Schools abuse helpline receives over 650 contacts as pupils urged to get in touch with concerns

We’ve received over 650 contacts in 5 months since launch

118 of those contacts were serious enough to refer to an external agency such as police, local authorities and the NHS.

Where information about the caller was known:

• 121 contacts were from adult or child victims: 73 were female, 41 male, two transgender and 5 unknown.
• 67 of the contacts were from parents with concerns about their child.

The helpline launched on April 1 after thousands of testimonies of sexual abuse and harassment, mostly perpetrated by peers, were posted on the Everyone’s Invited site.

These included reports about sexual name calling, unwanted sexual touching, sexual assault and rape by other pupils as well as online abuse like sharing nude images without consent.

Incidents inclided both recent and non-recent abuse with adults abused as children telling the helpline that they felt they could not report it at the time or they tried to but weren’t listened to. In other cases, adults witnessed incidents but didn’t act on it.

Some told the helpline they were accused of inviting unwanted attention while others were discouraged from taking action out of fear it would ruin their education and life prospects.

Victims said they felt scared, powerless and guilty because of the abuse and some developed anxiety, depression or suffered with drug and alcohol issues.