‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

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abuse, blame, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Children, denial, gangs, perpetrators, rape, sexual exploitation, silence, violence

‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

Children are at risk of serious abuse across England because of a culture of “wilful blindness” about the scale and prevalence of sexual exploitation across swaths of local government and in police forces, the deputy children’s commissioner warns.

In a highly critical interview given in the aftermath of the Rotherham abuse inquiry, which concluded that hundreds of children may have been abused there over a 16-year period, Sue Berelowitz said she had been “aghast” at the examples of obvious errors and poor practice she found.

Berelowitz told the Guardian she had discovered that police and council officers were in some cases still either looking the other way, not asking questions or claiming abuse was confined to a certain ethnic group – such as Asian men – or a particular social class.

Berelowitz is the author of a detailed report into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups last year following a series of high-profile cases in towns such as Rochdale and Oxford as well as Rotherham.

On a recent field visit to a police force, Berelowitz was surprised to learn that the officers’ top search on their internal computer profiling system was “Asian male”. When she asked what would happen if the perpetrators were not Asian, the officer in charge replied that the force was “not looking for those”. “I was astonished. I said: ‘I think you better start looking.'”

She said that in other cases a culture of blaming the victims remained prevalent: “I had another case when I met the chair of the safeguarding board of a large city [meant to co-ordinate the protection of children from abuse or neglect]. When I mentioned cases of child sex exploitation, he said: ‘Oh yeah, those two girls are prostitutes always walking up and down this street.’ I won’t mention the city as you’d be aghast to learn who it was.”

Berelowitz said she was shocked to discover that although “there had been progress” by authorities in the aftermath of the grisly series of gang-rape and trafficking scandals, “there are still instances of not looking, of wilful blindness. We have to be careful none of us is in denial about the terrible reality of what happened in places like Rochdale and Rotherham.”

Because the subject matter is uncomfortable and scrutiny damaging, Berelowitz added that there was a “culture of denial” that had been exposed by Prof Alexis Jay’s inquiry into the handling of child abuse in Rotherham. It found at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited by predominantly Asian criminal gangs between 1997 and 2013.

A day after the Jay report was published, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright, a former Labour councillor who was cabinet member for children and youth services on Rotherham council between 2005 and 2010, came under intense pressure to resign his post.

On Wednesday night, after the Labour threatened to suspend him, he resigned from the party but insisted he remained committed to his police role. He said: “I was elected to deliver the people’s policing and crime priorities in South Yorkshire, and I intend to see that duty through.”

Theresa May, the home secretary, and Wright’s party, Labour, both said he should go. Wright’s former colleague and council leader, Roger Stone, resigned following publication of the Jay report.

Berelowitz’s comments, however, are intended to broaden the issue beyond Rotherham and similar cases of abuse. She cautioned that despite the emphasis placed on the fact that most of the victims in the northern towns were poor and white, while the perpetrators were Asian, she said that the issue affected “all communities, all races”.

“Usually people say to me that it was an issue of Asian males and white girls. When we dug deeper we found Afro-Caribbean girls and sometimes boys as victims, or Roma perpetrators. There’s a culture of wilful denial to the reality out there. It’s white people, it’s Asians. Parts of every community are involved.”

Most troubling was the rise of peer-to-peer sexual abuse and exploitation, where both victims and perpetrators are minors. She said that in another extremely disturbing case, police officers had caught a gang of 14- and 15-year-olds who had gang-raped an 11-year-old over a number of days. “The police caught the offenders and charged them not with rape, but with drugs offences. I told them that the message was ‘don’t do drugs but rape is fine’. The force is now working to bring the case back.”

She also warned that the rise of technology had enabled children to be seduced and controlled more easily than before, with young girls texted threats to “murder their mother, whom a gang leader has just seen pull up in a new car, if they talk about an attack” or blackmailed with an incriminating video taken on a mobile of their own rape, filmed to ensure their silence.

There was also a gap in the research explaining what led apparently otherwise normal men to commit rape and torture on often vulnerable girls, Berelowitz said.

“Most of the research into adult males who sexually abuse children in paedophilic mode has been on white males serving long sentences in prison. There’s no research into the particular model of Rotherham or Oxford or Sheffield.

“My own personal hypothesis is that they live in a patriarchal environment and are likely to have grown up with a fair amount of domestic violence.”

The scale of abuse, too, was alarming. The office of the Children’s Commissioner estimated that 16,500 children are at risk from abuse from criminal gangs. In London there are about 3,500 street-gang members, Berelowitz’s most recent work says, adding that estimates that one in 20 of the population had suffered intra-familial abuse “are far too low”. “In London alone there are about 3,500 young people aged between 13 and 25 involved in street gangs. There is a level of extraordinary violence involved. Now any girl living in a neighbourhood is at risk. I’d say there was more than one girl for every gang member at risk,” she said.

Reinforcing the point that the problem is not easily categorised, a report from University College London and Barnardo’s reveals that the number of boys affected by child sexual exploitation may be much higher than previously thought. The report – which looked at 9,042 children affected by childhood sexual exploitation and supported by Barnardo’s since 2008 – reveals that 2,986, or one in three, were male.

Society, said Berelowitz, was only just coming to terms with the disturbing nature of the problem and the scale of the abuse. “I think we are facing a public health problem here. We need to mount a public information campaign like that done about seatbelts and get money for therapy. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”

More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

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child abuse, Children, harm, rape, safeguarding procedures, Schools, sexual abuse, Sexual Violence, young people

More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

Sexual abuse in British classrooms is increasing fast, according to official figures that reveal a 40 per cent increase in reports of rape in schools in the past three years.

At least 2,865 sex-crime reports have been recorded by police between 2011 and 2013  – and more than half of them were committed by other children, according to data released to The Independent by police under the Freedom of Information Act.

The figures showed that more than 320 alleged rapes were reported in schools in the last three years, with the NSPCC saying that pupils’ easy access to online pornography has likely driven the surge in online child abuse.

Last year alone, there were at least 1,052 alleged sex offences reported in schools, of which 134 were reported as rape.

Statistics on rape and sex crime reports that took place in schools were released by 37 out of 46 UK police forces. Children accounted for more than 90 per cent of alleged abuse victims, but more than half of the claimed offences were also said to have been committed by children.

The Department of Education (DfE) has resisted calls to introduce mandatory reporting of abuse allegations but the Government is now facing renewed pressure to reform child safeguarding. Currently, headteachers are urged to report allegations to child-protection experts, but there is no legal penalty if they choose not to.

Among cases that have come to light in recent years, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly stripped naked and raped by pupils at a school in Hampshire. The school, however, believed she had consented and excluded her for breaking rules by having sex on its grounds, a tribunal heard. In May, the Crown Prosecution Service said no charges would be brought against the suspects because of insufficient evidence.

In another case, a religious-education teacher in Manchester groped and kissed a teenage pupil in one-on-one meetings he arranged in his classroom. Richard Jones, 57, started a secret relationship with the girl, but was arrested when and when her family discovered explicit messages on her computer.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison last month after admitting a string of sexual offences.

Claire Lilley, of the NSPCC, said: “Schools must make sure they have adequate safeguarding procedures in place and that parents and teachers are able to recognise warning signs early so they can take swift action when required.

“However, the damaging behaviour of these children can be turned around if caught early. Prevention has to be the key.”

The National Association of Headteachers claimed the increase in child-abuse reports may reflect “alleged victims being more confident about making a disclosure”. A spokesperson said the work being done in schools to create a safe environment was “excellent”.

But Labour called on the Government to take “urgent action”. Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “These figures are very disturbing. Schools should be a place of safety for children and young people. The Government needs to take action given the evidence of growing sexual violence amongst young people.” She added they must “introduce compulsory sex and relationship education in all schools”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There is nothing more important than protecting children from harm – any allegation of abuse must be taken very seriously. Schools’ safeguarding arrangements are regularly inspected.”

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

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'character-building', Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, rite of passage, self-harm, suicidal

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

55 per cent of children who have been bullied develop depression – with more than one in three becoming suicidal or self-harming as a result, according to a Europe-wide poll released today.

Yet despite the scale of suffering, one in three adults view bullying as a routine rite of passage, and 16 per cent describe it as “character-building”.

The shocking statistics have provoked calls for urgent action, with more than 100,000 people joining a campaign by the BeatBullying charity calling on the European Commission to introduce new laws to protect children from bullying and cyberbullying.

This comes after an inquest in May heard how a British teenager walked into the sea to drown after suffering cyberbullying over Facebook.

Callum Moody-Chapman, 17, from Cumbria, had been sent online threats by a former friend who was going out with his ex-girlfriend. The 17-year-old boy threatened to beat him, set fire to his home and encourage friends “to stamp on your head”. A verdict of suicide into the youngster’s death last December was recorded by the coroner, who cited the abusive messages as “by far the most significant aspect of this case”.

Attitudes need to change if such tragedies are to be prevented, according to campaigners.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of BeatBullying, said: “Far too many European citizens still see bullying as ‘part of growing up’ and don’t take it seriously. This is pushing young people to the brink with some even resorting to harming themselves in order to cope.”

She added: “How many more children have to tragically lose their lives before these outdated perceptions change? Today more than 100,000 children, families, schools and charitable organisations are sending the European Commission a clear message that enough is enough. We urge them to listen.”

And Sarah Crown, editor of Mumsnet, one of the organisations backing the protest, commented: “These figures demonstrate once again why bullying ought not to be treated as ‘part and parcel’ of growing up. It’s a serious matter that can result in severe consequences for the victim.”

Little Mix, Amanda Holden, JLS singer Aston Merrygold, and reality TV star Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea are among the names supporting the campaign. Leigh Anne of Little Mix said: “Myself and the girls have all experienced being bullied at some point in our life, when we see on Twitter that some of our fans are going through it now we find it so upsetting, and that’s the reason we feel so passionate about this campaign.”

And the effects on victims can be long-lasting. For childhood bullying can continue to damage mental and physical health for decades afterwards, causing higher rates of depression, ill health and unemployment in adult life, according to a study by researchers from Kings College London published earlier this year.

Nepal’s bogus orphan trade fuelled by rise in ‘voluntourism’

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child abduction, child trafficking, exploitation, orphanages, parents, tourists, volunteering, voluntourism

Nepal’s bogus orphan trade fuelled by rise in ‘voluntourism’

Like an increasing number of tourists visiting Nepal’s mountain peaks, colourful markets and lush national parks, Marina Argeisa wanted to experience the latest must-do activity on the tourist trail: a volunteering stint at an orphanage.

What the 26-year-old Spaniard did not know was that her good intentions were unwittingly feeding an industry that dupes poor parents into sending their children to bogus orphanages in order to extract money from well-meaning foreigners.

It is a business model built on a double deception: the exploitation of poor families in rural Nepal and the manipulation of wealthy foreigners. In the worst cases, tourists may be unwittingly complicit in child trafficking.

Nepal’s tourist sector comprises nearly 3% of its gross domestic product, and in 2012 more than 600,000 foreigners visited the tiny country.

Volunteering, or voluntourism as it is sometimes known, is a rapidly expanding industry. There are dozens of agencies offering the chance to spend weeks, or months, working at some of the country’s 800 orphanages.

More than 80% of these institutions are located in the most popular tourist hotspots: the ancient Kathmandu Valley; the trekking capital of Pokhara; and Chitwan, home to the largest national park. Child rights campaigners claim the country is also home to numerous unregistered orphanages.

Yet many of the occupants of these sites have at least one living parent. The latest investigation by Unicef, the UN’s children agency, found that 85% of children in the orphanages they visited had at least one living parent.

The trade in children begins in Nepal’s remote and impoverished countryside, where parents are tricked into sending their children to orphanages, often lured by the promise of an education.

Lojung Sherpa sent three of her children to the Happy Home orphanage in the capital after she was told that foreigners would educate them and raise money for one of her daughters, who has a serious medical condition. But when Sherpa spoke to her daughter some time later, she was told that all donations towards her treatment had been taken by the orphanage’s owner.

Sherpa travelled to Kathmandu to remove her children from the home but was repeatedly turned away. After an investigation, which resulted in the arrest of the orphanage owner on charges of child abduction and fraud, police officers discovered that Sherpa’s children were missing. The youngsters were later found at various locations across the city, where they had been hidden, and eventually reunited with their mother.

Philip Holmes, chief executive of Freedom Matters, the charity that instigated the inquiry into Happy Home, said that in the worst cases this practice constituted child trafficking.

“Once a child enters an orphanage, he or she seems to become the property of the orphanage owner … [In effect], they become prisoners of the orphanage,” he said. “[They] use the children as an income source, through the sponsorship of children who are presented as being orphans when they are not … and through the exploitation of overseas volunteers.”

When Dorota Nvotova, a young Slovakian, began volunteering at Happy Home in 2008, she was so moved by the children’s plight that she found a sponsor for every one of them. She raised about €150,000 (£122,000) for the home, but it was only later that she discovered the real reason its owner was so eager to attract foreign volunteers.

“It’s definitely about him making money. For him, it’s a business,” she said. “Whenever volunteers came he always tried to impress them and then they started fundraising for him.”

Argeisa admits that she too felt compelled to help the children of Nepal. During her search for a volunteering opportunity, it was the stories of the orphans profiled on the website of VolNepal, a Kathmandu-based agency, that attracted her attention.

She quickly signed up and paid $480 (£285) to spend four weeks looking after the children, but had no idea their profiles had been fabricated. “I couldn’t imagine there were people doing bad things to children and using the vulnerability of children to make money,” she said.

After strange behaviour at the orphanage aroused her suspicions about the home’s proprietor, Argeisa discovered that two sisters publicised as being orphans had living parents who had paid vast sums of money to a broker to send their children to the home to be educated.

And they were being educated, but at a cost far beyond anything her parents could imagine. The girls were being used to generate donations from tourists, with the orphanage claiming that their mother and father had abandoned them and no other relatives could be found.

“These little girls are very important for the owner of the home to get money. This is the only reason that they want these children,” Argeisa said. “They are [being] used.”

After one of the sisters confessed that she was being sexually abused by the owner, Argeisa reported the allegations to a local children’s organisation, Action for Child Rights (ACR). The owner of the orphanage was subsequently arrested for attempted rape.

“This was very, very hard … I couldn’t stop my feelings against that man,” Argeisa said. “I think his mission was making money … and abusing children … He wouldn’t have set up the home if there were no westerners coming and giving money and doing volunteering.

“The foreigners do not realise what is happening because they [orphanage owners] are specialists in stopping people from seeing the dark side. There are many people living for six months in an orphanage and they don’t realise this, because these children are scared … These houses are jails for these children.”

This is not an exceptional case, says Jürgen Conings, general director of ACR, who has spent 10 years in Nepal investigating the nexus between foreigners, adoption agencies and orphanages. “I’m 100% sure that the majority of these homes are built for reasons other than childcare,” he said. “Foreign volunteers give a home credibility … and they pay to volunteer, so it’s a strong business model.”

A report by Tourism Research and Marketing estimates that volunteer tourism attracts 1.6 million people a year, and that the market is worth up to £1.3bn.

While there are no reliable figures about the scale of voluntourism in Nepal, Martin Punaks, country director of Next Generation Nepal, which reunites orphanage-trafficked children with their families, believes it is a growing industry. “There is the potential for huge profits to be made for those who intentionally and unnecessarily displace children from their families, so they can be used as lucrative poverty commodities to raise funds from well-intentioned but ill-informed tourists,” he said.

The government recognises the problem but is struggling cope with the scale of it. “These children are a showpiece [for fundraising], but no one knows how much the owner gets and how much goes to the children,” said Tarak Dhital, executive director of the Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB). “We have introduced minimum standards for children’s homes and we need to strengthen our monitoring systems, but haven’t been able to till now … we lack financial and human resources.”

The CCWB is responsible for regulating orphanages in Nepal, but there are serious questions about its capacity to do so. According to its latest report, 90% of children’s homes failed to meet the government’s minimum operating standards.

However, Conings cautioned against the blanket condemnation of Nepalese orphanages. “A lot of good things are done; a lot of NGOs and social workers are doing an amazing job,” he said. “We would never say it’s not good [to volunteer], but we want to bring this to the public’s attention. There is a positive and negative, so be aware and make good decisions.”

But Nvotova questions the premise of volunteering at an orphanage. “[Foreigners] feel cool by doing this,” she said. “But I think it’s more selfish than useful. Very often [volunteers] don’t want to see the truth. They just want to feel needed and useful.”

• Some names have been changed

Poll: nearly 50% of year 10 students feel addicted to the internet

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addiction, devices, internet, pupils, social media, social networks, students, young people

Poll: nearly 50% of year 10 students feel addicted to the internet

Almost half of all 14- and 15-year-olds feel they are addicted to the internet, with more than three-quarters of similarly aged pupils taking a web-enabled laptop, phone or tablet to bed at night, according to a survey.

Of those who take a device to bed, the bulk are communicating with friends using social media or watching videos or films, the study of more than 2,200 students in nine schools across England and Scotland found. More than four out 10 girls felt they used the internet on a compulsive basis for socialising, the survey found.

The poll was carried out on behalf of Tablets for Schools, a charity led by technology industry groups such as Carphone Warehouse and Dixons that campaigns for the increased use of iPad-like devices in education. Despite its remit the group has now published an advice guide for pupils and schools about internet devices, advising they be switched off before bed and during study times, with set times allocated for online activity.

The study said fewer than a third of students who used web devices in bed said this was connected to homework, with those more likely to use a computer, phone or laptop in bed also more likely to report feeling addicted to the internet. There were some gender distinctions, with 46% of girls saying they sometimes felt addicted to the internet, as against 36% of boys, but significantly more boys saying they felt a compulsion towards computer games.

The peak age for feelings of addiction was year 10, where pupils are aged 14 or 15, with 49% of those pupils reporting this. The greatest use of devices in bed comes a year later, with 77% of year-11 pupils. Aside from email the most commonly used sites at home were social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

While most students told researchers they were positive about the internet, a number expressed alarm at their apparent inability to disengage. “It’s the first thing I look at in the morning and the last thing at night. It seems I’m constantly on it,” a year-10 boy said. Another boy, a year older, said: “When I’m on YouTube one video leads to another and I cannot stop myself from watching loads of videos and sometimes I’m up till about 2 o’clock in the morning just because I’ve been watching YouTube videos.”

The issue of internet addiction is much debated, with some researchers questioning whether it can be classified as a formal addiction. There is evidence that British children spend more time online than many of their European peers. A 2012 EU-wide study of children aged 11-16 by the London School of Economics found the UK was among the worst nations for indicators of apparently excessive internet use, with more than a quarter saying they spent less time with family, friends or on schoolwork because of being on the web.

 

Teachers left to pick up pieces from cuts to youth mental health services

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behavioural problems, CAMHs, Children, counselling, counsellors, early intervention, emotional difficulties, mental health issues, mental health services, school, stress, support, teachers, training, well-being, young people

Teachers left to pick up pieces from cuts to youth mental health services

As the headteacher of large primary school in the west of England, Joan Cunningham is accustomed to the demanding aspects of managing an intake from a mainly disadvantaged area. However, for the past couple of years, she says, one issue has escalated so dramatically that it is nearly at crisis point. “There is so much more pressure on schools and teachers to deal with children’s mental health and behavioural problems,” she says. “We provide as much support as we can but, with fewer resources available and a massive increase in need … the pressure has been incredible.”

Cuts to mental health and other services for young people mean teachers are increasingly having to fill the gap, even though schools do not always have the resources or training to provide the extra support pupils with mental or emotional issues may need.

“It was already hard to access the right services before cuts but its getting worse,” Cunningham says. “Teachers … are not mental health professionals, and now there is a vacuum in the services we have [traditionally] relied on. Social services departments are under more pressure due to cuts, Sure Starts … have vanished, [and] in many cases the voluntary organisations we used to be able to turn to are disappearing. Sign-posting families to where they can get help is much harder because of all of this.” At a time when families are under greater financial strain and “even very young children” are under pressure to achieve academically, she concludes, the need for support is “growing very fast”.

Child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) have been particularly hard hit. These specialist services assess and treat children and young people with mental, emotional or behavioural difficulties. Typically, when schools cannot offer the support of their own counsellor, or when a child has especially serious difficulties, they will seek out their local Camhs for help.

In many cases, local authorities commission and fund these services, and the impact of council budget cuts on Camhs in some areas has been severe. According to research by the charity Young Minds, two-thirds of councils in England have reduced their Camhs budget since 2010. And when the charity asked NHS trusts and councils about other mental health spending targeted at children and young people, such as youth counselling or specific services for schools, more than half had cut budgets – some by as much as 30%.

The cuts mean local authorities’ Camhs spending is increasingly redirected towards more serious cases of mental ill-health, at the expense of early intervention services. “Draining money from early intervention services is short-sighted and just stores up problems for the future,” says Sarah Brennan, chief executive of Young Minds. “The result is Camhs feels it is being asked to respond to an enormous number of issues and schools feel Camhs has left them high and dry.”

Chris Harrison, national executive member and former president of the NAHT, says part of the problem until recently has been that targets in education have allowed children’s wellbeing to slip down the agenda. “The issue of mental health [in schools] has been coming to the fore over the past four or five years; there’s a real groundswell of interest, but it isn’t yet a priority in schools. We need to accept that preparation for life is about more than academic results.”

Research by the Teacher Support Network, a charity focusing on teachers’ wellbeing, shows around half of teachers feel pupil behaviour is worsening. Its survey of over 800 teachers also found almost two-thirds were stressed as a result.

The cuts to Camhs mean schools are struggling to provide professional support on site. Some have set aside cash from the Pupil Premium to pay for a regular counsellor. Andy Bell, deputy chief executive at the Centre for Mental Health, says that an “ad-hoc” system of support relies too heavily on the initiative of individual heads or teachers, and is undermined by unsatisfactory and arbitrary access to funds. “We see raising awareness of this issue as a major priority,” he says. “When we conducted research on child behavioural problems we found that three-quarters of parents asked teachers for help … However, some schools are better equipped than others. Many have virtually nothing by way of [professional] support, while others have full-time counsellors.”

Inadequate and underfunded services mean undue stress is being put on teaching staff, who may feel they are not trained or qualified to tackle many of the emotional or mental health problems that come up.

And with anecdotal evidence suggesting the number of young people experiencing mental health problems is rising, the crisis in Camhs is set to get worse. In 2004, the last year that government statistics were centrally collected on the prevalence of mental ill-health among children and young people, 1.3 million children were deemed to have a diagnosable mental illness. The economic downturn, coupled with government austerity and exam stress, means this figure is now probably much higher. And with NHS England estimating that only a quarter of children and young people with a problem are ever seen by mental health services, the figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

Politicians are becoming more aware of the scale of the problem. The health select committee has begun a parliamentary inquiry into Camhs, which campaigners hope will push mental health in schools higher up the agenda when it is published this year. “What we need is a consistent, national system that is accountable. What we need is for Camhs to be transformed.” says Bell.

Harrison says more needs to be done to ensure heads and schools have access to effective support services. “Schools and heads are battered at the moment. We want the government to look at the evidence. It’s common sense. There is overwhelming evidence that students learn better and are more effective in environments where they are supported and their teachers are supported.”

For now, charities and campaign groups are having to help schools themselves. Young Minds offers guidance on its website for teachers and is about to pilot a helpline for school staff, while the anti-stigma campaign Time to Change is running a project promoting pupil wellbeing and offering practical guidance for teaching staff. “Pupils are under much more stress these days and so are staff, yet teachers don’t have training in mental health – or spare time,” says Moira Clewes, lead teacher on health at Sandwich technology school, Kent, one of the schools piloting the project. “We are breaking down misconceptions around mental illness. Students are opening up. Teachers are grateful for advice. You’d be amazed at the impact this is having.”

A Department for Education spokesperson points to a range of initiatives, including the MindEd website, launched in March, designed to help people working with children, including teachers, “to recognise when a child needs help and how to make sure they get it”. The Department of Health says it has a “priority” focus on children’s mental health and, among other things, has put additional cash in to “talking therapies”, adding that it is liaising with the DfE to improve links between schools and Camhs.

For Cunningham, while any help is welcome, she is adamant that “nothing short of a clear, coherent and properly funded approach nationally will work for schools and for children”.

• Some names have been changed

Teachers: ‘Our pupils are targeting us’ with more than a quarter victims of abuse on social media

Teachers: ‘Our pupils are targeting us’ with more than a quarter victims of abuse on social media

Teachers are facing an increasing barrage of “vile” sexual abuse, unfair allegations of incompetence and videos of themselves taken without their consent being posted online by their pupils, according to a report seen by The Independent.

The survey of 7,500 teachers revealed that more than one in five (21 per cent) reported having adverse or derogatory comments posted about them on social media – from parents as well as children.

“Abusive and highly offensive language is common, accompanied by remarks about teachers’ appearance, competence or sexuality,” said a report out today, conducted by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT). Poor behaviour in the  classroom is enough to persuade many teachers to quit but the added element of online abuse taking place inside and outside the classroom is adding to the pressures of the job.

In one case highlighted by the report, a pupil tweeted: “You are a paedo and your daughter is a whore.” Another pupil said on Facebook that he wanted to kill his teacher – and invited fellow pupils to join in. The majority of comments by pupils, 61 per cent, came from 14- to 16-year-olds. However, there were two recorded from four- to seven-year-olds. The sites used by the pupils included Facebook, Ratemyteacher, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.

In one case, a picture of a drunk person who had passed out and resembled a teacher was posted, with a comment telling fellow pupils it was their teacher.

Of the comments posted by pupils, 47 per cent included insulting words or phrases, 50 per cent had comments made about their performance as a teacher, and 26 per cent had videos or photographs posted without their consent.

Of the parents’ comments, 57 per cent were insulting, 63 per cent criticised the teachers’ performance, 7 per cent involved threatening behaviour, and 7 per cent were videos or photographs taken without the teachers’ consent.

In addition to this, 6 per cent involved allegations of inappropriate behaviour with children and 3 per cent inappropriate behaviour with parents.

One teacher said of the abuse: “I was so upset by the allegations and comments from kids who had seen it all… that I ended up being off work with stress, on antidepressants and having to see a counsellor.”

Union leaders are urging schools to support staff in approaching social media websites to secure the removal of offensive material and encouraging them to go to the police.

Of those who complained, 11 per cent went to the police  – but three-quarters of these said no further action had been taken against either pupils or parents, although they had received a sympathetic hearing.

“Teachers are often devastated by the vile nature of the abuse they are suffering,” said Chris Keates, general secretary of NASUWT. “Teachers are often traumatised by the attacks made on them through social media.

“Some have lost their confidence to teach once they see foul and personal remarks made by pupils in their classes and have left the profession.

“Others have been so disturbed by the comments that their health has been affected.”

Meanwhile, teachers’ leaders will warn today that they face a “home invasion” of emails from heads and senior management, which sometimes arrive in the early hours and demand that action be taken by the recipient before the start of the school day.

Ms Keates cited one case where a teacher received an email at 2.15am demanding action by 8am, describing it as “unacceptable harassment and pressure”.

“Teachers even report receiving emails from school management at midnight on New Year’s Eve with a message reminding them of the work they must have completed by the time the new term starts,” she added.

She urged all schools to adopt a policy and protocol on the appropriate use of emails to avoid further stress being placed on teachers.

Self-harm sites and cyberbullying: the threat to children from web’s dark side

Tags

Bullying, Depression, mental health issues, self-harm, social networks, suicide, teenagers, young people

Self-harm sites and cyberbullying: the threat to children from web’s dark side

“Some of the images do scare me, especially if it’s my friends. Once my friend cut lines down the side of his face as a ‘Chelsea Smile’, he put it online and it was the worst thing I had ever seen. He’s my friend, I don’t want to see him that upset. He got so much hate for it and ended up going into hibernation, nobody heard from him for over a week and we honestly thought he had killed himself.”

Frankie* is 15 and lives in the Midlands. For the past year or so she has updated her Tumblr blog most days. On other social networks she uses her real name, but on Tumblr – a blogging platform – she shares her darkest thoughts about depression, anxiety and self-harm anonymously. “The other day I put up a self-harm picture,” she says. “I was alone and in a dark place. […] Of course, nobody would help, but posting it boosted my confidence a little; finding it buried in amongst all the other self-harm posts reminded me I’m not alone.”

Fears about self-harm sites have been growing since the suicides of two teenagers who, it emerged, were obsessed with self-harm and depression blogs, with mental health campaigners and experts warning that the UK’s teens are at risk of becoming a lost generation if parents and adults cannot reach out to them across the digital divide.

Tallulah Wilson, a 15-year-old who killed herself in 2012, was caught up in a “toxic digital world”, according to her mother, while the parents of Sasha Steadman, a 16-year-old who died from a suspected drug overdose in January after looking at self-harm sites, said her “impressionable mind” had been filled “with their damning gospel of darkness”.

For the uninitiated, self-harm blogs present a surreal world of fantasy and pain. Countless sites dedicated to self-harm and depression are filled with images of bleeding wounds juxtaposed with pixelated gifs, flickering eerily with snippets of Hollywood angst. Helen, who is now 18, visited them regularly, before stopping to help herself move on from self-harming. “You have people asking you how to cut yourself deep enough because their therapist said it wasn’t bad enough,” she says. “I have had people tell me to kill myself. I think the most traumatic is when you find someone’s suicide note online and there is no way to actually get in contact with the person.”

Isolated and lonely, she used the blogs because they gave her a sense of belonging. “You want to find people who are similar to you. That is what humans do,” she says. “It starts off as trying to help, but then it becomes competitive and dangerous. You get sucked into this world of who can cut the deepest/be the skinniest and avoid notice by the outside world. You end up spending hours a day searching these sites for reassurance, but it just makes it harder.”

Keeping children safe online is the “child protection challenge of this generation”, according to Peter Wanless, head of the NSPCC. ChildLine, part of the organisation, registered an 87% rise in calls about cyberbullying last year, a 41% increase in calls about self-harm, and a 33% increase in calls about suicide, with the biggest increase among 12- to 15-year-olds.

While the internet provides unprecedented opportunities for young people to communicate and learn, it can be a dangerous place for vulnerable teenagers, says Sue Minto, the head of ChildLine. “Children are communicating in a way we have never seen before – all the time and instantly,” she says. “Personally, I think this kind of relentless exposure is the biggest challenge we have ever faced.”

Minto notes that while peer pressure and bullying have been around for a long time, the ability to be contacted at all times is new. The cloak of anonymity can lead children to make comments they would shy away from in “real” life, she says. “The pressure on children is immense and very worrying – there is no break for these young people, it is quite relentless. Children who are being bullied tell us there is no point in turning off their phone, because the messages will just be there waiting for them.”

A recent survey carried out by youth charities ChildLine, Selfharm.co.uk,YouthNet and YoungMinds revealed that 61% of the 4,000 young people who responded said they self harmed because they felt alone, while 25% cited bullying. Almost 40% said they had never spoken to anyone in the “real world” about it.

Rachel Welch, director of Selfharm.co.uk, which supports young people affected by self-harm, says there is a huge gap between what adults see of the online world and their children’s experience. “So many young people are drifting into a world where they are completely disconnected,” she says.

But how dangerous are self-harm sites? Do they simply show teenage angst and creative expression, or highlight a worrying deterioration of teenage mental health?

Mary Hassell, the coroner presiding over the inquest of Tallulah Wilson, was concerned enough to write to Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, to warn him of a risk of future deaths without a greater understanding of children’s online worlds. Although Tallulah was treated by healthcare professionals, they didn’t have “a good enough understanding of the evolving way that the internet is used by young people, most particularly in terms of the online life that is quite separate from the rest of life”, she wrote.

A study into possible links between suicide and the internet has just been commissioned by the Department of Health and will report in two and a half years: a department spokeswoman said children’s mental health was a priority for the government and pointed to the introduction of “family-friendly filters” and internet safety into the national curriculum.

But for Sarah Brennan, chief executive of the youth mental health charity Young Minds, the real issue is ignorance of the scale of the problem, or even denial that the problem exists. The current NHS commissioning of youth mental health services is based on data collected in 2004 – the year Facebook launched.

“It is shocking that the government is allowing NHS commissioners to plan services based on out of date and inaccurate data,” Brennan says, adding that a Young Minds freedom of information request recently revealed that 34 out of 51 local authorities in England have reduced the budget for their children and adolescent mental health services since 2010, while a Community Care/BBC investigation this week showed that a growing number of seriously ill children are being admitted to adult psychiatric wards or sent hundreds of miles from home for hospital care.

“We are sitting on a ticking time bomb here,” says Brennan. “At the same time that we are seeing an increase in need, youth mental health services are being cut. There is an explosion of bullying online and young people struggling to cope with mental health issues, anxiety, eating disorders. If we don’t do something about it we could have a lost generation.”

What can be done? Since Tallulah Wilson’s suicide, Tumblr has introduced a warning that pops up when users search for terms related to self-harm, directing them towards sites offering support and calling on users to report blogs with “inappropriate content” so they can be taken down. A Tumblr spokeswoman said the site was “deeply committed to protecting our users’ freedom of expression”, but that it draws lines “around a few categories of content we consider damaging to our community, including blogs that encourage self-harm”.

And while there have been calls to shut down certain sites, such as Ask.fm – which allows users to ask anonymous questions and has been linked to teen suicides – teenagers and professionals spoken to by the Guardian agreed that simply banning sites or “dangerous” search terms was futile. Regulation can also backfire – recent efforts to impose opt-out “objectionable content filters”, backed by the prime minister, have resulted in sites such as ChildLine and Refuge also being blocked.

“We cannot put our head in the sand, simply blame these sites or hope to regulate our way out of this,” says Minto. “We are playing catch-up, but we need to take responsibility. You wouldn’t let your child cross the road without talking to them about road safety and the same goes for the risks of the internet – if we don’t tackle this it’s like opening the door and letting them walk through this cyberworld completely unequipped.”

Welch at Selfharm.co.uk agrees: “Calling for any type of ban is just missing the point. What we have to do is make sure our young people are emotionally resilient, emotionally aware and they know where to go to get help if they need it.”

Others say that while parts of the internet can be dangerous for vulnerable children, it can also provide the means to keep others safe and let them talk about their problems. As many young people contact ChildLine online as call its helpline. Online friends can be a force for good.

Samantha, a 17-year-old who started self-harming when she was 14, says her Tumblr site helped her recover from depression. “I felt like I belonged somewhere, they understood me in a way I felt I had never been understood before,” she says. At one point, she was off school with depression and spent all day online, answering 10-15 messages from other troubled teenagers every day. Now she “has a life” again and is online less frequently. “I’ve been told that I’ve saved lives and it made me feel good about myself that I was helping other people,” she says. “It’s really odd – but it works for me.”

Frankie, who is still working towards recovery, has mixed emotions. While she recognises that some blogs might encourage self-harmers, or make them feel worse, she still believes they can help. “I think for [people] like myself it can be reassuring just to know there are others out there that do it too [but] what scares me is thinking how many there are, how they are all posting it online, are they all cries for help? If that many people are crying for help then something needs to be done, and fast.”

*Names of young people have been changed. If you face any of the issues in this piece, you can call ChildLine on 0800 1111

Young people are sexting – but that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to be, says research

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relationships, sexting, young people

Young people are sexting – but that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to be, says research

With the rise of smartphones and Snapchat, sexting is in vogue – but a new study has found that many young people engage in the practice without really wanting to.

More than half (52.3 per cent) of young adults have engaged in “ unwanted but consensual sexting with a committed partner”, according to research to be published in February in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.

Most did so for flirtation, foreplay, to fulfil a partner’s needs, or for intimacy, but women were more likely to consent to unwanted sexting because of anxieties about their relationships.

The research, which was carried out by scientists at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), polled 155 undergraduates in committed relationships on their sexting habits.

Fifty-five per cent of the female respondents said they had previously engaged in unwanted sexting, while 48 per cent of men had done the same.

The results show similarities between sexual behaviour online and off: in both cases, couples will willingly go along with sex, even when they do not feel like it, from reasons ranging from satisfying their partner to avoiding an argument.

But while women are often considered to engage in unwanted sex more than men, the research shows only a small difference in the number of men and women partaking in unwanted sexting.

The authors of the article argued “gender-role expectations” could be to blame. Men might be more likely to agree to undesired sexting because doing so is “relatively easy and does not require them to invest more into the relationship,” while women might be discouraged from virtual sex because it fails to help them attain their relationship “goals”.

The survey also showed that people who were anxious about their relationships were more likely to send begrudging sexts, in a bid to alleviate fears about alienation or abandonment by their partners.

Cancer’s lost generation: the teens and young adults ‘forgotten in the middle’

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diagnosis, misdiagnosis, teenagers, Young adults, young people

Cancer’s lost generation: the teens and young adults ‘forgotten in the middle’

After six months of misdiagnosis, Stephen was eventually told he had bowel cancer. He was 15. A straight-A student, he had always wanted to be a doctor. Now 18, he says: “I’ve lost faith in the healthcare system.” He visited his GP numerous times with “crippling symptoms” and went to A&E on five occasions. “I have a strong family history ofbowel cancer. At one point, we asked the doctor if I might have cancer and demanded further scans. He said: ‘No, definitely not, you’re too young.'”

Over the past three decades, cancer survival rates have increased dramatically. But for teenagers and those in their 20s, the outlook is less promising – several reports have shown that improvements in outcomes for them do not match those among children and older adults.

To investigate this, the National Institute for Health Research has launched Brightlight, a cohort study that hopes to become the largest ever of young cancer patients (aged 13-24). It intends to recruit more than 2,000 people by next April. In earlier studies, two of its leaders, Professor Jeremy Whelan, a specialist in teenage oncology atUniversity College London Hospital, and Dr Lorna Fern of the National Cancer Research Institute, found that one of the critical factors for the “survival deficit” is delayed or mis-diagnosis. Invariably, this leads to a poorer prognosis as the more advanced the cancer is, the harder it is to treat.

According to a study published in the BMJ in October this year, those aged 16 to 25 are twice as likely as older adults to have three or more GP consultations before being referred to a specialist and a 2010 survey found more than a quarter of young cancer patients had visited their GP at least four times, many presenting with multiple “alert”symptoms (lumps, swellings or persistent unexplained pain) before their eventual referral. More than a third of participants at this year’s Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT) conference (the aptly named Find Your Sense of Tumour) were only diagnosed on emergency. Among many young patients there is overwhelming resentment of GPs; a sense that they were not taken seriously, their symptoms dismissed as adolescent fatigue, stress, or persistent hangovers.

It is true that cancer is rare among young people. But it is also the leading medical cause of non-accidental death among them – and the TCT says that in the past 30 years, cancer among teens and young adults has risen by 50%; for the first time, teenage cancer cases outnumber those of children. Young people are also known to contract the most aggressive forms, exacerbated by their growth spurts. Failure to detect the warning signs at an early stage can have devastating consequences, as Stephen’s case shows; his cancer was recently diagnosed as incurable. Raising awareness, he says, is essential to dispel the myth that young people are immune – a situation not helped by NHS campaigns such as Be Clear on Cancer, which feature only older faces.

Greater awareness is also needed to enable GPs to spot the “alarm-bell” symptoms. Since younger patients tend to develop the rarer forms of cancer – leukaemias, lymphomas, sarcomas, germ-cell tumours and cancers of the central nervous system – there is an urgent need for more research to group the specific symptoms of these malignancies.

At the moment, teens and young adults are also seriously under-represented in clinical trials. In a 2008 study, Whelan and Fern found almost half of patients aged 10-14 participated in a trial, but this fell to 25.2% for 15 to 19-year-olds, and just 13.1% for those aged 20-24. For too long, they argue, clinical and research communities have failed to recognise teens and young adults as a distinct category with unique biologies, and they have been left “forgotten in the middle”.

It is the same story when it comes to hospital care; teens and young adults have been identified as a “lost tribe”, caught between paediatric services and those designed for older patients. The National Cancer Reform Strategy (2007) estimated that 70% were not treated in age-appropriate settings; many were left on children’s wards, with the disturbance of crying babies, or isolated in bays with elderly patients and surrounded by constant bereavement.

Those lucky enough to be treated alongside their peers at a young-person unit describe the experience as a godsend. “I was a total mess before I found Teenage Cancer Trust,” says Jasmine Singh, 22, who is recovering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was transferred to a TCT unit with specialist young-person cancer nurses and counsellors, as well as a team of support workers offering education and career advice – a lifeline for young sufferers who fall behind with their studies or training.

In 2005, government directives recommended that all 13 to 24-year-old cancer patients be treated in such units – but at the moment there are only 27 in the UK, and only around half of all young patients are treated in one. The same recommendations stressed the importance of “age-appropriate care”, but there is no real consensus over what this means. The Brightlight study sets out to provide some answers. By interviewing young adults over a five-year period, it aims to gain a clearer insight into the type of care that benefits them the most.

One of the study’s pioneers was Stephen himself, in his capacity as a young adviser at the National Cancer Research Institute. “I don’t know how long I have left because I haven’t asked,” he says. He refuses to waste a moment on self-pity – in between chemotherapy treatments, he is too busy fundraising for TCT, determined to improve the outlook for other young people with cancer.