Sydney private school students share allegations of sexual assault in Chanel Contos petition

Sydney private school students share allegations of sexual assault in Chanel Contos petition

WARNING: Some readers may find the following content distressing

A former Sydney private school student has been overwhelmed with hundreds of stories of sexual assault after starting an online petition calling for a larger focus on consent in sex education.

Chanel Contos, a former student of Sydney’s Kambala Girls’ School, started the petition on Thursday calling for better and earlier sex and consent education in schools.

As of Saturday, more than 11,000 people from 50 different schools had signed it.

There was also about 1,400 women who shared their experiences of sexual assault, which they claim occurred during high school, or shortly after.

Chanel Contos. Credit: Supplied

Chanel told Sunrise the scope of the problem was “so large” that no matter what group of friends she was with, there was “at least one or two girls who have experienced sexual assault”.

“A close friend came to me a few days ago and was quite distressed about something that had happened to them eight or nine years ago now,” she said.

“The trauma is still there because we didn’t have the opportunity to process it at the time.”

Chanel first raised the issue in an Instagram poll, which revealed that 72 per cent of respondents said they or someone they are close to had experienced sexual assault from students from an all-boys school.

Thousands of testimonies

Since launching the petition calling for holistic sex education to be introduced earlier in the curriculum Chanel has received more than 1,400 testimonies detailing sexual abuse.

“Australia has one of the best education systems in the world, and the funding or the effort is not being put into making sure that students know about consent in a holistic way,” she said.

Chanel created the petition on Thursday. Credit: Instagram

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Chanel wrote in the petition that while her school provided “life-changing education on consent for the first time in year 10” - it came too late.

“There were too many girls in the year who were already either sexually active or had experienced sexual abuse because they weren’t ready to be sexually active but didn’t know how to say no because they hadn’t had a consent talk,” she said.

Widespread issue

She added that she had focused on Sydney schools due to her direct experience, and contacts, however, she says the issue “is everywhere”.

“I also thought I would only have the reach to approach private schools except now with the traction I have gotten, I am definitely going to work on this on a national level,” she said.

File image of a group of high school students. Credit: DAN PELED / AAPIMAGE

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Chanel said the approach to consent would also need to be gendered.

“There needs to be conversations targeted towards girls that talk about issues that affect them more adversely like slut-shaming, sexual coercion, consent, peer pressure,” she said.

“And then there need to be conversations towards boys that talk about toxic masculinity.”

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A Viral Petition Has Revealed More Than 2,000 Alleged Sexual Assaults In Australian Schools

A week following allegations made by Brittany Higgins, where the former Liberal Party staffer alleged she was assaulted in Parliament House in 2019, a viral petition has been created to call for the need for earlier and better sexual consent education to be taught in Australian schools.

The online petition—created by Chanel Contos, a former student of Sydney’s Kambala girls' school—since going live on February 18, has garnered more than 2,000 testimonies of sexual assault from current and former Australian private school students.

The idea to create the now-viral petition came after Contos raised the issue with friends via an Instagram poll, which revealed that 72 per cent of 300 of her friends had said they or someone they are close to had experienced sexual assault from a student from an all-boys school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, she told The Guardian.

Nearly a week later and more than 16,000 people have signed the petition, which calls for testimonies from current and former students—with Contos also opening up the petition to include schools across Australia.

The petition includes first-hand accounts of sexual assault from women during their schooling years, with schools in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and New Zealand all involved, from some victims who allege to have been as young as 12 at the time.

“The majority of signatories have long graduated… yet, they are advocating for younger generations to receive an education they were deprived of or received far too late,” the petition read.

The alleged incidents are harrowing, with some victims claiming the anonymous forum is the first time they have revealed their experiences.

Hundreds of Sydney students claim they were sexually assaulted

In the same week that the national conversation was centred on the sexual assault allegations of Brittany Higgins in Canberra, more than 200 young women contacted Ms Contos with personal testimonies about sexual assault they said they experienced at the hands of a peer at a boys’ school. Loading About 1500 students from 50 different schools have signed her petition demanding better – and earlier – sex and consent education in schools. Ms Contos, who is now studying her masters in gender and education at University College London, laments that the first school talk she received about consent happened when she was in year 10. “Me and my friends left that room and realised we had been raped … It was a life-changing talk, but it happened too late,” she said.

She said her first experience of sexual assault came when she was in year 8 and a private school student in the year above her forced her to perform oral sex on him. “I knew it was wrong, because I didn’t tell anyone, but I didn’t understand why,” she said. At the dinner with friends last year, she learned the same male student had forced another acquaintance to do the same thing a year later. “No-one thinks of it as rape until you’re told it is. Until [then] you think rape can only be a random in a dark alley past midnight. In reality it happens with people you trust,” she said. “It happened to so many of us. We talk about a guy who forced us to give them head like what we had for breakfast yesterday.” A list of more than 50 testimonies published so far under the petition, which has anonymised both alleged victims and perpetrators, claims that students who attended Scots College, Cranbrook, Sydney Grammar School, Saint Ignatius Riverview, St Joseph’s College, Waverley College and Shore had been perpetrators of sexual assault. The women who wrote the testimonies identified themselves as former students of schools including Kambala, Kincoppal-Rose Bay, St Catherine’s School, Ascham, Pymble Ladies College, Wenona, Queenwood, SCEGGS Darlinghurst and Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College.

“We talk about a guy who forced us to give them head like what we had for breakfast yesterday” Chanel Contos The headmaster of St Catherine’s School in Waverley, Dr Julie Townsend, described the testimonies as “heartbreaking”. “More needs to be done to create an environment in which young women feel they will be trusted when they come forward. It is also clear that much of the work schools do is happening too late,” she said. The Herald has spoken to some of the students who made claims but has not substantiated individual allegations. The testimonies detail alleged sexual assaults that took place during school years or shortly afterwards, while the young women were still mixing in crowds determined by their school social circles. The allegations come from students who graduated in 2006 to some still in school.

In several testimonies, women describe waking up naked at parties or in a young man’s house, after passing out due to intoxication, with male peers penetrating them. Some girls said the alleged perpetrators were acquaintances they had only met that night; others were friends at the time. Other students say they were physically forced to perform oral sex on a male while intoxicated, sometimes while the boy’s friends were present or filming the incident. Several only realised something had happened to them when they woke up in pain and found their underpants soaked in blood. None of the alleged incidents occurred on school grounds, but those who signed the petition said they “passionately believe that inadequate consent education is the reason for their sexual abuse during or soon after school”. “[People have signed] because they are sad and angry that they did not receive an adequate education regarding what amounts to sexual assault and what to do when it happens,” the petition said. Ms Contos asked her followers on Instagram to share their experiences of sexual assault, in particular at the hands of boys from single-sex schools.

“When you go to a private school in Sydney, most of the time you only interact with other people who go to these schools: all-boys schools and all-girls schools. Being so distant from the reality of having girls in your everyday life, girls become the victims of boys’ experiments with their sexuality,” she said. “More needs to be done … It is also clear that much of the work schools do is happening too late” Dr Julie Townsend, principal of St Catherine’s School Chief executive of school workshop provider Enlighten Education, Dannielle Miller, said the testimonies were “harrowing, yet not at all surprising”. “It’s important to note too that sexual harassment and sexual assault isn’t just happening to private schoolgirls; all young women are at risk. We need to explicitly teach young women to be clear and unapologetic when expressing their personal boundaries, to know how to speak up in cultures that may try and silence them, and to actively lobby for what they need and deserve,” she said. “Any protective advice given to girls in the schools must be carefully framed within a context of unpacking victim blaming. But we must also do more work with young men to teach them what active, informed consent looks and feels like, and create cultures where boys and men also use their voices to speak up too. The work of calling out male misbehaviour must not fall solely on females.”

Schools that responded to the Herald said they had programs in place that taught students about the criminal nature of sexual harassment and assault. Dr Townsend said: “It is clear from these girls’ testimonies that many of them have suffered in silence for years, and we need to ensure that, not only do they understand what assault is, but know their rights in reporting it and charging someone.” Loading “It is heartbreaking to read of the trauma they went through, and also to learn that many of them were too fearful to report it afterwards – or were treated contemptuously when they did.” Wenona principal Briony Scott said sexual assault was beyond the remit of any one school.