Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment

Children and young people are targeted for sexual abuse and exploitation by adults and by one another. As a society, we have sometimes ignored the harm sexual violence and sexual harassment can cause.

Although anyone can experience sexual harassment and violence, research indicates that girls are disproportionately affected. In their 2020 report, How Safe are Our Children?, the NSPCC found 90 per cent of recorded offences of rape in 13 to 15-year-olds were committed against girls.

Every year, Girlguiding completes the Girl’s Attitudes Survey. The latest survey revealed that girls continue to feel unsafe in public, in school, online and when outside on their own.

In Ofsted’s Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges (2021), children and young people reported the following things happened “a lot or sometimes” to them or their peers:

• unwanted touching;
• pressure to do sexual things they didn’t want to;
• sexual assault of any kind;
• unwanted or inappropriate sexual comments;
• sexist name calling;
• being sent explicit pictures or videos of things they did not want to see.

The frequency of these harmful sexual behaviours means that some children and young people consider them normal.

Children and young people who are, or are perceived to be, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender (LGBT) can be targeted by other children, and children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are more likely to be abused than children and young people without additional needs.

Children and young people also told Ofsted that the sharing of nudes was widespread, along with “body shaming” and “slut shaming”, and they felt that teachers were out of touch with the realities of their pupils’ lives and what they had to endure, both in school and out of school, in terms of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

All children and young people have a right to grow up safe from abuse and harassment. Settings working with children and young people are central to framing a safeguarding ethos and creating protected spaces for children and young people to explore healthy relationships. There is a duty for settings to ensure they take action to keep children and young people safe. (See part five of Keeping Children Safe in Education for further information.)

There is a strong emphasis on safeguarding children and young people from harm by changing expectations, challenging unacceptable behaviour and improving children and young people’s knowledge and understanding of healthy relationships.

Expanding the definitions

Whilst the definitions above are short and to the point, what do they mean? Click on the expand button for further information about what is meant by sexual violence, sexual harassment and harmful sexual behaviour.

Adapted from Keeping Children Safe in Education

Sexual violence –

• Rape is intentional penetration by the perpetrator with their penis without consent, and there is no reasonable belief that the victim consents.
• Assault by penetration is intentional sexual penetration by the perpetrator with a part of their body or anything else without consent, and there is no reasonable belief that the victim consents.
• Sexual assault is intentional sexual touching of the victim by the perpetrator without consent, and there is no reasonable belief that the victim consents. (Settings should be aware that sexual assault covers a very wide range of behaviour, so a single act of kissing someone without consent or touching someone’s bottom/breasts/genitalia without consent, can still constitute sexual assault.)
• Intentionally causing someone to engage in sexual activity without their consent, and there is no reasonable belief that they consent, is also an offence. This could include forcing someone to strip, touch themselves sexually, or to engage in sexual activity with a third party.

What is consent?

Consent is about having the freedom and capacity to choose (saying yes when being pressured, coerced, or threatened is not consent). Consent to sexual activity may be given to one sort of sexual activity but not another, e.g. to vaginal but not anal sex, or penetration with conditions, such as wearing a condom. Consent can be withdrawn at any time during sexual activity and each time activity occurs.

• A child under the age of 13 can never consent to any sexual activity.
• The age of consent is 16.
• Sexual intercourse without consent is rape.

Sexual harassment – ‘Unwanted conduct of a sexual nature’ that can occur between children and young people, online or offline, and both inside and outside of an education setting. It includes:

• sexual comments, such as telling sexual stories, making lewd comments, making sexual remarks about clothes and appearance, and calling someone sexualised names;
• sexual “jokes” or taunting;
• physical behaviour, such as, deliberately brushing against someone, interfering with someone’s clothes (settings should consider when any of this crosses a line into sexual violence – it is important to talk to and take into account the experience of the victim) and displaying pictures, photos or drawings of a sexual nature;
• online sexual harassment.

Online sexual harassment includes non-consensual sharing of nude and semi-nude images or videos, sharing of unwanted explicit content, upskirting, sexualised online bullying, unwanted sexual comments or messages (including on social media), sexual exploitation, coercion and threats.

Unchallenged sexual harassment creates a culture that can normalise inappropriate behaviours and provide an environment that may lead to sexual violence.

Harmful sexual behaviour – Children and young people’s sexual behaviour exists on a wide continuum. Problematic, abusive and violent sexual behaviour is developmentally inappropriate and may cause developmental damage. A useful umbrella term for this is “harmful sexual behaviour”. The term has been widely adopted in child protection.

Harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) can occur online and/or offline and can also occur simultaneously between the two. HSB should be considered in a child protection context and take into account the ages and stages of development of the children and young people involved.

Children and young people displaying HSB have often experienced their own abuse and trauma. It is important that they are offered appropriate support.

A preventative approach

Settings should have in place an effective policy framework including clear communication routes for safeguarding concerns, a clear and understood behaviour policy, and a core set of underpinning standards and values that equip children and young people for positive relationships and adult life.

Staff should assert these values, with structural support from the safeguarding and pastoral teams and a supportive curriculum that addresses the potential for sexual violence and sexual harassment directly.

Contextual approach

A setting’s approach to sexual violence and sexual harassment should reflect and be part of the broader approach to safeguarding, transparent, and clear and easy to understand for staff, pupils, students, parents and carers.

All staff in the setting should be aware of, and consider, extra-familial harms around the local community, groups and gangs of children and young people, criminal/sexual exploitation, each child and young person’s family environment, and online activity/risks in devising an effective strategy to minimise the risk of sexual violence and harassment.

As one girl put it to the Ofsted review team: ‘It shouldn’t be our responsibility to educate boys’.

Staff training

It’s crucial staff are aware of behaviour that constitutes sexual violence or harassment and do not minimise or dismiss concerns. All staff should be aware of how to support children and young people and how to manage a safeguarding report from a child or young person.

Ofsted’s review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges revealed that many settings underestimated the scale of sexual harassment and online sexual abuse.

Some settings dealt with incidents in an isolated way, without considering the context and wider safeguarding risks, such as risks to other children and young people, unsafe spaces within the setting, peer power dynamics and unhealthy peer cultures.

Children and young people reported feeling disillusioned, embarrassed and left at risk of significant harm as a result of failures in their settings.

Ensure staff receive training on what to look for and practise how to respond. Such training should be focussed on improving outcomes for children and young people, be underpinned by robust evidence and expertise, include collaboration and expert challenge, and be sustained over time. Scenario work is effective in helping staff embed their learning.

Education of children and young people

Intervening early to ensure children and young people understand the boundaries of healthy relationships is key to preventative work.

Settings should have a planned programme of evidence-based content, delivered through the whole curriculum. The programme should build upon the setting’s clear set of values and standards, which are upheld and demonstrated throughout all aspects of pupil/student life and are underpinned by the setting’s behaviour policy and pastoral support system.

The content should be age and stage of development appropriate (especially when considering children and young people with SEND and their cognitive understanding), and may tackle such issues as:

• healthy and respectful relationships;
• what respectful behaviour looks like;
• consent;
• gender roles, stereotyping and equality;
• body confidence and self-esteem;
• prejudiced behaviour;
• understanding that sexual violence and sexual harassment is always wrong;
• addressing cultures of sexual harassment;
• addressing misogyny.

Good practice allows children and young people an open forum to talk things through and ensures that children and young people are made aware of how to raise concerns (including about friends/peers), make a report and how reports are handled.

Support for children and young people

It is essential that all victims are reassured that they are being taken seriously and that they will be supported and kept safe.

A victim should never be given the impression that they are creating a problem by reporting sexual violence or sexual harassment. A victim should never be made to feel ashamed for making a report.

Depending on the level of concern raised, and the needs of the children and young people involved, support may include that from the setting’s pastoral support team, early help services or more specialist support, such as counselling.

Whatever the setting’s response, it should be underpinned by the principle that sexual violence and sexual harassment is never acceptable, will not be tolerated and that all the children and young people involved (including perpetrators) will need support.

Working with children and young people whose behaviour is sexually harmful to reduce the potential to re-offend has marked success, with rates of returning to such behaviours as low as five percent.

Settings should have access to specialist support around harmful sexual behaviour to contribute to their training, and to help them support children and young people where appropriate. There should also be access to specialist counselling or support for children and young people involved in concerning incidents.