Sexual violence in UK schools should be considered a public health crisis, a sexism expert has warned.
Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of Men Who Hate Women, also warned that deepfake porn would be the next issue that schools across the nation will have to tackle, amid the rise of AI-enabled misogyny.
She sat down with BBC journalist Samira Ahmed to discuss her latest book, The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny, at the Hay Festival in Wales on Monday, which The Independent is once again partnering with.
When asked about the rise in sexual violence in schools by an audience member, Ms Bates said: “We have a crisis in schools. It is a national emergency.
“We know that one in three teenage girls are sexually assaulted at school and we know from a BBC Freedom of Information request that 5,500 sexual offences – including 600 rapes – were reported to police in schools in the UK over three years.
“If you do the very depressing maths on that, its means exactly one rape per day during the school term being reported.”
She continued: “This is a crisis; it is a public health crisis and it needs a public health programme. There has to be statutory guidance to give schools the powers to act on that, and yet it’s something that we’re not talking about.
“But if this isn’t a national emergency – one rape per day in schools – then I don’t know what is.”
Ms Bates also warned of the role deepfake porn could soon play in abuse of girls in British schools.
She discussed a 2023 case in the Spanish town of Almendralejo, where several girls aged between 11 and 17 discovered that AI-generated images of them naked had been circulating on social media.
“In the years since, we’ve seen a significant number of these cases cropping up across schools in the UK,” Ms Bates said.
“It is the next big sexual violence issue that is going to impact schools. It’s just that we’re not really talking about it yet.”
Hay Festival, which is spread over 11 days, is set in Hay-on-Wye, the idyllic and picturesque “Town of Books”. The lineup includes Mary Trump, Michael Sheen, Jameela Jamil, and more.
The Independent has partnered with the festival once again to host a series of morning panels titled The News Review, where our journalists will explore current affairs with leading figures from politics, science, the arts and comedy every morning.
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