'epidemic' Of Sex Taunts At Teachers
The Sun Herald
Saturday July 30, 1994
MALE students humiliated female teachers and pupils by touching and leering at them and calling them "sluts" and "scrubbers" in an epidemic of sexual harassment at co-educational high schools in NSW, according to an education expert.
University lecturer Kerry Robinson told a Sydney conference on school bullying last week that 70 per cent of women teachers she had interviewed had been subjected to sexual harassment "by students as young as 12 or 13".
Ms Robinson, who is collating the results of three years of research, said the boys bolstered their egos and asserted their masculinity by sexually harassing female teachers and students.
"Sexual harassment at school transcends the traditional concept that it is perpetrated by a male in authority over a women in a junior position," Ms Robinson said.
She said most of the 110 teachers she interviewed had experienced some form of sexual harassment "with the majority of it coming from their male students". Only 10pc of male teachers had experienced sexual harassment.
"Exposure of sexual harassment is often hidden or silenced by principals who treat the problem as a matter of discipline rather than harassment," she said.
She said intervention was often minimal because sexual harassment was regarded as "childish teasing".
"The women teachers are seen as poor disciplinarians and therefore responsible for not being able to control the boys' behaviour rather than the boys' behaviour being seen as sexual harassment," she said.
Ms Robinson said female teachers had stopped lodging complaints about sexual harassment because they "fell on deaf ears".
She said one male deputy principal she interviewed admitted he was "one of the biggest sexual harassers around" and bragged that "if they (teachers)didn't like it they would tell me".
Ms Robinson described the incidents of sexual harassment of teachers and students as "a very serious problem".
Incidents of sexual harassment at schools are rarely puiblicised.
In a minor one that was highlighted earlier this year, The Sun-Herald revealed that teen heart-throb Alex Dimitriades, who shot to fame overnight in the Australian movie blockbuster The Heartbreak Kid and went on to star in the TV series Heartbreak High, was suspended from Kingsgrove North High School for sexually harassing a female teacher two years ago.
Dimitriades, who was accused of harassing the teacher by singing the pop song I'm Too Sexy, was allowed to continue his HSC studies at the school but only after apologising and signing a contract guaranteeing good conduct.
Last month, NSW Police Minister Terry Griffiths unexpectedly resigned his portfolio after five women workers took stress leave because they were allegedly subjected to sexual harassment by the minister.
Ms Joan Lemaire, of the NSW Teachers Federation, said the federation had rejected the Education Department's draft policy paper on discrimination, including sex-based harassment, because "it was only three pages long".
"It's a widespread problem. The extreme cases certainly don't happen in every school but there is a problem which has to be dealt with in the majority of schools," she said.
An Education Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the survey results.
© 1994 The Sun Herald