Horrifying new report find rape culture exists in over 1,600 primary schools in the UK
Rape culture exists in over 1,600 primary schools in the UK and Ireland, a new report has found.
Campaign group Everyone’s Invited listed 1,664 primary schools where students as young as five to age 11 submitted anonymous testimonies alleging rape culture at their institutions.
The testimonies include experiences of groping, sexual harassment and forced penetration.
The report also found that almost half of children under the age of seven exhibit signs of misogynistic behaviour, claiming “misogynistic rhetoric and harmful gender norms” are ingrained in children from as early as nursery.
The document further revealed that 60 per cent of teachers reported seeing children under nine exposed to pornography.
One testimony read: “When I was five, another five-year-old boy at primary school started calling me beautiful and sexy (which I didn’t even know what it meant at the time).
“One day, he followed me into the toilets and smashed my head against the sink. I told my mum, and the school phoned her to tell her we were ‘just playing’ and said they would keep an eye on him.”
The student goes on to say the boy attempted the assault again, and after telling a teacher, they just put the two in the same room together.
MORE LIKE THIS:
- Access to violent porn and people like Andrew Tate are creating a generation of men who think rape is ok – Miriam Cates
- ‘What have they got to hide?!’ fumes Nigel Farage as Labour rules out national inquiry into grooming gangs
- ‘This man should not be allowed out on the streets’ – Domestic abuse survivor Tina Nash
She added: “A teacher tried to downplay it, and say it wasn’t that bad (basically gaslighting a six-year-old for the sake of keeping their reputation).”
“The boy wasn’t expelled. I left school, and learnt that he did it to another girl after I had left.”
Another student revealed when she was 10 years old, a boy threatened another boy would “lick” her “vagina” and “pay another boy £20 to rape me”.
She added: “I didn’t tell anyone. One of the boys in my year told their mum, who told mine. I went in for a meeting with the headteacher. She told me, ‘As women, we have to accept what men say to us’.”
Everyone’s Invited, which works towards eradicating rape culture, has urged relationship and sex education to begin in nursery or reception.
The charity – founded by Soma Sara, a former private school student and sexual abuse survivor – had previously exposed sexual abuse in schools and colleges. It found that rape culture was also “endemic” in primary schools.
The charity’s report recognised that primary school teachers frequently encountered challenging and uncomfortable situations in the classroom, but it found that 80 percent of those surveyed felt unprepared to handle these issues.
It added: “Many are not trained beyond the legal minimum in safeguarding, which leaves them ill-equipped to respond to disclosures of sexual violence.”
The document also stressed the impact of social media on the increase in violence, claiming mobile phones gave children access “to the most extreme content possible with a click of the finger”.
A recent report from the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that child sexual abuse and exploitation had risen by 400 percent between 2013 and 2024.
The report also noted that more than half of the alleged perpetrators in sexual violence cases were children themselves.