Female teachers groped, sexually taunted by school boys

Female teachers have described how schoolboys had groped them, air-dropped porn to their work laptops, and taunted them with comments about rape and sexual acts.

Female teachers have described disturbing incidents of schoolboy sexual harassment and assault.

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Female teachers have described schoolboys’ groping them, pinching their bottoms, air-dropping porn to their work laptops, and taunting them with rape comments, as experts warn of a rise in harmful sexual behaviours by male students.

Young teachers are demanding action from parents and schools, as they confront what they believe are the effects of online misogyny, violent pornography, diminished expectations from schools about behaviour, and a lack of parental supervision.

Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist said “more and more” female teachers, particularly young graduates, were leaving the profession from instances of sexual harassment and “how they’re treated by male students”.

Melinda Tankard Reist. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

Teachers from public and private schools also said sexualised language in the classroom, including moaning and sexual ­noises, had “amped up 10-fold”, especially among younger students, with one Queensland high school teacher saying children “can’t distinguish between what is appropriate to talk about and what is not” due to the “sexualis­ation in society”.

“The kids are porn sick,” the regional Queensland public school teacher said, adding that teenagers had watched porn at the back of her classroom or air-dropped explicit content to her computer while she was teaching.

“I’ve had a student walk up to me and literally say to my face that he wants to f..k me. He was 14 years-old … I’ve had my bottom pinched by a student in class, in front of others, and then he basically said he didn’t do it. I’ve had a penis drawn on a light, and when I had it taken down, a student said ‘You look like you can handle cock really well’,” she said.

“That’s a standard public school experience … And it’s not just boys. Girls too are hyper-­sexualised, (and) extremely dis­respectful.”

She said the “worst one” was when an 18 year-old male student said “he wanted to make a rape dungeon for me, to eat me out for breakfast, to tie me up. At the time I was so shocked, I froze. And so I didn’t report it until I went home and I got extreme anxiety coming back to work the next day. I was asked Are you sure that’s what you heard? … Students are protected quite a lot.”

She said it was a common refrain for teachers at her school to say “another day of being paid to be abused”.

Another female teacher resigned from a school in a dis­advantaged suburban area in Queensland after she was groped and grabbed from behind by a male student, who became “fixated on her”. She asked the administration to move him to another class but was told it wasn’t possible, and that she should try not to dress too young.

Female teachers spoke to The Australian about their experiences of sexual harassment.

“I bought loose fitting pants and loose fitting tops, but it did not help, I was still targeted. It got to a point where it was triggering poor mental health, bad sleep, I started to feel really hopeless.”

The next year, a 12-year-old student touched her breasts. “It didn’t feel like it would get better, so I needed to move (schools).”

She said she had seen these sexualised behaviours only in the last three years of her career, including that “students with very graphic, explicit sexual knowledge are getting younger and younger”.

“Teachers are leaving in droves. It’s not just sexualised behaviour but generally abusive behaviours.”

“They’re not getting that from their parents, but there’s less and less supervision in the home; they’re engaging with social media but not having as many conversations with parents.”

A teacher based in regional NSW said sexualised comments could be “anything from your appearance, to ‘you’re asking for it’ type sexist comments … or if you’re in a mood, they’ll say ‘is it that time of month again?’”

“Currently, in our year 5 cohort, there’s inappropriate behaviour we’re trying to shut down, such as sexual moaning during class … And inappropriate touching of themselves. It’s not going to change unless parents are aware of it.”

Stephanie Wescott.

She said post-Covid there was a shift to more violent behaviour, which had then progressed to more sexualised behaviours.

“We are letting down that generation and I do feel like no one is brave enough to say it is the parents fault.

“Kids are ... at home for an hour-and-a-half on their own and searching for some sort of belonging or identity (on their phones), getting influenced by the wrong people. Their belief systems are morbid and empathy going out the window,” she said.

A teacher at a Victorian private school said she noticed sexual moaning and comments had begun earlier, at 11 or 12 years-old.

“We are a really good school, a private school, and I think these behaviours have increased.”

Ms Reist said teachers often did not feel safe to disclose what had happened, and were told that “boys will be boys” and to just ignore it.

“There’s no clear policies and procedures for them to follow … I rarely come across a school that has a sexual harassment policy for peer-to-peer or peer-to-teacher. It needs to happen at a systemic level.”

Monash University education researcher Stephanie Wescott, who interviewed 30 female teachers across public and private schools, said harassment and sexism by boys was only getting worse, which she attributed to the online “manosphere” and instructional videos on how to perceive girls. “It’s just more pervasive, much more of an everyday occurrence than an exceptional experience,’’ she said.