From unwanted touching to rape: the scale of child-on-child abuse in English and Welsh schools

Ten years after full extent of problem was revealed, Guardian investigation finds schools facing uphill battle amid rapid societal changes

It is 10 years since a report first revealed the epic scale of sexual bullying, harassment and abuse girls faced in England’s schools on a daily basis.

The report, by MPs on the women and equalities committee, showed the horrifying normality of child-on-child abuse in schools. The need for government action was “overwhelming”, said the committee chair, Maria Miller. Ofsted duly investigated, recommendations were written, promises were made and a new sex education curriculum was rolled out.

A decade later, and six years after the Everyone’s Invited movement began to collect anonymous testimonies from victims, a Guardian investigation has shown the problem persists unabated at schools in England and Wales. In many ways it may be more pernicious as a result of the rise of social media, misogyny and the mass consumption of online pornography by teenage boys.

The freedom of information investigation captures only the most serious incidents; those reported to and recorded by police. Interviews with experts, lawyers and campaigners suggest many more cases never get reported, often because the children involved are under the age of criminal responsibility and the assault is dismissed as “age-related exploration”.

Andrew Lord, a partner with Leigh Day solicitors and a specialist in abuse claims, has dealt with cases of child-on-child sexual abuse in private and state schools, inner-city schools, rural schools, primary, secondary and boarding schools for more than a decade. He says the impact on victims can endure for years and many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“From my own cases I can see it’s happening up and down the country to children of all ages,” he said. In many instances, however, schools were still struggling to deal with it appropriately. “If you have children in a physical fight, schools know exactly how to react. When you are talking about sexual assault, it’s a different matter.”

Lord is currently representing a secondary school pupil who reported being subjected to a number of sexual and physical assaults by fellow pupils in a changing room. The family is seeking a claim for negligence and breach of human rights against the school for its failure to protect the child.

“Schools do have a duty to ensure that both children [involved in an incident] receive their education, but I am aware of situations where the children continue at the same school and the victim has felt that they have not received adequate support to enable them to engage safely with their studies after disclosing incidents of sexual violence.

“Victims can find themselves being ostracised, which may represent a breach of the Human Rights Act,” he added.

Lord also represents a number of primary school children, including a boy who reported being seriously sexually assaulted by another child on school premises. He was scared he would be hit if he did not comply.

“The biggest issue for me with primary-age cases, when children are below the age of criminal responsibility, is there is often no real statutory investigation and there’s an overreliance on ‘age-related exploration’.”

What typically happens on primary school premises, Lord said, is that a child is taken to a more hidden area by fellow pupils – behind a shed, climbing frame or bushes – is forced to undress and is assaulted, often under threat of being excluded from play and friendship groups.

While most victims of sexual abuse in schools are girls, boys are also targeted. Bethany’s* eight-year-old son was sexually abused on three occasions by a classmate during play dates at her home.

She only discovered what had happened when he began crying at bedtime. She reported it to the school but claims it tried to dismiss what happened as relationship difficulties. “This was not a relationship difficulty. This was sexual assault,” she said. “No one was taking it seriously.”

Her son was never interviewed. There was no proper investigation into what happened and no appropriate safety plan was drawn up to protect her son. “They wanted to sweep it all under the carpet, and that’s not good enough. It was like he was not believed.” In the end, he moved to another school. The other boy remained.

“My son was never treated as a victim in any sense. They offered him no real support. What was worse than the incident itself was how the school dealt with it. It was just appalling. We both felt very, very let down,” said Bethany.

Richard Scorer is another lawyer who deals with civil claims arising from sexual abuse and receives regular approaches from parents, and in some cases teenagers who have suffered child-on-child sexual abuse of various kinds in school.

“We see a lot more of it now than we would have done even a few years ago. As well as a greater awareness, it’s also possible there’s a greater underlying level of abuse and that may have something to do with the pervasiveness of online pornography, particularly in the lives of teenage boys.

“It’s the full range of sexual assault, ranging from unwanted touching to rape. Some of that will take place on school premises, some of it will be off-site. Boys are overwhelmingly the perpetrators. There’s obviously all of the issues around revenge porn and the sharing of intimate photographs – that’s a big issue as well.

“My sense is that schools in some instances are struggling to know how to respond because of the extent of what’s going on and because safeguarding is quite resource intensive. Schools are forced into a bit of a social work role, picking up the pieces from things that are going wrong in society at large.”

Tony Hartney, a school improvement consultant and former headteacher, said awareness around child-on-child sexual abuse was much better in schools and there was a greater willingness to tackle such issues, but they remained “tricky” to handle.

“When there are allegations made like this, schools are very sensitive to the needs of both young people involved to try and make it as viable as possible for them to continue with their education in schools.

“The difficulty of course is things take time. Whilst investigations are going on, you ideally want them to be in schools and to have as normal an education as they can. It’s tricky for schools to manage these situations.”

When she became children’s commissioner for England in 2021, Rachel de Souza knew from her time as a headteacher about sexual harassment and abuse in schools.

“But what I heard as I listened to young people shocked me. Children were viewing violent pornography, it was changing behaviour and peer-on-peer abuse was widespread, normalised and too often brushed under the carpet.

“We have taken important steps in the last few years – from work to bring highly skilled professionals together under one roof to care for child victims of abuse, to action to prevent children from accessing pornography, and a focus on evidence-based relationships education that addresses the realities of teenagers’ lives.

“But as these figures show, we have a long way to go. This is not simply a school or college issue, it is a societal one. We need to address the causes – harmful sexual behaviours are increasingly shaped by the content and cultures that children are exposed to online.

“And we need to urgently improve what happens when young victims of sexual assault speak out and their experience of the justice system, and make sure they get the support they need.”

* Name has been changed for reasons of anonymity