‘Everyone needs to be teaching consent’

Acting Prime Minister Paula Bennett says consent is taught in New Zealand schools, and the issue of a perceived rape culture is not a ‘‘government solution alone’’.

On Monday, hundreds of demonstrators – mostly high school students – turned up to protest at Parliament calling for the compulsory teaching of consent, and of the rights of women, in all secondary schools.

Yesterday, Bennett said she supported the protesters.

‘‘We can always be looking at the guidelines ... but this is not a government solution alone. This has got to go from our young people to our teachers, to our parents and us parliamentarians, and society in addressing some of the behaviours ... in pockets in our society,’’ she said.

Consent was taught as part of sex education through to year 10 but was not compulsory.

‘‘Last year, schools asked for better guidelines on how that should be taught and it was provided to them,’’ Bennett said.

The protest came on the back of sexist jokes posted on Facebook by Wellington College students and revelations last week that four year 9 students had been suspended from St Patrick’s College, Silverstream, for inappropriately filming two female teachers.

Labour is calling for consent to be better taught in schools.

MP Kelvin Davis said it was great to see so many men supporting the protest at Parliament.

‘‘I think that it shouldn’t just stay there. They need to go back to their schools, sports clubs, and when they’re engaging on social media and speak out and stamp out this sort of talk - it’s just unacceptable at any level.’’

Davis wanted teachers to be better resourced to teach consent so if a school wanted to put more of a focus on it in the curriculum they had the ability to do so.

At Wellington Rape Crisis, we talk a lot about consent. We talk a lot about healthy relationships and families. We talk a lot about how we build, rebuild and support these relationships and families in our communities and with our survivors: good, open, safe communication, respect, trust – these are some of the foundations for consent and healthy relationships and form the foundation for our work with survivors.

Now the Government wants to require NGOs, including specialist services for survivors of sexual violence like us, to collect and report information on an individual client level. This includes names, addresses, ages, ethnicities and the names of dependent children.

We have serious concerns and big questions about this proposal. Like all other social services affected by the proposal, we haven’t had the opportunity to have our concerns and our clients’ concerns heard, or to engage in meaningful discussion.

As a specialist sexual violence agency, we have questions about the impact this has for us at an agency level, a practitioner level, or, most importantly, on the survivors of sexual violence who are bravely accessing our services, or at the incredibly hard stage of considering and weighing up whether to seek help.

This requirement, as it stands, would pose significant risks to what clinical and social work best practice tells us is effective and what survivors say works.

We are not denying data can support our work. We strive to be accountable. We invest a lot of time, money and effort into meeting best practice standards and public accountability requirements. We know collaboration across agencies is essential to achieving healthy communities and healing for people.

We believe the Government wants to ensure survivors have access to our services. But there is a big gap between ensuring accountability and best practice, and demanding full disclosure of private, identifying details of the people we work with and their wha¯ nau.

Our clients shouldn’t be asked to choose between trying to heal from the impacts of sexual violence, or avoiding unknown, long-term, serinous impacts to them and their whanau if their private information is compromised.

By the same token, we must not create new barriers to perpetrators seeking support for their harmful behaviour through agencies funded by the Government to provide sexual harm prevention services.

A pillar of our work is ensuring survivors have control over their lives again. This proposal undermines that, and when sexual violence is already so underreported, it creates more barriers to healing, hope and change.

This is an incredibly hard position to put survivors in. This is an incredibly hard position to put our agencies in. We tautoko the brave stance other services have taken in voicing their concerns around this issue.

Wellington Rape Crisis relies on Government funding to keep our doors open, but we have to consider the best interests of our clients, including their rights to be assured of privacy and confidentiality when they begin to work with us on such a highly sensitive topic.

Advocacy at multiple levels is required to make the change we need for our communities to thrive and survivors and families to heal. Our job is to advocate for policies that will ultimately end sexual violence and makes our services as accessible as possible for those who need us most.

We want to walk the talk of healthy relationships in all aspects of our work. We seek true collaboration and transparency between government and those of us on the ground with sexual violence expertise.