Scottish secondary schools risk becoming breeding grounds for "rape culture" amid high rates of sexual harassment, a report has warned.

The research argues that pupil judgements about whether problematic behaviour is acceptable or not are often nuanced and ambiguous, and highlights dangers inherent in the normalisation of "lower level" incidents such as sexual jokes. This, it suggests, sows the seeds for more serious, coercive or aberrant conduct.   

The report stresses that many study participants - who were aged between 13 and 17 - expressed uncertainty about the experience or acceptability of certain behaviours. Developing school-based strategies that deal with the issue's complexity is essential, its authors argue.

The analysis, which was led by Glasgow University’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, set out to explore the prevalence and perceptions of sexual harassment in Scottish secondary schools.

It found that, overall, a significant majority of pupils reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment at or on the way to school within the past three months. This included 65% who had experienced visual/verbal incidents (sexual jokes, for example). Thirty-four per cent had experienced a personally invasive behaviour involving contact (such as sexual touching).

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Professor Kirstin Mitchell, lead author, warned sexual harassment was “common” and often seen as “normal” among teenagers at school. She added: “Our study agrees with others in this respect, but, importantly, also highlights the uncertainties which teenagers may feel around whether many behaviours generally regarded as representing sexual harassment are acceptable or not."

The research assessed prevalence via a survey of 638 students, 119 of whom took part in 18 focus groups to explore which of ten example behaviours were perceived as harassing or unacceptable, and why.

Significantly, its data pointed to what researchers have called a “gateway effect”, with personally invasive incidents involving contact almost always reported by those who have experienced more common visual and/or verbal behaviours.

In their report, researchers state: “Experience of a range of sexual harassment behaviours in the school setting, particularly being the recipient of sexual jokes, being shown unwanted sexual material and/or hurtfully described as gay or lesbian, is common and normalised in adolescence. 

“A significant minority also experience ‘more serious’ behaviours such as sexual touching, blocking and/or being pressured to send naked or sexual pictures of themselves; harassment of this type is more likely among mid- or older adolescents and those whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual.”

Some survey participants in the study reported being unsure about whether they had experienced certain behaviours, with participants in focus groups expressing uncertainty regarding acceptability.

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Ambiguities centred on the context of how an incident happened, including the degree of pressure; persistence and physicality; the degree of familiarity between the instigator and recipient; and perception of the instigator’s intent. Researchers said young people were having to make complex judgements about factors that might make a behaviour more or less acceptable.

Study results showed rates of perpetration, particularly involving contact or personally invasive types of behaviour, were higher among boys. Rates of victimisation and perpetration also increased with age.

Highlighting the complexity of the data, the researchers' report adds: “While adolescents perceive behaviours involving coercion as unacceptable, there are ambiguities around the acceptability of many behaviours generally regarded as representing sexual harassment which require complex judgements at a developmental stage marked by identity formation, exploration and initiation of intimate relationships. 

“School-based interventions should recognise this by adopting an approach which not only aims to increase knowledge of sexual harassment, but also includes active learning, including discussions around, and challenges to, the factors underpinning young people’s decisions on whether or not behaviours are acceptable, perhaps based on some of the ideas and statements included in our data. 

“They should also aim to develop understandings of how ‘more serious’, coercive and/or aberrant behaviours increase when ‘less serious’ behaviours are perceived as normal and acceptable, so feeding into ‘rape culture’. In doing so, such interventions may expand the numbers, types and/or levels of behaviours understood as sexual harassment and disrupt its normalisation, thus impacting both attitudes and perceived peer norms.” 

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Prof Mitchell added: “These results have implications for the design of school-based sexual harassment interventions which, if effective, could generate long-lasting changes in attitudes and behaviours.”

The study figures were drawn from students in three Scottish secondary schools.

The paper, which is called Sexual Harassment in Secondary School: Prevalence and Ambiguities, has been published in PLOS ONE. It was funded by the MRC and Chief Scientist Office.