LONDON – Over 7,000 reports of abuse or violence suffered, verbal and physical, for what appears to be a “culture of rape” especially in British schools and universities: it is the “MeToo” of British students and what could soon become “a scandal in national level “. It’s not a tabloid but Simon Bailey, one of the British police chiefs and, among other things, the UK’s child and teen protection officer, who uses such blunt terms.
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Bailey spoke to the Times of a shocking theme that has been discussed overseas for days: that is, the culture of harassment, rape, machismo and sexism, especially in schools and universities in the Kingdom. Where, according to Bailey, many cases would have been “covered up” to protect the reputation of the schools. The complaints, which arrived en masse in the last few hours, were recorded by the “Everyone’s Invited” site, a platform created specifically at the end of last year so that minors, and not only, can anonymously report the abuses suffered.
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In recent days there have been many reports, from girls but also boys, even a nine-year-old child: they range from physical and verbal harassment, to abuse and rape, sometimes after the victims have been drugged. In some cases, images of the violence were also posted on social networks. But the complaints came, albeit in a smaller percentage, also from adults, of any sex. “This shows that this is a universal problem,” he tells Bbc Soma Sara, a young activist who founded the site “Everyone’s Invited”, “because there has been a clear increase in cases and in the age and population groups involved”.
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The identities of the victims remained anonymous on the site, but not the schools where the terrible incidents would have occurred. The last was Dulwich College, where the great writers PG Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler and even the king of Brexit, Nigel Farage studied. In this institute, a boy has uncovered Pandora’s box by telling all the male chauvinism and sexism of his fellow men. His denunciation has given courage to many girls who are now denouncing everything. But this is also happening in several private London schools. Many boys and girls had in mind to protest last Friday, leaving the courtroom. Someone did it, others did not, also due to the anti Covid restrictions.
But unease is growing among young people and teenagers, especially after the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, the 33-year-old woman kidnapped and killed a few weeks ago in London by a policeman on her way home. The controversy of the following days, with the riots between police and demonstrators watching for her, sparked the protests of many women over the harassment, abuse and discrimination they suffer every day in the UK. A recent survey had decreed, out of thousands of girls listened to, that practically all of them admitted to having suffered verbal or physical harassment or abuse at home and / or at school and that only 5% of them reported them.
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