Police chief to parents: Hand in your son if he’s carried out sex assault

Chief Constable Simon Bailey also warned that some schools may have covered up allegations to protect their reputations
Leading London Schools Beset By Reports Of 'Rape Culture'
It comes as a helpline is being set up for pupils and past students to report incidents
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Parents who are aware that their sons have carried out a sexual assault should report them to the police, a senior officer said today.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for child protection, predicted a “significant number of reports” coming in after more than 6,000 young people posted testimonies on the Everyone’s Invited website.

It comes as a helpline is being set up for pupils and past students to report incidents. Mr Bailey called on parents to contact police if their children are involved.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “If parents are aware that their son or their daughter has been a victim of abuse then please come forward and report the abuse. Your son or daughter’s account will be believed and we will deal with it appropriately.

“If as a parent you are aware that your son has been responsible for a sexual assault, then I think you should be taking your son to the police and saying ‘look I have now become aware that this is what my son has done’.”

He added: “The website has already received I think over 7,000 testimonies ... and those numbers are growing exponentially... so I think it’s reasonable to predict there is going to be a significant number of reports that are going to come into the system.”

Mr Bailey also warned that some schools may have covered up allegations to protect their reputations.

He said he has no evidence for this, but it is a “predictable and reasonable assumption that in some cases ... schools will have made the decision just to deal with the allegations internally rather than reporting them when they should have done.”

So far, it is mostly private schools in London that have been at the centre of rape culture and sexual harassment allegations. But Mr Bailey said: “This is not something that is exclusive only to the private schools.”

Mr Bailey said a culture has grown up, partly fuelled by easy access to pornography, where it is seen as acceptable by some people to treat young women “in a manner that we are now seeing disclosed on the website”.

He called on parents and schools to have conversations with children about pornography, and to tell them “that is not real. That is not a relationship”.

He added: “Parents have a responsibility to ensure their children ... recognise and understand what good values are. What respect and trust and honesty are. How to treat people.”

The Department for Education said it is “very concerned by the significant number of allegations recently posted on the Everyone’s Invited website”.

It is working with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to “provide support, protection and advice to those who are reporting abuse, including on contacting professionals or the police if they wish”.

Culture minister Nigel Huddleston urged anyone who is facing abuse to call the new helpline. Speaking on Sky News he said: “We will be looking at this and of course Ofsted and the inspectorate do have powers up to and including closing down schools if there’s evidence there.

“It’s a quite alarming picture that’s been emerging over the last few days.”

Helen Pike, headteacher of Magdalen College School, which has been named on the Everyone’s Invited website, said: “Everybody at the moment is moving heaven and earth to ensure our young people are safe in schools, but we are only ever as good as our information, so the holy grail for us here is getting lines of communication open.”

She added: “There’s an enormous opportunity here for parents and schools to work together to get an insight into what is going on in teen social media and particularly at gatherings when the adults aren’t around.

“If we ask the right questions we may learn some answers to things that have been troubling us for some years now.”

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