It’s that time of the year
again, especially in the northern hemisphere, where the new school year
commences, in the south it’s the start of semester 2, and conversations turn to
the new academic year, education and
safeguarding. This is not a prevention or a bystander intervention blog one,
rather a policy and public engagement one.
Over the last couple of
weeks there has been an increase in policy and bystander intervention blogs
coming across my newsfeed from the UK (university
inquiry, sexual
harm in schools, sexting) and USA (community
colleges and sexual assualt) regarding the rate of campus based sexual harm
(and I use this term broadly as the stories ranged from primary school to
university level) and how to respond to it. These stories highlight a number of
core factors, including;
- that the problem is not
improving (in the UK there is a feeling that the current
university sexual harm prevention approaches are not working),
-
that campus culture is too
blame (the recent reports in the UK about clubs
and societies as well as fraternities
and sororities
in the USA),
- that wider societal
attitudes contribute to these factors (stories about unchanging attitudes to
women, the impact of pornography and sexting behaviour across society in
general – with increasing UK
and USA
criminalisation of as well as concerns around children and adolescents ),
-
that the government needs
to step it to resolve the issues (the development of a
new inquiry in the UK); and
- that individual factors
are at the centre of our health and criminal justice responses (a continued
focus on the role of the victim in preventing sexual harm and the role of
society in condemning it).
The presiding outcome to
all of this is that it’s the same story that we have heard for a number of
years in this field, as well as sexual harm in general, that something must be
done (e.g., Cambridge
university, USA & in
general), a ringing of hands and some new policies (intervention
initiative, step
up & existing
evidence based practice). If we want to impact upon attitudes to sexual
harm, prevent sexual harm, encourage bystander intervention and have viable public
health policy that gets used we have to ingrain these changes from the start,
in childhood, we need a life course perspective on this not just a repair and
move on model. There needs to be coherent sexual harm education and prevention
approaches starting in primary school and then following children all the way
through life to secondary school, university and into the workplace. However,
our perceived morality around sex and sexuality can get in the way of the
education policies that need to be implemented. In the UK, at least, there are
some general guidelines that all schools, colleges and universities should
attend to but these are open to interpretation and then you end up with a
postcode lottery of sorts regarding the message that you receive (generally
workplace initiatives are better formed and better implemented). Poorly planned
policy leads to weak implementation. The arguements that can be used to counter
increased sexual health and sexual harm education in schools and colleges include
that this is not the role of the state and that parents are having these
conversations with their children at home. In the reality neither of these arguments
are true as the state should be providing pro-social modelling and some of the
most vulnerable children (to being a victim or potential perpetrator of sexual
harm) are not getting this pro-social modelling/conversations that children
need at home; therefore, if they do not get these conversations at home or in
education where are they getting them - from each other, from inappropriate
sources, like pornography or other adult content (like TV, Movies and Music)?
People will seek out answers in the most straightforward and accessible ways,
the internet has helped as well as hindered with this, but these may not be the
most appropriate ways. Pornography has become the reason for sexual harm in
modern society again, like it was in the late 1970’s/80’s (see the work of Professor
Keith Soothill), with the argument that watching pornography leads to an
increased likelihood of committing sexual harm; in some cases yes but in all
cases no. The real argument is that pornography gives a distorted view of sex,
sexual relationships and the impact of sexual harm (actually as does mainstream
TV, Movies and Music) which can have a lasting impact if engaged in without a
filter (that is as an adult we know what is appropriate/inappropriate and what
to dismiss) which children do not have, so that can accept it as given. What this all comes back to is the need to
develop a clear, well thought out policy on understanding and responding to
sexual harm that spans the life course, that is simple and transferable across
institutions. What we need is a societal response that lays the ground work in
early education that only needs attending to and maintaince in university, we
should not be starting from scratch. We do not have a coherent response that
the minute only a recognition that something needs to be done and that
different institutions can do what they want; this is problematic we need to
move towards a more integrated, thoughtful and better developed approach. If sexual
harm is a public health issue we need to treat it like one.
Kieran
McCartan, Ph.D
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