Grappling with student sexual aggression
Elementary and secondary schools have mostly avoided issue colleges have been forced to confront
AFOREST GROVE, Ore. n Oregon school district was intent on identifying warning signs that students might be contemplating a campus shooting when they stumbled on a threat far more pervasive yet much less discussed — sexual aggression among classmates.
Unsure at first what to do, the districts adapted the same early-intervention approach used to handle potential school shooters: Based on observations or tips, school staff now quietly keep an eye on kids they worry are sexually aggressive.
Parents help the school try to understand why their child is acting out. And the school intervenes if behavior threatens to escalate, whether the student is a kindergartner or about to graduate.
This awakening puts the districts at the forefront of grass-roots efforts to grapple with a sensitive and complex challenge that U.S. universities already have been forced to confront but elementary and secondary schools have mostly avoided.
A yearlong Associated Press investigation uncovered about 17,000 official reports of sexual assaults by students over a recent four-year period, a figure that doesn’t fully capture the problem because such violence is greatly underreported and some states don’t track it.
AP also found that only 18 states required training for teachers, school administrators or students focused on peer-on-peer sexual assaults. There’s no K-12 equivalent to the federal law that requires colleges to track student sexual assaults, provide services to victims and devise prevention programs.
To fill the void, technology companies have joined school districts, students and parents in trying novel approaches to curtail student-onstudent attacks.
No single attack prompted the Forest Grove School District to monitor students. Instead, administrators were encountering a succession of situations they didn’t know how to handle, such as unwanted groping.
“The principals were just asking: ‘What should we do?’ ” said Kimberley Shearer, coordinator for the new Sexual Incident Response Committee at the 6,000-student district.
Experts who have treated young sexual offenders stress the value of early intervention, and research cites the importance of a culture that encourages students to report incidents without fear of retaliation and with the expectation that adults will do the right thing.
That kind of trust is essential in Forest Grove, where school officials have learned the difference between age-appropriate experimentation and dangerous sexual behavior, Shearer said. Officials may be able to scan social media, but the kids know what’s really going on. To discuss the more serious cases, a group of school administrators meets regularly in the basement of district headquarters in this rural, farming district between Portland and the Pacific Ocean. Also at the table are local law enforcement, juvenile social workers, child protection officials and a psychologist.
Students have begun organizing their own efforts to fight sexual assault in grade schools. Groups such as SafeBAE and Know Your IX encourage activism and coach fellow students on the power of bystander intervention and rights under Title IX, the U.S. law increasingly used to address school sexual violence and harassment.
The video and in-person presentations that SafeBAE offer come from high school sex assault survivors who co-founded the group.
Teenagers tend to be skeptical of advice from adults, so the peer-to-peer approach helps the message resonate, said Shael Norris, the group’s executive director.
Signs that such student-led activism has taken root also are evident in cases in which reluctant school districts were prodded to respond to sex assault allegations.
Last September, police began investigating after a Kansas district received a report a boy had attacked a girl in a school bathroom. Students and parents didn’t find out until local news broke the story about a week later.
Feeling blindsided, a group of students at Shawnee Mission East High School in suburban Kansas City mobilized a response: Rally classmates to wear black clothing the next day.
Social media spread the word as #WearBlackToStopAttacks, and several hundred students participated — as did more than a dozen schools in the region.
“Typically when you hear about quieted sexual assaults, it’s on college campuses,” said senior Katie Kuhlman, who helped organize the action, along with Brena Levy. “So hearing that it had happened at our school, but not from our administration, it was like a red flag.”