Women's Views on News |
| Alarming level of sexual offending in schools Posted: 08 Sep 2015 11:30 AM PDT
More than 5,500 alleged sex crimes in UK schools were reported to police in the last three years, according to the BBC. Freedom of Information (FOI) requests the BBC sent to all UK police forces showed there were nearly 4,000 alleged physical sexual assaults and more than 600 rapes. At least a fifth of these offences were carried out by children, so-called “peer-on-peer” abuse, but details about the rest of the assaults are apparently 'not known'. And the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, fears the problem may be even worse. “I believe these figures are the tip of the iceberg," the BBC reported him saying. Bailey then continued: “It is good news that more victims have the confidence to come forward and report abuse, although – while I cannot prove this – I believe more child abuse is taking place. “That includes children being raped on school premises.” The End Violence Against Women Coalition's acting director Sarah Green has called these figures ‘extremely alarming’. Responding to the publication of these figures, Green continued,"This is nothing short of a national emergency and must be responded to as such. The Education Secretary should respond immediately. "The figures reveal that serious sexual offences are committed in our primary and secondary schools on a daily basis. "Children, especially girls, are clearly not safe, and they cannot learn and develop, when there is this level of sexual threat in their learning environment. "The figures also show that the institutional abuse which is the subject of the Goddard and Savile inquiries is not only historic but ongoing. "Our member organisations respond to sexual assault cases between pupils where many schools have little idea how to treat victim and alleged perpetrator, and we understand that girls commonly end up leaving the school where the assault took place," she continued. "This is completely unacceptable. "These figures expose that those with responsibility for educating young people, from national government to local level, do not have robust enough policy to deal with this level of offending, are unfamiliar with the gender and sexual dynamics and pressure in young people's lives today, and are failing both girls and boys." The End Violence Against Women Coalition would like to see the government act immediately and set out plans to: Respond to this level of known sexual offending prevalence in schools as an urgent priority and re-assess exactly what training and resources for responding to sexual assault are available to all schools, their leaders and those they are accountable to – governing bodies, local authorities, academy trusts – and consult experts on improving this. The Coalition recommends a 'Whole School Approach' is adopted where the head and senior leaders oversee this work, there is training for every member of staff, there is regular Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) for all pupils, young people are empowered to challenge harmful attitudes and behaviour, parents are involved, and links are made with local support services. And the government should: Commit to centrally gathering and publishing information about rates of sexual offending in schools on an annual basis, including information on the gender and age of victims and perpetrators, so that differences in prevalence and policy can be detected and acted on; Commit to making Sex and Relationships Education unequivocally compulsory in all schools for children of all ages, including clear teaching on sexual consent; and Ensure that specialist support services in the community, such as Rape Crisis centres, are adequately resourced to support the numbers of women and girls who approach them for help – at present many of these services are in crisis, because they have no long-term funding and even face cuts at the same time as the number of survivors seeking support is increasing. "In wider society we all need to look urgently at why we have such high levels of sexual offending, which is hugely disproportionately committed against girls and women," Green said. "We need to look at the confusing and harmful messages young people receive from our hyper-sexualised popular culture, where women and girls are constantly portrayed as sexual objects and men as entitled to them. "And we must look at the failure of public services to detect and respond adequately to violence against women and girls, and ultimately at persistent inequality between men and women, as well as intersecting racial, class and age related inequalities, which lead to excuses for and minimising of abuse. "Today is an urgent wake up call." The EVAW Coalition has reviewed some of the FOI statistics and is disappointed that the police have not always been able to provide information about the gender and age of perpetrators, making it difficult to show exactly who is doing what to whom for some of the offences. It is known that sexual violence is a profoundly gendered crime, and that girls and boys are most at risk of sexual violence from the men and boys they know. But although these FOI figures tell us a lot about the gender of victims, and some information about the age of victims, but they do not show how much of this violence is committed by fellow students, or the levels of perpetration from the adults entrusted with their care. The EVAW Coalition urges the government and the criminal justice and statistics authorities to improve the collection of this information. This is not the fisrt report on this issue. A YouGov survey for EVAW in 2010 revealed endemic levels of sexual harassment of girls in schools. An Oftsed report in May 2013 found what Sex and Relationships Education is taught in schools to be very inadequate. A huge joint criminal justice and other inspectorates report February 2013 found that early sexual offending in boys was frequently dismissed, minimised and not responded to, with opportunities to prevent re-offending critically missed And in February 2014 the Children's Commissioner produced compelling reports on young people's poor understanding of sexual consent and the normalisation of pornography in young people's lives. Those working in crime prevention at the Home Office are aware of these levels of offending and in 2012 commissioned an impressive and ongoing public awareness and changing attitudes campaign aimed at young people. It seems that the Department for Education has yet to engage with this. Although, remarking on the BBC report, a government spokesman told the BBC the Department for Education had published a package of updated child protection advice and guidance in March this year, which included statutory guidance for schools and colleges on safeguarding children. He added that the government is also committed to consulting on mandatory reporting of child abuse, and has published guidance on teaching children about sexual consent from the age of 11. And he said, “Our statutory guidance is crystal clear that anyone who has concerns about pupils’ welfare should refer to local authorities or the police if a crime is committed, and all schools must act swiftly on allegations.” Nonetheless a review of schools' ability to respond is urgently needed. Please write to your councillors and your MP and raise this issue and ask them what they are going to do about it.  |
| Rights trio condemn Trade Union Bill Posted: 08 Sep 2015 10:39 AM PDT
Liberty, the British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) and Amnesty International UK have published a joint statement condemning proposals in the government’s forthcoming Trade Union Bill. The statement says: The government’s plans to significantly restrict trade union rights – set out in the Trade Union Bill – represent a major attack on civil liberties in the UK. By placing more legal hurdles in the way of unions organising strike action, the Trade Union Bill will undermine ordinary people's ability to organise together to protect their jobs, livelihoods and the quality of their working lives. It will introduce harsher restrictions on those who picket peacefully outside workplaces – even though pickets are already more regulated than any other kind of protest. Unions will be required to appoint picket supervisors who must wear armbands and carry letters of authorisation, the absence of which could expose their unions to legal action. Further proposals out for consultation could mean unions are required to provide a protest plan to employers, police, and other State regulators, revealing in advance if they plan to use social media, including Twitter and Facebook during their campaign and what they plan to set out on websites and blogs. Taken together the unprecedented measures in the Bill would hamper people's basic rights to protest and shift even more power from the employee to the employer. It is hard to see the aim of this bill as anything but seeking to undermine the rights of all working people. We owe so many of our employment protections to Trade Unions and we join them in opposing this bill.’ Recent examples of restaurant chains pocketing tips left by customers to cover "administrative costs" are examples where trade unions are essential. Sara Ogilvie, policy officer at Liberty, told the Independent: "Strikes are actually a tiny, tiny part of what trade unions do, but they are vital for acting as a stick to give trade unions and employees the opportunity to go to employers and say 'look: this is something we need to talk about, this is something we need to get sorted out' and let the employer know that the threat of a strike is always there. "If you take that threat away, people who are not getting paid the minimum wage, people who are not getting their tips because firms are taking them directly out of the till; they're going to have no way of enforcing their rights, which is completely at odds with what the Conservatives are saying about being the party of the workers." None of the better employers in the UK have publicly called for the clampdown on trade union activity the government is proposing, as Ellie Mae O’Hagan explained in the Independent earlier this year, because frequent strikes and poor relations with unions are something you find only in the very worst workplaces.  |
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