Rise in assaults ‘linked to sex education in schools ignoring consent’

STUDENT welfare campaigners warned there is a direct link between how sex education in some Irish schools ignores the issue of consent and the spiralling number of reported rapes, sexual assaults and sexual harassment cases.

One student welfare officer, Cork Institute of Technology’s Stephanie Fogarty, warned that the number of sexual assaults now being reported in Irish third-level institutions was “terrifying”.

A variety of groups including student unions, family planning associations, Irish atheists, sexual violence support services and the National Women’s Council have now called for cross-party support for a Solidarity/People Before Profit bill which will make comprehensive sex education mandatory in all Irish schools.

Critically, the bill will exempt comprehensive sex education from any veto by individual schools on the basis of religious ethos.

It will also ensure that consent is properly taught, and that sex education is factual, objective, age appropriate and non-gender normative.

The issue of consent has become hugely topical in Ireland following several high-profile rape and sexual assault trials.

Advocates of the new legislation said they also believed it would help reduce homophobic bullying in Irish schools.

The new bill will ensure that members of the LGBT+ community also have full access to sex education, and that the curriculum is not heterosexual-only.

Cork TD Mick Barry con- firmed that the legislation, the Objective Sex Education Bill, 2018, would be debated in the Dáil next Wednesday, with a vote on whether it should proceed to committee stage.

It will serve, if enacted, as an amendment to the Education Act introduced in 1998.

“Sex education in most Irish schools is now simply not fit for purpose,” Mr Barry said.

“It is clearly inadequate and, in some cases in some schools, it is somewhat of a joke.”

Ms Fogarty said it was quite common for students to arrive in third-level education and not know how to use a condom – or to be completely ignorant of what consent actually means.

Education Minister Richard Bruton has already ordered a sweeping review of all sex education in Irish schools.