Cpt. Rishwat
T20I Captain
- Joined
- May 8, 2010
- Runs
- 44,301
Displayed in the windows of the sports hall at James Allen's Girls' School in South London is a montage of posters.
Normally, forthcoming events and activities would be publicised here.
But not today.
Instead, covering the front of the building are the testimonies — handwritten in mainly big, pink letters — of young women at the leading private school who say they are victims of 'predatory' boys at neighbouring £44,340-a-year Dulwich College.
They make for uncomfortable reading.
'I SAID NO . . . HE DIDN'T LISTEN, wrote one pupil. 'WHY DOES ALCOHOL EXCUSE HIS ACTIONS BUT CONDEMNS HERS?,' asks another.
'I HAVE BEEN TOLD I WOULD PROBABLY LIKE TO BE RAPED,' says a third.
Among the claims, including accusations of 'groping, harassing, assaulting, drugging, coercing, filming, and upskirting,' is a message for the parents of the privileged elite who attend Dulwich: 'EDUCATE YOUR SONS.'
The poster campaign at the sports hall, which is open to the public, highlights, in a very powerful way, the allegations which have engulfed the public school establishment over the past week or so.
The seemingly unstoppable flood of claims, that many of the country's most gilded educational institutions have become a 'breeding ground for sexual predators', is reminiscent of the #MeToo Movement in 2018, which led to film producer Harvey Weinstein's downfall.
Westminster, St Paul's, Eton, Latymer, Highgate and King's College, Wimbledon, have already been 'named and shamed' in thousands of anonymous online accounts.
Hardly a day seems to pass without another famous school being added to the growing list of elite educational establishments accused of presiding over what has been widely described as a 'toxic rape culture'.
And now many boys and their parents are terrified the situation is about to escalate, with news that a small number of Dulwich College boys have been reported to the police by their headmaster after individuals came forward to identify them as 'abusers'.
Some have already been disciplined, but where there is evidence of potentially criminal behaviour, they have been reported to Scotland Yard by headmaster Dr Joseph Spence who has written to parents to apologise 'to anyone who has experienced abuse or harassment perpetrated by a pupil of Dulwich College'.
Many of the horror stories posted in open letters and on specially set-up websites are from former pupils.
However, the police investigation and the poster protest at James Allen Girls' School (Jags), the oldest independent girls' school in London, bring the allegations very much into the present.
'I won't be quiet,' is the defiant message in one of the windows. Similar slogans are pinned to the school gates. Yet, it is claimed that, until now, many girls have remained silent.
Today, a former Jags pupil has waived their right to anonymity to speak to the Mail about an allegation that they were raped by a 'DC' (Dulwich College) boy three years ago when they were 17.
Izzy Myatt, 21, was 'too ashamed' to report what happened at the time, saying: 'I still feel uneasy even driving past the school.'
Another pupil, Georgina Edwards, also 21, told us how she was 14 when she was first asked for naked pictures of herself by an older boy at Dulwich and that a polling app was used to rate girls at Jags, the sister school of Dulwich, under such headings as 'f***, marry, kill'.
It is this casual, everyday misogyny which seems to have become normalised that is the most shocking aspect of the tsunami of allegations that are now emerging.
Misogyny and the treatment of girls as little more than meat was certainly a recurrent theme during our investigation into the sex culture at British schools (not just private schools but all schools) this week.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ate-school-rape-culture-wont-silent-more.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ate-school-rape-culture-wont-silent-more.html
We are talking about a school where places cost £44,000 a year for the privilege. Do they think because they are from elite families normal rules don't apply to them? Or is this perhaps more widespread than we think?