[Column] Another pandemic: sexual abuse and misogyny at UK schools

Everybody in society must step up to stamp out the culture of misogyny

Timo Fleckenstein

By Timo Fleckenstein, associate professor of social policy at the London School of Economics

The #MeToo movement put sexual abuse center stage in public debate. Following the exposure of decades-long sexual exploitation and abuse by US film producer Harvey Weinstein in late 2017, the hashtag went viral on social media, making survivors across the globe more open to share their experience of sexual harassment and assault.

In the UK, the website Everyone’s Invited, founded in June 2020, has become an important space for young women to share anonymously their experiences of sexual harassment, assault and rape.

The issue came to the fore again when a police officer kidnapped, raped and murdered a 33-year-old marketing executive named Sarah Everard in March 2021.

More women stepped forward using Everyone’s Invited, including young women and girls at schools across the country. A shocking picture of sexual harassment, assault and rape in schools, including some of the most prominent private schools, started emerging.

Students at Highgate School in North London walked out to protest sexual abuse in their school and the school leadership’s failure to address the issue. Rather than supporting victims, they were “silenced” to protect the private school’s reputation.

Under mounting public pressure, the Secretary of Education asked the Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted) to conduct an emergency inquiry into safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. The education inspectorate’s report involved 32 public and private schools, and they spoke to over 900 children and young people.

The report’s findings are chilling. More than nine in 10 girls report sexist name-calling, and eight in 10 receive unwanted and inappropriate sexual comments. Almost seven in 10 girls have been subject to pressure to do sexual things they did not want. But it does not stop with words like “rape jokes” on the school bus: nearly two-thirds of girls have experienced unwanted touching by their male peers.

Ofsted’s report arrives at the unsettling conclusion that sexual harassment has become “normalised” at schools in Britain. It has become a routine experience of girls and young women, and it is difficult if not impossible to escape sexual harassment, like receiving unsolicited explicit photographs and videos — including incidents at primary schools.

This is not to say that boys and young men do not experience sexual abuse, but girls suffer from this disproportionately. In 2018/19, nine in 10 recorded rape offenses of 13 to 15-year-olds, for instance, were committed against girls. When experiencing abuse, girls commonly express that they do not feel it was worth reporting the offenses. They feel left alone and unsupported.

It seems the culture of peer-on-peer sexual abuse and misogyny is widely accepted, undoubtedly unchallenged in far too many cases. Even though huge under-reporting is obvious, more than 6,300 cases of sexual harassment and assault — 10 percent of them being cases of rape — in or near schools has been reported to the police in England and Wales, according to exclusive Channel 4 reporting.

Schools and, more widely, society have failed children and young people — not only the victims but also the young perpetrators, who grew up in a culture that does not condemn violence and misogyny.

Sex education struggles to keep up with changes in young people’s childhoods, and it might not come with the greatest surprise that Ofsted concludes that sex education is out of touch with the lives of children and young people. But it would be irresponsible to leave the task to schools.

Parents have a huge responsibility too, as what is said and done at home might be part of the problem. Everybody in society must step up to stamp out the culture of misogyny in society and create gender-egalitarian spaces in which everybody can flourish.

It is a huge challenge, without a doubt, and the one that could have easily emerged or can emerge in the future at schools in Germany, Italy, South Korea, or anywhere.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]