A report by 'Let's Talk Consent' collected testimonies from 300 students. All had been victims of sexual assault at school.

Let's Talk Consent's founder and report author, Genna Hawkins-Boulton, says victims were confident about reporting their assaults.

However they often still found themselves in the same classes as the assault perpetrators.

Hawkins-Boulton is appalled that schools are not offering pathways to restorative justice.

This is particularly disappointing when victims who had received consent education recognised their experience as sexual assault and followed the advice to report "the person who had hurt them".

Schools are "really struggling" to uphold their duty of care in this regard, Hawkins-Boulton says.

Her report recommends more training so staff can better support victims, revising guidelines so there is a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence and making consent-based education compulsory.

Hawkins-Boulton thinks schools aren't adequately prepared to handle sexual assault disclosures. A lack of support for those who came forward to report abuse is a result.

"... it's quite a tough environment for a survivor to be in" she says.

In one testimony, a sexual abuse survivor says they approached their school detailing the abuse and its mental health impacts. These included at least four panic attacks a week. They also resulted in a suicide attempt.

Despite speaking out about the attack and identifying the attacker, the sexual abuse survivor was timetabled to share two classes with the attacker the following year.

They were also offered a counselling session with the perpetrator.

Hawkins-Boulton says that is "just a big 'no' in terms of thinking about retraumatisation in survivors."

The survivor left "that school to go somewhere else and that was a massive disruption to learning."

Victim blaming

The report highlighted concerns about victim-blaming.

Sexual abuse survivors say they experienced this, not only from their peers, but also sometimes from staff.

"That's when the disclosure training would [be] really crucial, because you just never want to put the onus on the victim for coming forward," Hawkins-Boulton says.

Pornography

Young people's easy access to pornography is 'incredibly dangerous' Hawkins-Boulton says. It's an important reason for making consent-based education compulsory.

The Let's Talk Consent report referenced a Light Project in 2018. It found 75 percent of New Zealand 14-17-year-olds had seen pornography.

Seventy-three percent of those who watched it said they used it as a learning resource.

Seventy percent believed watching pornography influenced them to view women as sex objects.

Thirty-five percent of pornographic scenes showed coercion.

People are learning about consent through pornography - which often ignores consent, Hawkins-Boulton says.

It "... glamourises sexual assault - and so that is incredibly dangerous."

She thinks both schools and parents should be having tough conversations around pornography literacy. Doing so would provide students with guidance for the rest of their lives, she believes.

"We have to think about what kind of example we are setting for young people, and schools are an environment where tweens kind of grow into young adulthood" she says.

"We have to really create a culture where there is a zero tolerance of sexual violence."

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• 1 News

Male students as young as 12 at Brauer College in Victoria were directed to "stand up and apologise" to their female peers - simply because of their gender.

A parent, Danielle Shepherd says her son is "confused and upset" by the incident at an all-school assembly on Wednesday.

"They watched a video to do with sexual consent and at the end of it they were made to stand up and apologise to the opposite gender on behalf of their own gender," she said.

"He wasn't sure why, he just knows that he was told to get up and apologise for things he hadn't done.

"He's upset by it - he now has this misconception that everybody looks at him and males as predators or somebody wishing to do harm to someone in a sexualised manner - seriously, he's 12."

Shepherd says she agrees with sexual consent as a topic being raised and discussed at school, but the school's method was "terribly executed."

"They've singled out an entire gender - it's so wrong," she says.

One Snapchat post, understood to be from a male student at the school, also took aim at the assembly.

"Today at Brauer they made every guy stand up and apologise to every girl for rape, sexual assault ... so on."

"Guys go through as much shit as girls do," the post said.

The school wrote to parents about the assembly the next day, conceding the gesture was "inappropriate".

"At the assembly we spoke about the difficult topic of derogatory and sexualised language and violence against women. The assembly also covered the idea of bystander action and how students have the power to play a role in stopping inappropriate behaviour," principal Jane Boyle explained.

As part of these discussions, the school's boys were asked to stand, as a symbolic gesture, apologise for the behaviours of their gender that have hurt or offended girls and women.

"I'd like to assure you that this was conceived with the best of intentions. However, in retrospect we recognise that this was inappropriate."

At present sexual harassment in Australian schools is being widely discussed. The Victorian state government is making sexual consent classes mandatory across Victorian schools as of next month.

Source

• news.com.au
• Image: Twitter