Harassed students choose silence
Insults, groping ‘ accepted,’ prof says Much abuse ‘goes on under radar’
They’ll switch seats in class. They’ll take a different route home. They’ll keep a buddy for “ protection” or even start skipping school.
In a sexually charged culture where harassment is not uncommon, experts say teen victims will do almost anything to avoid reporting the crime.
“ Even someone who has had their clothes pulled down or who had been groped doesn’t see it as sexual harassment. It’s as if this kind of behaviour is just accepted today,” said psychology professor Jim Duffy of Memorial University in Newfoundland, who surveyed 1,600 high school students about sexual harassment in a joint project with the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
“ We found sexual insults and jokes and groping and leering and even homophobic insults surprisingly prevalent, yet students didn’t tell their parents and they didn’t tell the school, and I find that fairly striking,” said Duffy yesterday in an interview.
“ If anything, they would tell a friend. In the worst- case scenarios, some students considered switching schools rather than tell.”
Student reluctance to report sexual harassment has come under scrutiny this week after sweeping charges related to sexual harassment were laid at a North York high school. A 16- year- old student at James Cardinal McGuigan Secondary School complained she had been harassed for more than a year before telling a teacher last week.
Kevin Kobus, director of education for the Toronto Catholic District School Board, said students clearly need more encouragement to step forward and tell school authorities, but Paddy Stamp isn’t surprised the student is alleged to have stayed silent for so long. As long- term head of the University of Toronto’s sexual harassment office, Stamp sees recent high school graduates who will do anything to avoid the harassment — except report it.
“ An enormous amount of sexual harassment goes on under the radar. “We get calls about harassment every day, but only 60 complaints are filed a year. Students are afraid to get involved in some ghastly big process that would invade their private lives,” said Stamp, who has overseen the office for 15 years. More than one- third of Canadian teens admit they sexually harass their peers from time to time, according to a recent study of 900 students in Grades 5 to 12 by bullying expert Debra Pepler of York University. She says schools need to take steps to make students more comfortable reporting sexual bullying.
“ The good news is, that after seeing reports of such serious allegations of sexual harassment this week, the vast majority of young people — 60 per cent — said they rarely take part in this kind of behaviour,” said Pepler.
“But when harassment does
occur, we need to help make students feel more welcome coming forward,” she said. “ We need to be much more explicit with students about coming forward. We need to give victims much more support.”
Pepler’s study asked students how often they make sexual jokes, brush up against classmates in a sexual way, spread sexual rumours, show someone sexual pictures, send sexually charged messages, use homophobic insults, rate someone’s body or “ flash’ another student.
While 60 per cent of students said they seldom if ever take part in such behaviour, 35 per cent admitted they do some of these things with “ moderate” or occasional frequency, said Pepler. And 3 per cent admit they do it frequently.