Young people encouraged to report sex assaults

Counsellors at the ChildLine base in Manchester are encouraging more young people to speak out about sex assaults, as new research from the NSPCC shows that thousands of teenage girls across the UK who are sexually assaulted by boys suffer in silence.

Research undertaken by the NSPCC with young adults shows as many as 280,000 young girls in the UK could be affected at some point if the figures were extrapolated out.

Adolescents are responsible for around a third of all sex offences committed against children and in three out of four of these cases the victim will know the offender. However, teenage girls will often accept the abuse as part of a relationship or don’t know how to stop it.

While the majority (66 per cent) of those abused by an adult report what’s happened, fewer than one in five tell anyone if the offender is a young person, according to the charity which runs the UK-wide ChildLine Service.

From 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011 the Manchester ChildLine base carried out 1,415 counselling interactions with the primary concern of ‘Sexual Abuse’. The perpetrator was disclosed in 88 per cent of these counselling interactions. Only 6 per cent of the young people who contacted counsellors at the ChildLine’s base in Manchester said they had been abused by another young person.

Jon Brown, Head of the NSPCC’s Head of Strategy and Development for Sexual Abuse programme said: “Many girls are being forced to carry out sexual acts and in some cases are even being raped. We’re not talking about ‘horse play’ or teenagers experimenting, this is often serious abuse.

“But unfortunately many of the girls don’t see it that way. They think it’s just part of a relationship they have with a boy or may be too embarrassed or frightened to tell anyone about it. When an adult sexually abuses a young person there is a greater chance it will be reported to someone – police, a parent or a teacher. But when a teenage boy is responsible it seems to slip into another category where the same alarm bells don’t ring with the victim.

“The boys who do this must learn this behaviour is not acceptable under any circumstances otherwise they will think they have a free rein to continue mistreating girls in this way. And the girls may need counselling or therapy because this kind of abuse can cause both physical and psychological harm. There is an awful lot of pressure on them, particularly in an increasingly sexualised world where boys can easily access pornography and get completely the wrong idea of what a relationship is all about. So advice and education are paramount.”

The risk of a girl being sexually assaulted rises dramatically from early teenage years with the majority of assaults being committed against 12-17-year-olds.

In an effort to reduce incidents of teenage sexual abuse the NSPCC is calling for:

Education programmes to promote consenting, respectful relationships and dispel the perception girls are just sex objects.
Young people to seek help, through ChildLine, teachers or parents if they are being forced, pressured or coerced into carrying out sex acts.

Sue Minto, Head of ChildLine, said: “It’s vitally important that young girls get help and support if they find themselves in a situation where they are being coerced into having sex. Frequently they will feel this is just part of growing up and won’t recognise that it’s wrong. Fewer than 6% of the 1415 contacts we had at the Manchester base last year about sexual abuse were from children saying they had been assaulted by another young person, so this seems to bear that out. Sometimes the abuse will happen in an intimate relationship or it may be a friend of a friend or someone on the edge of their social circle. But whoever it is we would want to encourage anyone effected to talk to someone about it, or contact us confidentially by phone on 0800 11 11 or online: www.childline.org.uk/teenpressure.”