Hundreds of former private school students share sexual assault claims

Hundreds of former private school students share sexual assault claims

Hundreds of former students from more than 50 private schools across Australia have signed a petition demanding better education around sex and consent in high school, detailing grueling experiences of sexual assault from as young as the age of 13.

Chanel Contos, 23, a former Kambala student, opened the explosive conversation overnight, with a poll asking her Instagram followers a series of questions related to school-based experiences of sexual assaults, perpetuated predominantly by single-sex male school students.

“I had the idea last year and collected five testimonies from close friends, but I ended up moving to London and got sidetracked,” Contos tells 9Honey.

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Within 24 hours, Contos was inundated with horrific accounts, from a litany of former private school students. (Instagram)

Having recently been approached, the London-based Master’s student shared a poll to social media, asking questions like “have you or has anyone close to you ever experienced sexual assault from someone who went to an all boys school?”

Within 24 hours, Contos was inundated with horrific accounts, from a litany of former private school students.

Anonymous respondents revealed they had been pressured to perform non censual sexual acts, including threesomes, forced alcohol consumption, and waking up to being touched by someone inappropriately.

Contos shared the anecdotes anonymously, naming the private school the respondent was from, and the graduating school year of the victim.

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Contos says the response to her poll has been “insane”, with hundreds of people responding. (Instagram)

“It made me so angry about how normalised and prevalent it is,” Contos tells 9Honey.

“And because it’s so normalised we don’t address it and then the trauma exposes itself in our future sexual experiences.”

Contos says the response to her poll has been “insane”, with hundreds of people responding.

One account alleged they had woken “up the next day completely naked” after blacking out drunk.

“I found out that morning that his friend had filmed him preforming oral sex on me while I was barely conscious,” they shared.

The respondent says the video was shown to multiple private school boys.

“I still don’t know if that’s all that happened between the and I that night, but I have a feeling he had sex with me,” the woman explained.

“To add to it, the boy who filmed it was one of my very best male friends.”

Contos says the response to her poll has been “inspirational.”

“I was inspired by how many girls and boys were willing to talk about their sexual experiences,” she explains.

“Or the amount of people who have admitted to doing things when they were younger that they weren’t proud of.”

Pairing her poll with a petition, Contos launched a public motion for “Consent to be included in sex ed earlier and better.”

The letter shared to Google Polls reads: “if you are a Head of School and have received this email it is because your old students don’t feel they received adequate sexual education about consent to keep them safe during, and soon after school.”

“This petition was created in response to what began as an informal Instagram poll,” the petition said.

72 per cent of respondents claiming they had some experience of sexual assault from someone who went to an all boy’s school. (Instagram)

Contos reveals in the docs, in less than 24 hours, the poll received over 1,500 views, with 72 per cent of respondents claiming they had some experience of sexual assault from someone who went to an all boy’s school.

“The majority of signatories to this petition will have long since graduated from your schools. Most are now at university or in their early years of the workforce with their high school days only a distant memory,” the petition continues.

“Yet, they are advocating for younger generations to receive an education that they were either deprived of or received far too late. This highlights the long lasting impacts that sexual assault at a young age leaves not just on the victim, but their friends and the wider community.”

Contos said those who signed the petition have done so “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.”

“I want it to be more normalised to speak up against sexual assault.” (Instagram)

“These are uncomfortable conversations to have with young teenagers but it is far more uncomfortable to live knowing that something happened to you, or a friend, or perhaps that you were even the perpetrator of it, and it could have been avoided.”

Contos, who is currently studying a Master in Gender, Education and International Development in London tells 9Honey, “I want to emphasise the fact that I don’t want to attack these boys, I want to call out the education system.”

“We need to be aware that we live in a rape culture society.”

The university student hopes the petition, that details extensive personal accounts of sexual assault, forces people to “reflect on their sexual education about consent.”

“I want it to be more normalised to speak up against sexual assault.”

If you, or anyone you know is struggling, please contact: Lifeline 13 11 14; beyondblue 1300 224 636; Domestic Violence Line 1800 65 64 63; 1800-RESPECT 1800 737 732

Hundreds of Sydney students claim they were sexually assaulted

In the same week where 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. 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 Ignatitus 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.” “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.” Loading Wenona principal Briony Scott said sexual assault was beyond the remit of any one school. “It is also essential that schools (both public and independent) are allowed to teach about such matters, rather than have them being constrained by the personal but public opinions of politicians, or criticised when wanting to educate around sexuality. You cannot have it both ways.”

Ariane Severo abre inscrições para Oficina de Literatura, Psicanálise e Cinema — Revista News

A psicanalista e escritora Ariane Severo abre nova turma para a Oficina de Literatura, Psicanálise e Cinema. As aulas iniciam no dia 09 de março, das 19 às 21 horas e durante três meses, às terças-feiras, num total de doze encontros, os alunos analisam e debatem o filme Meia-noite em Paris, de Woody Allen (seleção oficial do Festival de Cannes e Oscar de roteiro original, assistido por mais de um milhão de espectadores no Brasil).

Ariane explica a metodologia: “A oficina é um facilitador, um potencializador do processo criativo, um espaço ocupado pela experiência cultural. Exercitamos a escrita, aprendemos as técnicas essenciais da arte de escrever e desenvolvemos o nosso texto até que possamos alcançar domínio e segurança”. Os alunos recebem uma aula semanal, com o tema de aula e o de casa. Os contos produzidos são lidos no sarau online que ocorre uma vez por semana. São estudados os componentes da narrativa e os elementos que compõe o filme como: direção, direção de arte, roteiro, montagem, fotografia, trilha sonora, figurino, iluminação e tipos de planos.

Na abertura do filme passeamos pela cidade ao som do clarinetista Signey Brechet, seu ídolo musical. Paris surge numa sequência de cartões postais, do nascer ao pôr do sol. A cidade luz como personagem central, com no mínimo trinta e cinco locações para os alunos ambientarem seus contos.

Publicidade

O protagonista realiza uma nostálgica viagem no tempo para uma Paris onírica e mais romantizada de Ernest Hemingway, Zelda e Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel, T. S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, Josephine Baker, Côco Chanel. Paris boêmia, dos anos 1920, auge da criatividade, e Paris de 1890 com outros coadjuvantes famosos como Edgar Degas, Gauguin, Tolouse-Lautrec. Também Rodin, Camille Claudel, Monet…

“O deslocamento espaço-temporal dos Estados Unidos à Europa, dos anos 2010 aos anos 1920, 1890, articula pelo menos três temas importantes: a perda da inocência e a recusa da realidade presente e a arte como antídoto contra o vazio da existência e o medo da morte.” Papel do cinema, da literatura e da arte em geral, salienta.

As vagas são limitadas. Maiores Informações podem ser obtidas pelo e-mail ahelena.rilho@yahoo.com.br ou (51) 99703-8175 (whatsapp) c/ Ana Helena Rilho.

Ariane Severo é psicanalista e escritora. Publicou os livros Os Dois Lados do Espelho: Relato de uma Experiência em Psicanálise Vincular (2015), O Suave Mistério Amoroso: Psicanálise das Configurações Vinculares (2014), Encontros & Desencontros: A Complexidade da Vida a Dois (2010) e colaborou na obra Transmissão Transgeracional e a Clínica Vincular (2006), sem contar a publicação de diversos artigos em revistas especializadas. Lançou também o romance Nina – Desvendando Chernobyl, finalista, em 2018, do Prêmio Jabuti.

Oficina de Literatura, Psicanálise e Cinema com Ariane Severo

A partir de 09 de março, às terças-feiras, das 19 às 21 horas

Informações e inscrições: ahelena.rilho@yahoo.com.br e (51) 99703-8175 (celular/whatsapp) com Ana Helena Rilho