The #Metoo movement is making school in Britain

In June 2020, when 22-year-old Soma Sara shared her own experience of sexual abuse on Instagram, she soon realized that she was drawing attention to “A massive problem” : “In a few days, I had already received 300 testimonies of assault and sexual harassment from relatives! “, says the young woman, just graduated in English literature from University College London (UCL).

She was far from thinking, however, that she would trigger such a tsunami: a sort of #metoo of British colleges and high schools, which puts heads of prestigious schools in trouble and forces Boris Johnson’s government to act. She now continues the interviews on Zoom at a rate of hell, Easter weekend included.

It took a terrible news item for his fight to take on an unprecedented scale. At the very beginning of March, Sarah Everard vanished into the streets of London. His body was found a week later in Kent, east of the capital. A police officer is suspected of the murder and then charged. Londoners multiply tributes to the young woman and demonstrations.

Traumatic experiences

In a few days, thousands of testimonials from college girls, high school girls, students (and a few boys) flocked to EveryOne’s Invited, the platform created in the fall of 2020 by Soma Sara. In short first-person accounts – there were 13,900 on April 5 – they tell of the daily harassment, the boys who rate the girls on their looks, photograph their underwear, the traumatic experiences of revenge porn (public dissemination, without consent, of sexual images), forced touching, barely consented sexual relations, even outright rape. Their name never appears – testimonials are systematically anonymized; on the other hand, the schools which they attended or still attend often appear.

And it’s a parade of some of the most famous establishments in the country: the Eton Boys College, where Boris Johnson, David Cameron and so many other British politicians studied, others boarding schools (boarding schools) renowned, such as Charterhouse, Harrow or Latymer Upper School … Not a day goes by without students or ex-students taking up their pen to denounce macho practices: the word is freed, denouncing the indifference of the teachers, school leaders, but also other comrades or parents who are often incredulous.

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