Schools ‘do not react to sex attacks properly’

School authorities often react “in inappropriate ways” to incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault of pupils, rape crisis groups have claimed.

The comments follow a survey of college students which found that consent regarding sex was a “grey area”, hampered by an inability to talk about sex and ignorance of what constituted sexual assault.

Rape Crisis Network Ireland said these students left post-primary school unprepared, leaving them vulnerable to sexual violence.

RCNI policy officer Clíona Saidléar said research showed that, by the time young people reach adulthood, they had learnt to tolerate a large amount of sexual violence.

She said the research RCNI commissioned — which was published on Tuesday — showed that young adults did not believe anything could or should happen in response to almost all forms of sexual violence, except the most serious.

“Where do they learn this?” said Ms Saidléar. “Schools are not solely responsible but there is no national guidance or policy on how schools respond to sexual harassment and indeed low-level assault, groping, etc.”

She said it is not included in the Department of Education’s Action Plan on Bullying and that the forthcoming statutory framework Children First does not deal with the area.

“Our experience is that school authorities react in different ways and often in inappropriate ways,” said Ms Saidléar. “For example, they tell young girls who have been assaulted on school corridors that they are better off forgetting about it and not taking or asking the school to take any action.”

She said a policy document RCNI published this week, The Older Child and Sexual Violence, highlighted the need for action.

The report said that while a school was by no means wholly responsible for empowering children in their capacity to negotiate sexual pressures and encounters, the education system has “an opportunity and an obligations” in this area.

It said: “Rape crisis centres nationwide, in contact with survivors and educational institutions, report ongoing instances of harassment and assault and inappropriate or inadequate responses to same from the authorities.”

It cited a 2002 study which found that girls and female teachers in co-ed schools regularly experienced the threat of or actual sexual assault on school premises.

“The ‘milder’ assaults we can surmise took the shape of actual or attempted breast squeezing, bum pinching and crotch grabbing,” said the report. “The boys described it as ‘a bit of fun’ and ‘harmless’. The girls described it as ‘running the gauntlet’.

The report’s conclusion said: “Effective primary prevention requires every school community to have an explicit zero tolerance of sexual harassment and violence. This is largely absent at present. RCNI believe a national whole-of-school policy and set of actions is an appropriate response to the scale of the problem of teenage vulnerability to sexual violence.”

Ms Saidléar said the group wanted a meeting with Education Minster Ruairi Quinn on the matter.

* Helpline: 1800 778888 www.rcni.ie