Campaigner: Girls must help shape national response to harassment crisis

Girls and young women must help shape the emergency action needed to ease the crisis of consent in Scotland’s schools, according to one influential campaigner.

Elena Soper is one of the team behind Oor Fierce Girls, launched by teenage girls in Dundee last year to promote respectful, healthy relationships and challenge harassment.

Now 30, Soper suffered physical, psychological and sexual bullying before she was a teenager that led her to selfharm, and is one of the people who helped to develop the project.

She said: “It’s the schoolgirls themselves who decided what they needed and wanted. It’s been a huge success.

“If I’d had a group like Oor Fierce Girls to turn to when I was being bullied and abused and school, I doubt I would have ended up self-harming or ended up having to take antidepressants.”

She said: “It started with verbal abuse from the same two boys.

“It was nasty name-calling, attacking my appearance. But it escalated into physical abuse, pulling my bra strap, pulling my hair or putting their hands under me as I was about to sit down.

“I was always a bit of a nerd so I was different, and I dressed differently. I tried to brush it off and handle it myself but that’s difficult.

“When I was in fourth year things took a far more violent turn. The two same bullies were pushing people around in the school corridor and I’d just had enough and I refused to move.

“They attacked me, punched and kicked me. The violence was awful but luckily I didn’t have any broken bones and, of course, the teachers became aware of what was happening.”

The two boys were suspended from school for several days and Soper received counselling and medication.

“I was aware I wasn’t the only one being bullied and harassed at school, but it’s such an isolating thing to experience. All I really knew was it was happening to others.

“That’s why the Oor Fierce Girls project is so important and effective. If I’d had that kind of support things would have been different for me.”

Soper hopes similar groups can now be established across Scotland, encouraging young girls to support each other and help them recognise what is and what isn’t a healthy relationship.

The project is supported by Dundee City Council, the Young Women’s Movement, and children’s charity the NSPCC. Roisin Smith, of the council’s children and family services, said: “This has been an incredibly positive project, not least because so much of the work has been led by the girls themselves. Every school across the country has experienced bullying and behaviour issues, and these are dealt with by robust antibullying programmes.

“Not only are these young girls empowered, the positive effect has rippled out so it affects the boys as well as the whole community.”