Sexual bullying…who’s to blame?

Parents assume that when they drop their kids off at school they are safe from harm. Think again!

The documentary ’kids behaving badly’, revealed shocking and disturbing facts of what they call sexual bullying that takes place within our schools.

It was reported that in the 2006-2007 academic year, 3,500 school children were given fixed term exclusion for sexual misconduct. This behaviour included groping, using sexually insulting names, obscene graffiti and serious sexual attacks. More disturbingly was the fact that 260 of those children excluded were children in primary schools as young as five years old.

“We have seen a dramatic rise in sexual bullying. Certainly over the last four or five years on the Kidscape helpline we used to get maybe one or two calls a year about sexual bullying, but now we are getting two or three calls a week” – Michelle Elliott (KIDSCAPE)

“It’s really difficult for people generally to think about sexually harmful behaviour happening by young people towards young people in schools. But it is an issue, it is happening, and we need to acknowledge it and we need to respond to it. We’ve had a ten year old, who was forcing other children to perform sex acts on him, and performing sex acts on them. We’ve had much younger children who’ve been inappropriately touching each other” – Paula Telford (NSPCC)

So how do children of such a young age learn this behaviour?

I believe a number or bodies are to blame.

Firstly, the media. It influences the way we think, the decisions we make and how we perceive the world. But it is the content that they promote that I think is to blame. The media has made sex mainstream. We are bombarded with media containing sexual imagery and suggestive content. For example: In your local newsagents with their sexually explicit magazines and newspapers where women’s breasts grace the covers, the Internet where no material is off limits regardless of your age, billboards on the street with provocative and scantily dressed women, television with their sexed up ads and sex orientated shows and then there’s music videos with their sexually explicit lyrics and sex saturated videos to accompany. This material is accessible by us all. You don’t have to look for it, it looks for you. It’s this sort of material that kids grow up with and learn from. It’s how they form their personal beliefs, morals and values as to what is seen as acceptable in modern society.

Secondly, the government. The government is there to make and enforce rules and laws; yet where are the rules as to what is acceptable for viewing and where it is to be viewed?  They claim that there is a watershed on television to protect young children from content that may be deemed inappropriate for their age, yet there are endless programs and channels that are sex orientated from soaps to adult channels. What I find most shocking is the music videos that can be aired at any time of the day which have sexual suggestive lyrics with videos that are sexual in nature, usually of half dressed women gyrating and exposing themselves on-screen. Where are the restrictions that should be in place? People shouldn’t have to have sex thrown in their faces and children shouldn’t be exposed to it either, yet the government shies away from raising the issue as it is seen as controversial.

Finally, the Parents. Parents are supposed to protect their children. However, it seems that parents are oblivious to exactly what it is they are exposing their children to. Children are kitted out with the latest technology where sex is only a click away and they can access and share all sorts of material.

Then there’s the issue of clothing marketed and aimed at children that is provocative and is clearly unsuitable for a child to wear. Parents buy these clothes for their children as its “fashion”, despite the fact it makes them look like a sex object and encourages unwanted sexual behaviour from others.

So now I ask you…how do you think children of such a young age become perpetrators of sexual bullying?