NationStates Jolt Archive

An attempted sexual assault where a boy attempted to force a 7-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him and threatened her with violence at the school has been described as normal behaviour by the school. It has been reported that this has happened before with another boy saying that he saw the girl performing oral sex on the boy back in late May.


THE principal of a Queensland school where a seven-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a classmate dismissed the attack as a "childhood experiment" and it is claimed she failed to immediately contact parents or police, The Courier-Mail reports.

The outraged girl's parents say their daughter was made to feel she was in the wrong and ordered back to the classroom where the attack took place - with her seven-year-old assailant sitting just three rows behind her.

The case erupted in late May when another boy told teachers he had seen the girl performing oral sex on the boy in the Year 2 classroom at lunchtime.

The witness said the boy had menaced the girl and threatened her with violence.

However, the attacker continued to be welcomed at the country state school, making it impossible for the girl to return.

"It's disgusting how the school has behaved," the victim's grandmother said.

"They did everything wrong."

The girl's distraught parents said yesterday the State Education Department and the Department of Child Safety had washed their hands of the case and that a letter of complaint to Premier Anna Bligh went unanswered.

However, Ms Bligh said: "My office dealt with this correspondence by requesting that a qualified Education Queensland officer contact the girl's grandmother personally, and I understand the matter has now been investigated fully."

She said she had been advised the school had acted quickly and appropriately.

"Both the parents of both children were advised on the day that the complaint was made and the Queensland police were advised within 15 minutes of the parents being notified," Ms Bligh said on ABC radio today.

"The advice I have is Education Queensland and the school principal did, in fact, contact the Queensland police on the day they received the complaint."

Girl traumatised

The parents now fear the attacks may have been going on for two months with their traumatised daughter experiencing mood swings and coming home with bruises.

"He said he would kill her if she said anything," the 30-year-old mother said.

"He has admitted hitting her hard with his hand and a ruler."

It is believed the school was alerted to another sex attack involving a different child.

Child sexual abuse campaigner Hetty Johnson said there were 13 new cases of sexual abuse reported in Queensland every week. Most involved schoolchildren aged between five and eight, she said.

Ms Johnson, the executive director of Bravehearts, said the ages of assailants and their victims was getting lower and lower, probably because of easy access to internet pornography.

She demanded the principal be sacked after revelations she did not call the police and had interviewed the children without their parents' present.

"It's inexcusable," she said.

The mother said the principal did not phone her until hours after her daughter was abused.

Normal behaviour

"She said, 'don't worry, it's normal childhood behaviour'," the mother said. "I couldn't believe her and collapsed on the floor. She was so insensitive.

"My world had the bottom ripped out of it and she was telling me it was normal behaviour. Can you believe that?

"How the hell could this happen? The children were unsupervised and an empty room was left unlocked – both breaches of Education Department rules.

"The school attempted to sweep it under the carpet at every opportunity. The police were never contacted. The whole thing is disgusting.

"They expected our daughter to return to the class with the boy present.

"They said they would keep an eye on things and there would be 'low risk' he would re-offend," she said.

Police said the boy was too young to prosecute.

The Department of Child Safety said it had no power to intervene as it was not a family matter involving children in care. The furious mum said: "They all traded my daughter's purity and innocence to cover their own arses.

"Would they treat their own children this way? I think not."

No apology

The family said they had not received an apology or an explanation from the Education Department. "All they would say was that the matter was referred to the department's legal department," he said.

The family is now faced with costly nine-hour round trips to take their daughter to see a specialist counsellor in a regional capital. So far the department has not offered to cover the counselling or travel costs.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24331611-1248,00.html

So is this normal behaviour? Should the school allow this to continue?

I would say no to both questions and I will say that this behaviour in my experience is typical of schools who attempt to cover up any form of harassment and assault and make the victims out to be the ones in the wrong.

So express what you think of the issue and of schools behaviour towards harassment and assault in general

Sexual abuse reported weekly? I find that... almost impossible to believe. The only way it even seems conceivable is if there is an adult on campus who is/has been sexually abusing children and/or encouraging them to do the same. This is not normal behavior for anyone, let alone young children. The boy needs just as much counseling as the girl--he's clearly been exposed or subjected to some very traumatic things to act out in this way.

~ is completely blown away with the news ~

It's not normal behaviour :eek:

However...

1. It's not sexual assault or sexual harrassment, a kid that age doesn't have the hormones for it. It must be a learned behaviour pattern and not of sexual nature per se.

2. It should be treated as normal bully incident in regards of the boy involved

3. The parents of the girl should have a long chat with a qualifed counselor in regards of their daughter's premature sexual behaviour.

4. WTF is wrong with that school anyways? 7 year olds having oral sex in school grounds?

considering what you can get suspended and expelled for these days, I'm amazed that they're calling this 'normal'.
A funky hairdo or weird piercing is terrible but sexual assualt is fine? wtf?

An attempted sexual assault where a boy attempted to force a 7-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him and threatened her with violence at the school has been described as normal behaviour by the school. It has been reported that this has happened before with another boy saying that he saw the girl performing oral sex on the boy back in late May.


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24331611-1248,00.html

So is this normal behaviour? Should the school allow this to continue?

I would say no to both questions and I will say that this behaviour in my experience is typical of schools who attempt to cover up any form of harassment and assault and make the victims out to be the ones in the wrong.

So express what you think of the issue and of schools behaviour towards harassment and assault in general

I came on NSG to post that, and you got in before me!

I think it's really concerning. What is that young boy learning at home? And that poor little girl probably didn't even understand what was going on. If he was threatening her, though, I'm sure she understood it wasn't good/right.

I think schools often try to cover this kind of thing up. I also think that a lot of teachers of primary school children have started to become more hush hush because they're worried about the younger generation of demanding yuppie parents (at least that's what a few teachers at my old school thought). They're so worried about being "PC" and getting sued, that massive things like this are overlooked, ignored or put down to kids being kids.

I remember at my school there were some really serious incidents, for example girls were caught dealing/selling drugs on school grounds, and girls were physically fighting each other, all sorts of terrible things, however you were more likely to get suspended for wearing 2 pairs of earrings instead of one.

On Ninemsn they were asking "should the parents have been informed?" on a poll. I can't imagine the parents NOT being informed.

~ is completely blown away with the news ~

It's not normal behaviour :eek:

However...

1. It's not sexual assault or sexual harrassment, a kid that age doesn't have the hormones for it. It must be a learned behaviour pattern and not of sexual nature per se.

2. It should be treated as normal bully incident in regards of the boy involved

3. The parents of the girl should have a long chat with a qualifed counselor in regards of their daughter's premature sexual behaviour.

4. WTF is wrong with that school anyways? 7 year olds having oral sex in school grounds?

Sexual assault or sexual harrasment doesn't need to include sexual attraction or a damn hard on. It's sexual assault because it's a sexual act. Rape is often about power, and sometimes not about sex at all.

I agree that it's very likely to be a learned behaviour pattern.

I don't think it should be addressed like other bullying cases. It's not like other bullying cases. AND - in my experience in Australian schools - bullying doesn't actually get dealt with. I don't think the police should really be involved though. It's a tough one.

And from reading the article on Ninemsn, it says HE threatened HER, so I don't think she needs to have a "chat" about her premature sexual behaviour. I think she needs to be counselled about a range of things surrounding the issue.

An attempted sexual assault where a boy attempted to force a 7-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him and threatened her with violence at the school has been described as normal behaviour by the school. It has been reported that this has happened before with another boy saying that he saw the girl performing oral sex on the boy back in late May.


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24331611-1248,00.html

So is this normal behaviour? Should the school allow this to continue?

I would say no to both questions and I will say that this behaviour in my experience is typical of schools who attempt to cover up any form of harassment and assault and make the victims out to be the ones in the wrong.

So express what you think of the issue and of schools behaviour towards harassment and assault in general

Definitely abnormal behavior and the second question does not deserve an answer. Why should a school ever advocate rape?

And to think that I wasted my formative years playing tag and dodgeball. :(

Normal behavior in a perverse Japanese brown-bag manga maybe.

And to think that I wasted my formative years playing tag and dodgeball. :(

I thought this behaviour was only an effort to attract the opposite sex... :confused:

~ is completely blown away with the news ~

It's not normal behaviour :eek:

However...

1. It's not sexual assault or sexual harrassment, a kid that age doesn't have the hormones for it. It must be a learned behaviour pattern and not of sexual nature per se. Whoa whoa whoa.

First of all, what sort of definition of 'sexual harrassment' are YOU working from?

Sexual harrassment in common law nations is generally any unwanted or unsolicited behaviour of a sexual nature. You seem to be claiming that a child that young is incapable of behaving in a sexual manner because of 'lack of hormones'. First of all, that is irrelevant to the legal definition of sexual harrassment. Even people with zero sex drive can sexually harrass others. Second, most studies dealing with normative sexual behaviour in children (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/4/e9) have found that sexual behaviour in younger children than these is widespread and 'normal', even screening for sexual abuse. Do children necessarily UNDERSTAND the 'implications' of sexual behaviour, or even distinguish sexual behaviour from non-sexual behaviour? At the younger ages (2 - 5), the answer is fairly clearly 'no'. Nonetheless, there is little to support labelling this sexual behaviour as non-sexual simply because of that lack of consequential understanding. Human beings are innately sexual. Learned patterns of behaviour have a decided impact on the expression of that innateness, but do not determine whether a behaviour is sexual or not.



2. It should be treated as normal bully incident in regards of the boy involved
Except it's not normal bullying. It's bullying of an explicitly sexual nature. Again, this boy might not understand the difference between demanding oral sex or demanding a lunch item from the girl...but the consequences of one form of bullying over the other are much further reaching and need to be dealt with.

3. The parents of the girl should have a long chat with a qualifed counselor in regards of their daughter's premature sexual behaviour. You contradict your claims that children of a certain age are incapable of sexual behaviour...unless you wish to claim some gendered nuance here?

4. WTF is wrong with that school anyways? 7 year olds having oral sex in school grounds?
Rather...what is wrong with the individuals involved in these cases? Certain sexual behaviour among children is common and to be expected. Coercive or explicit sexual behaviour tends to point to sexual abuse.

Whoa whoa whoa.

First of all, what sort of definition of 'sexual harrassment' are YOU working from?
I'm incapable of seeing children as sexual objects...More accurately, I'm incapable of comperhending how a 7 year old might percieve an act as sexual because a kid that age is not biologically capable of understanding the concept.

In other words: From my POV there is no sexual drive for a kid that age, hence it can't be sexual harrassment. There inarguably is sexual curiosity but the significance of the experiments is not what we adults consider analogous to having sex.
You contradict your claims that children of a certain age are incapable of sexual behaviour...unless you wish to claim some gendered nuance here?
Like I pointed out, such blatant sexuality at that age is a learned trait not instinctual drive, hence the reason behind the behaviour must be something their parents are more responsible of than the kid him or herself.

Rather...what is wrong with the individuals involved in these cases?
I completely fail to see how could a 7 year old be responsible for demanding or giving oral sex - It MUST come from the environment somehow.

I completely fail to see how could a 7 year old be responsible for demanding or giving oral sex - It MUST come from the environment somehow.

Maybe because the 7 year old DID IT maybe? It doesn't matter one inch whether he thought it sexual or not. A crime is a crime, regardless of age. The perpetrator must be dealt with as such, even if it is a juvenile court.

She was probably wearing a short skirt or something. Asking for it.

I wonder about people sometimes...

Yes, children experiment sexually, but since when have schools ever allowed that to happen during school hours.

Secondly, when have threats of violence been acceptable...

And G3N13, snopes reckons the youngest age a female ever got pregnant was five. It seems biology doesn't subscribe to your view of reality.
http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/medina.asp

its normal behavior for a boy who is being sexually abused at home. its not normal in that it should be expected and excused like little boys who try to kiss the girls as a way of bothering them.

it should not be excused by the school but if the boy was 7 he cant be criminally charged. his family should be investigated within an inch of their lives to see what is going on in the home.

And to think that I wasted my formative years playing tag and dodgeball. :(

Bwahahaha it was always girls for me at school. Kiss chase, docs and nurses ahhh good times!

She was probably wearing a short skirt or something. Asking for it.

Undoubtedly.

Bwahahaha it was always girls for me at school. Kiss chase, docs and nurses ahhh good times!

And to think I had a childhood deprived of these bare essentials

A crime is a crime, regardless of age. The perpetrator must be dealt with as such, even if it is a juvenile court.
Lock the bastard down for 15 years! He'll surely come out a better person.

Lock the bastard down for 15 years! He'll surely come out a better person.

He'll probably be better at rape

2. It should be treated as normal bully incident in regards of the boy involved
You mean ignored by the boy's parents and the school's administrators and rewarded by the boy's peers? That's more or less what's already being done.
Lock the bastard down for 15 years! He'll surely come out a better person.
Unless Juvenile court has gotten a lot more Dickensian in the past several years, that isn't at all what Non Aligned States was suggesting. The kid needs, first of all, to be immediately separated from his peers, and the people in charge of that school need to be separated from any position of authority they have ever held, now hold or may hold.

So is this normal behaviour? Should the school allow this to continue?

and now... one answer for two questions...

"Lord, I hope not!"

Maybe because the 7 year old DID IT maybe? It doesn't matter one inch whether he thought it sexual or not. A crime is a crime, regardless of age. The perpetrator must be dealt with as such, even if it is a juvenile court.

Well he is to young to be charged with anything and the police can't do a thing, not even place him in juvenile court. IIRC the age is 10 or 11 which is why we have kids who know they are underage to be charged breaking the law such as robbery, gang beatings etc, and know that all that can happen to them is that the police will give them to their parents.

I came on NSG to post that, and you got in before me!

I think it's really concerning. What is that young boy learning at home? And that poor little girl probably didn't even understand what was going on. If he was threatening her, though, I'm sure she understood it wasn't good/right.

I think schools often try to cover this kind of thing up. I also think that a lot of teachers of primary school children have started to become more hush hush because they're worried about the younger generation of demanding yuppie parents (at least that's what a few teachers at my old school thought). They're so worried about being "PC" and getting sued, that massive things like this are overlooked, ignored or put down to kids being kids.

I remember at my school there were some really serious incidents, for example girls were caught dealing/selling drugs on school grounds, and girls were physically fighting each other, all sorts of terrible things, however you were more likely to get suspended for wearing 2 pairs of earrings instead of one.

On Ninemsn they were asking "should the parents have been informed?" on a poll. I can't imagine the parents NOT being informed.

Pipped at the post :p

Yes schools do like to hide a few things and prefer to deal with it themselves, even if that means pretending the incident never happened or making the victim out to be the bad guy. Whether it is because they want to be more PC and not get sued I don't know I think a bit trying to protect their reputation also comes into it a bit, as well as a general sense of not caring.

At my school a teacher and a 18-year-old year 12 student had a sexual relationship, and the matter was dealt in house with him being dismissed and he went off to the UK to teach for a year he came back a year later and is now teaching at the other high school.

With all bullying issues I think the schools only want to deal with problems they know they can easily deal with such as suspending someone for wearing two earrings whereas drug dealing was allowed to continue simply because it was easier for the schools to do this. An incident happened last year at my sons school him and a bunch of other classmates where being bullied by a group of older kids who would push them around steal their lunch and use them for their enjoyment such as tripping them up when they went past, stealing their hat and throwing it amongst themselves keeping it out of reach of the young kid and even a few incidents of dacking happened. The school did little about this, their may have been a time out or something but really the punishment was little and did nothing, the school wasn't going to do anything serious about it until myself and the parents of the other kids barged into the principals office demanding something to be done and threatening to bring the police in on him since he was breaking state OHS laws.

This incident is the worst I have heard but as I said I am not surprised that the school has dismissed it as "normal behaviour", and the boys house life should be looked into, maybe he has an older brother who has shown porn to the boy or something.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/630867/trio-of-schoolboys-ran-sex-club

Another article from another Queensland school, this time about a few 6 year old boys who said they were running a sex club. Sort of disproves what G3N13 was saying.

And it appears that the school didn't bother contacting the parents until a week after the incident happened because "they were busy"

EDIT: 3000th post

This is staggering. Most sexual assaults ar commited by children? What kind of place is Queensland?


Unfortunately, the school's behavior is just an extreem example of something that is probably quite typical. Students abuse eachother, lazy/incompitant/sadistic educators look the other way, then try to cover up thier own misconduct.

I was bullied in school, and for the most part my recollection of the teacher's respose was that they did jack shit about it. A year or two ago their were complaints of a Gym teacher at my highschool shoving female students and yelling at them, and it was basically dismissed by the administration, who said something along the lines of it being "one parent with an ax to grind."

I have fortunately never been witness to an act of sexual violance, least of all one commited by a 7 year old. But I can say from experience that the administration's behavior is all too usual.

So, this is an oportunity to make a very harsh example of this kind of conduct. Any one at the school who knew of this and did nothing, or tried to minimize what an apalling case this is should be fired. While I am not familiar with the laws in this jurisdiction, I wonder if they could be charged with accessory to rape for covering this up. Basically, throw the book at them. Additionally, the young victim's psycological care should be payed for out of these dirt bag's wages.

As for the boy who perpetrated this assault, he may be too young to be tried, but that's not what he needs. What he needs is involuntarry incarceration in a mental institute. He needs to be treated. He needs to be given therapy. And congratulations to whoever pointed out that his parrents need to be investigated. It's all too likely he was imitating what someone else had done to him.

God, just when you think nothing can stun you any more. This is the second time today I've been shocked by the depths to which humanity can sink.

This is staggering. Most sexual assaults ar commited by children? What kind of place is Queensland?

Unfortunately, the school's behavior is just an extreem example of something that is probably quite typical. Students abuse eachother, lazy/incompitant/sadistic educators look the other way, then try to cover up thier own misconduct.

I was bullied in school, and for the most part my recollection of the teacher's respose was that they did jack shit about it. A year or two ago their were complaints of a Gym teacher at my highschool shoving female students and yelling at them, and it was basically dismissed by the administration, who said something along the lines of it being "one parent with an ax to grind."

I have fortunately never been witness to an act of sexual violance, least of all one commited by a 7 year old. But I can say from experience that the administration's behavior is all too usual.

So, this is an oportunity to make a very harsh example of this kind of conduct. Any one at the school who knew of this and did nothing, or tried to minimize what an apalling case this is should be fired. While I am not familiar with the laws in this jurisdiction, I wonder if they could be charged with accessory to rape for covering this up. Basically, throw the book at them. Additionally, the young victim's psycological care should be payed for out of these dirt bag's wages.

As for the boy who perpetrated this assault, he may be too young to be tried, but that's not what he needs. What he needs is involuntarry incarceration in a mental institute. He needs to be treated. He needs to be given therapy. And congratulations to whoever pointed out that his parrents need to be investigated. It's all too likely he was imitating what someone else had done to him.

God, just when you think nothing can stun you any more. This is the second time today I've been shocked by the depths to which humanity can sink.

Well I don't know about Queensland law but if it was in SA they school and the Board of Education could be charged with safety law violations, not that it has been done yet but as a school is a workplace if the owners and managers (principals) cannot provide a safe working environment then they can be criminally charged with heavy fines and the prospect of jail time.

Queensland is a twisted state and is the butt of manu jokes in a lot of aspects but I suppose that is what comes from a state that has little checks and balances in its system.

You mean ignored by the boy's parents and the school's administrators and rewarded by the boy's peers? That's more or less what's already being done.

Unless Juvenile court has gotten a lot more Dickensian in the past several years, that isn't at all what Non Aligned States was suggesting. The kid needs, first of all, to be immediately separated from his peers, and the people in charge of that school need to be separated from any position of authority they have ever held, now hold or may hold.

He also needs to be immediately separated from his caretakers and school, until child protective services can figure out what's going on, because odds are 10-1 this boy is being abused.

Well I don't know about Queensland law but if it was in SA they school and the Board of Education could be charged with safety law violations, not that it has been done yet but as a school is a workplace if the owners and managers (principals) cannot provide a safe working environment then they can be criminally charged with heavy fines and the prospect of jail time.

Queensland is a twisted state and is the butt of manu jokes in a lot of aspects but I suppose that is what comes from a state that has little checks and balances in its system.

Its terrible that these problems seem to be chronic in Queensland, but nothing seems to be being done about it.

A lot of people should lose their jobs, and their freedom for this.

Unfortunately, the school's behavior is just an extreem example of something that is probably quite typical. Students abuse eachother, lazy/incompitant/sadistic educators look the other way, then try to cover up thier own misconduct.

I can't believe anyone could have so little empathy or concern for their students that they'd brush this aside. And yet, the proof is right here.

I've sat kids down and informed other teachers (I was only a student teacher at the time, so I consulted with my master teacher) over far lesser incidents than this. Any time that children have inappropriate contact, whether sexual or violent or both, it needs to be addressed. Even when it's totally innocent (like a "game" among young children that involved touching each others' genitals through their clothing, which they found "funny") it needs to be addressed promptly. Abuse like this... unthinkable. It makes me ill.

I can't believe anyone could have so little empathy or concern for their students that they'd brush this aside. And yet, the proof is right here.

I've sat kids down and informed other teachers (I was only a student teacher at the time, so I consulted with my master teacher) over far lesser incidents than this. Any time that children have inappropriate contact, whether sexual or violent or both, it needs to be addressed. Even when it's totally innocent (like a "game" among young children that involved touching each others' genitals through their clothing, which they found "funny") it needs to be addressed promptly. Abuse like this... unthinkable. It makes me ill.

Oh, I have no doubt that their are conciensious educators. Good for you for doing your job. I'd just like to see it happen more often. With crap like this, once is too many(as corny as that sounds).

its normal behavior for a boy who is being sexually abused at home. its not normal in that it should be expected and excused like little boys who try to kiss the girls as a way of bothering them.

it should not be excused by the school but if the boy was 7 he cant be criminally charged. his family should be investigated within an inch of their lives to see what is going on in the home.

indeed, how on earth does a little boy get the idea to force oral sex on someone?

indeed, how on earth does a little boy get the idea to force oral sex on someone?
*shudder*

no way that doesnt include abuse or some very bad supervision with pornography in the home.