At least a tenth of educational institutions in England have been named in an online campaign which urges young survivors sexual abuse to share their stories. The schools and colleges were named on the Everyone’s Invited website in detailed accounts of young people on rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.
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The list consists of public and private primary and secondary schools as well as colleges. Some 260 institutions in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were also mentioned. The schools were mentioned by anonymous respondents as being the locations of the abuse they suffered. However, some critics discount the list for not taking into account cases that occur outside school premises or only mentioning the schools because respondents or their abusers attended them.
Prevalent rape culture
In April, the campaign, Everyone’s Invited released the names of 86 universities that were mentioned in rape cultureallegations filed anonymously. The website has so far collected 16,000 testimonies with the site seeing an increase in the number of allegations following the death of Sarah Everard in March.
On average, the names of private schools have appeared eight times more than any categorywith allegations ranging from rapes to slut shaming.
A spokesperson for the campaign said:
[The new list] reinforces the shocking reality that rape culture is everywhere, including all schools. The schools we should be worrying about are the schools not mentioned on Everyone’s Invited. Some school heads have told their pupils not to share their testimonies with Everyone’s invited.
Why are some head teachers silencing survivors? Why is the reputation of institutions being prioritised over victims of rape and sexual abuse?
Sexual harassment ‘normal’ in schools
A recent report by the UK’s agency in charge of educational standards, Ofsed shows that sexual harassment is so common in schools that pupils do not see the point in challenging or reporting it. The report also shows that young people do not trust adults to understand or deal with the harassment issues they face.
While admitting its findings do not ‘sufficiently assess’ the extent of sexual harassment in schools, Ofsed said its inspectors will now interrogate schools that do not provide a log of sex abuse cases.
Everyone’s Invited wants this step taken further to ensure that schools have an anonymous reporting system in place. The campaign believes this would help address the gap between incidents that happen in schools and what Ofsed is reporting.
