary schools, a floor to ceiling cubicle system is to be constructed for increased pupil privacy unless specifically stated otherwise within the school specific brief – this is to discourage anti-social behaviour (including by use of mobile phone cameras). Where schools feel that this arrangement is not correct for them, then they are able to change this requirement for their new school building through their school’s specific brief.
There is a duty of care on a school to ensure the safety of their pupils, staff and other building users. Many of the specific issues concerning the welfare of vulnerable and other pupils are known to the school and are managed appropriately ensuring that pupils have access to the correct facilities under appropriate supervision.’

Toilet manufacturers are now designing secondary school toilets to fit this new brief. They have a door to floor gap of less than 0.5cm so a mobile phone can not go under. How can the Department say pupils will be at no more risk of sexual assaults and rapes with this new design in the future?

One parent described the enclosed design as ‘rape cubicles’. The real-life school evidence shows drug taking and dealing is also occurring in these private cubicles. And of course you can’t see into the cubicle to see anyone in trouble medically, which is where most ill children will head to, eg with the new threat of spiked vapes. And how can the Department say no pupil is at risk of this in the future? For a first seizure or a seizure lasting over 5 minutes you are always supposed to call an ambulance. Secondary school age children are one of the highest age groups for having seizures for the first time. The fact that there are defibrillators in every secondary school and that the cubicle door designs can be opened outwards from the outside, shows that there is some awareness of past events.

The civil servants who decided to add this design to new enclosed toilets can not have done due diligence. If they had done they would see it goes against the evidence, and the rights of certain disabled groups (such as those thousands of children who are unassisted and unsupervised at school but are at more of risk of collapse eg the 5-12 children with epilepsy in each school) to be educated in a safe and healthy environment.

The safest school toilets designs have been single sex and have door to floor gaps for safety and hygiene. Keep them safe.

The Department of Education has failed children.

I'm extremely fortunate that my DDs have been able to attend a state girls school as I know this isn't an option in many areas. I originally wanted single sex for my elder quiet, daughter as I didn't want her to be able to interact in lessons without being drowned out by noisier boys. I certainly didn't think I needed to protect them from rape and sexual assault.

When we we're choosing secondaries, some people asked me if I was worried about how they'd form relationships and learn to deal with boys in the "real" world. Funnily enough, my focus was on their education, not dealing with boys, but it's a sad indictment that some people think girls need to learn to get along with boys.

I'm starting to think we need to revisit single sex schooling generally. As PP have said, the police sadly cannot be trusted to deal with it and when even a declared DSL posts what about the boyz, I despair of the situation improving.

Girls should have the right to a safe education.

There's no data for it (that I know of) but I would say the majority of children reporting rapes come via a disclosure made at school. Which is good. It means the culture change KCSIE was working towards is happening.

There's a current jump in rape reports. There always is in September, when children come back to school and start making disclosures. Likewise January. We are handling 3 reports of rape which were disclosed in the first 2 weeks back.

The discussion here is why. As I said earlier, in my view its social media algorithms expoding boys to toxic masculinity, then bring exposed to porn. Not being adequately educated on either (in my view because of a view that taking smart phones away will solve thr problem, rather than actually talking about it to children). Then aspects of girls exposure to patriarchal attitudes making them feel responsible. There is also an unexplored aspect to this (that discussion about is ususlly silenced) about malicious reporting. Its unpalatable, maybe it just needs to be accepted that it happens and ignored, but it's part of the same wider issue.

There is also an unexplored aspect to this (that discussion about is ususlly silenced) about malicious reporting. Its unpalatable, maybe it just needs to be accepted that it happens and ignored, but it's part of the same wider issue.

In your opinion which is as unvalidated as my perspective. I've no idea why you consider, "But consider the men/boys" isn't raised on every thread about rape or VAWG. We must read very different threads.

You're offering a claim that 50% claims are malicious. That is, plausibly, an extension of the attitudes in the TES piece and contributes to a permissive tolerance of assaults and rapes. Without data, there's no way to adjudicate this.

However, perhaps it would be illuminating to read your personal account of what you think is silenced and the wider contribution to safeguarding children. Is there a difference in malicious reporting across age-groups. Do boys make malicious reports, if so, about whom? Your account would be as skewed by bias as my own but it might be helpful to understand why you might consider it useful in a discussion of safeguarding in this area.

ETA: please make it a separate thread.

IMO, the police and ONS need to start collecting meaningful data on perpetrators as well as victims.

Thank you for this important point. The data I quote from 2015 (at least 1 rape inside a school premises per day) was gathered by the BBC contacting police forces and scrutinised by themselves and Parliament. It was a long, detailed investigation. It would be good to get a breakdown of the Observer figures. When I have asked government departments about figures, no one seems to be collating that information - or at least letting me have the statistics.

When I was that age it was older men in positions of power that were doing the sexual harassment more than my peers.

Glad you’re nowhere near a teenage daughter of mine. Show me a ‘boy mom’ 🙄

Ahh for an edit button to last longer! My first point should say ‘Thank you for the important point on data’.

I have been ‘discretely’ told to do a freedom of information act on data. So I believe something is out there and collated. I hope people are collecting the data on the stories I get.

I was raped at 14 by a young man (18+) that started talking to me on the bus on the way home from school. My sister reported it and he went to prison for three years. This was over ten years ago. Turns out he was known for being a predator but none of the other girls affected had managed to speak in court about it. I held a lot of anger for a long time that I could've been spared had he been treated as a threat to girls the first time he was caught. He was on tag already when he assaulted me, but the girl was too scared to make an accurate statement so he'd gotten off lightly.

Teaching girls not to bother reporting means girls like me don't get spared. It's really sad that we stop bothering as we get older because the reputation of the boys and men who hurt us are more valuable than the girls and women who will be abused after us.

He's not on the sex offenders register anymore and has a daughter.

The move to mixed sex toilets won't have helped. If I was cynical I would think that was the idea of bringing them in

Horrifying but not surprising (to me). I was sexually assaulted when I was 14 and, yes, it was horrifying. But even more horrifying is the FACT that it's getting worse and all that's "being done" about it seems to be to allow men and boys into "our" spaces - which is exactly where I suffered my assault.
I can only despair for 14 year old girls today.

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

And schools are proudly making all loose gender neutral ffs

81% increase in sexual assault and rape AT school seems to coincide quite neatly with the mass introduction of mixed sex toilets in schools.

Shocked? No.
Surprised? No.

I assume MEN came up with that outstanding idea as any women with half a fucking brain cell could have predicted it.

Mum if 2 teen daughters, they think the boys are disgusting.

When I was 14 (6 years ago) I thought boys were disgusting too, and I was "sexually assaulted" by one (not raped - it was horrible but I know that rape would have been worse). It happened in a "girls toilet" so he shouldn't have been there, so I can't pretend that such things don't happen in supposedly "single sex" rooms. But how much worse today! The actual toilet where it took place has become a sort-of "mixed gender" room (there is still an area marked for "girls" - no, don't ask me what it all means!) - but how much worse as the perpetrator would have legitimately been in an open area next to where it happened.

I am frankly appalled you are a DSL yet think it appropriate to use the term 'pearl clutching' about girls reporting.

How do you know they're malicious reports, or is that just your opinion? What evidence do you have to back that up? The impact ON THE GIRL of reporting is not negligible, particularly if the DSL thinks she should put up with unwanted touching or she's a 'pearl clutcher'.

I think this is very accurate.

There was a rather shocking thread in chat where a mum was worried because her 14 year old son ordered a femboy outfit in the mail. The number of people who felt that there was just nothing to do or say, part from telling him to be careful on the internet, was a bit shocking.

But I think the underlying issue with that is that we don't have any kind of widely accepted social morality of sex, apart from :don't hurt others". Here is the thing though, if you have no personal boundaries around sex (or anything else) you are are going to struggle with boundaries when it does directly affect others too. We learn self-control most fundamentally in relation to small things, interior things, and through the cultivation of habits. The habit, or lack of habit, of refraining from watching things that might put images in our mind that wouldn't be good for us has substantial long term social implications.