Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing this debate. It is in sad circumstances, however, in the sense that we are a year on from when the right hon. Lady’s Committee made recommendations to the Government. Clearly, horrible and horrific issues have arisen this week, which makes it even more poignant that we are having this debate today. The issues in schools are the starting point for the systemic problem that we arguably have in this House and across various parts of society. It is not just in this House, but in business, local government and, I would argue, at every level of society.

I know, as I have already said to the Minister, that education is devolved to the National Assembly and is the responsibility of the Welsh Government, but this issue has no borders. It is a matter for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for the European Union and for every country in the world. This violence or this stain, as it were, on our society is unacceptable across the world, and in my opinion, it has no boundaries.

For women in particular, the reality of sexual harassment and violence is first apparent in school. As a former cabinet member for children’s social care and education for four years in Wales, I fought for organisations such as Stonewall Cymru to come in and assess the impact of violence in schools on LGBT bullying and bullying generally, against the will of some teachers in senior leadership roles. To my mind, the academic year issue was quite poignant: I was up against those in certain schools who told me, “Oh, we couldn’t possibly do that until next September”, or “We cannot put in place your policy, Councillor Elmore”—as I was then. I was told time and again, “We cannot fit that into the curriculum because the curriculum plans have been written.” I fought against that for several successive years. Whatever programme I put in place to try to improve outcomes for bullying, assessments or whatever it might be, there was the constant issue of timetabling, with people saying it would not work because they had already written the timetable. That was a true failing of some schools, school leaders and school governors, who lacked the understanding of what was happening at the coalface in some schools across the United Kingdom.

The effects of sexual harassment on mental health and wellbeing are of course huge, and it leaves lasting scars on girls, as well as on some boys, when they later move into the workplace. Those who have committed what in my view are offences think it is acceptable in society to carry on doing so. I speak as someone who was never sexually assaulted in school, but I was horrifically assaulted in school to the point where I was hospitalised several times and received mental health support for what would be considered breakdowns at the ages of 14, 16 and 17. I know all too well the horrors of being attacked for supposedly, as it happens, being a homosexual, which I am not—and if I was, so what? That was the rationale for my being attacked the final time at the age of 17, when I was assaulted and hospitalised, which involved minor reconstruction to part of my face. I was assaulted in a friend’s home by seven school friends, based on the premise that I was—I shall keep this within parliamentary language—a gayer, and therefore deserved to be attacked as a 17-year-old boy.

Research published in “Psychological Science” in 2013 demonstrated that former victims of bullying in schools were more likely to have left school without qualifications and less likely to have friends. Again, this is a systemic issue: girls do not perform less well than boys as long as girls are actually treated fairly within education. It is a huge failure of all society that we have this ongoing problem. The NSPCC mentions abuse survivors. The idea that someone was abused as a child disgusts us. Nevertheless people survive that abuse, but it means that they may then have relationship difficulties and will not understand what it is to be in a loving, caring relationship. If a child understands that abuse is something that simply happens, they may expect it when they marry—perhaps they never marry, but when they form a relationship or whatever.

In the time remaining, I wish to touch briefly on work by the Welsh Government in encouraging schools formally to record cases of abuse. They started that last year, and for the first time in a number of years, schools in Wales are now recording cases to ensure that that is fed into Welsh Government information. The Welsh Government are also instructing schools to mark Safer Internet day, and to explain, for example, “These things can happen to you on social media, or with access to pornography”. Perhaps the Minister could consider those points and learn from the devolved Administrations.

The Welsh Government have also approached Women’s Aid when formulating the guidance that goes to schools. I do not suggest for one minute that it is all perfect and rosy and that the sun is shining—the sun often does shine in the valleys of Wales—but we can learn lessons from the education service in Wales, and we should look at that. Finally, I echo the calls made by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke about social media. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) said, we must do more to hold social media companies to account—I have spoken about that many times in this Chamber. We must bring them to book, and the law must be changed to improve young people’s lives.