'Period spot checks underreported'

 

Senior Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin asking students about alleged period spot checks at a school in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur, in October. FILE PIC

KUALA LUMPUR: A report on sexual violations involving students found that period spot checks  are the most underreported form of abuse in schools.

The report found that 75 per cent of period spot checks were ordered or led by female teachers and school administrators.

In one case, a student and her female friends had to strip in front of seven female teachers and show their sanitary pads as proof of menstruation.

Another student said a male teacher frequently entered her class to make jokes about female genitals after her classmates were subjected to a period spot check.

School administrators and teachers also allegedly warned the students "not to make a big deal" about the incidents.

The 64-page report, produced by the All Women's Action Society (Awam) with the Save the Schools MY (STS) movement, compiled 770 testimonies from former and current students.

From the testimonies, 1,495 sexual violations were identified and 279 incidents involved multiple violations.

Sexual harassment accounted for 75 per cent of the cases (1,046), followed by bullying (299), period spot checks (74) and other violations, such as child grooming and stalking (76).

Almost 200 students who shared their testimonies are still minors up to 2021.

Female students, the report found, encountered sexual harassments almost 17 times more than male students.

Most of the  harassment occurred in secondary schools and at least 76.7 per cent of these cases involved children.

The survey found that 41.1 per cent of perpetrators of sexual harassment were teachers or school administrators, with 87.1 per cent being males.

Some survivors started to skip school or quit schooling after the incidents while others experienced anxiety and depression.

Puteri Nuraaina Balqis

The episodes resulted in distrust of males and affected their beliefs about relationships.

Perpetrators in more than half the 237 sexual harassments cases formally reported got off scot-free, while other survivors either had their reports trivialised (36.1 per cent) or faced victim-blaming (13.6 per cent). 

Female students experienced 10 times more bullying violations than male students, the report found.

Besides sexual harassment, period spot checks and bullying, the 770 testimonies also included alleged rapes, child grooming and stalking.

One survivor, for instance, was intimidated into performing oral sex on a male friend, who threatened to commit suicide if she refused to do so. Another survivor was raped when she was 8.

Awam urged the Education Ministry to act on the "grim and heart-rending" findings of the survey by implementing long-term solutions.

These solutions, it said, included gender awareness and sensitisation training for school administrators as well as incorporating modules on gender awareness and sensitivity in teacher training colleges.

"The ministry should update its 2011 guidelines on management of sexual harassment cases and monitor implementation in schools.

"It must provide clearer directives on reporting mechanisms, actions taken against perpetrators, and survivor redress for the period spot check circular that was issued recently."

STS founder Puteri Nuraaina Balqis said the fight to make schools safer would continue until game-changing policies, shifts in mindset and executable mechanisms were in place to curb sexual violations against students. 

Puteri said: "One case is already dreadful, let alone 1,495 violations. There could be many more victims who are silently struggling with the trauma." - NST