Meeting with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls 

On Monday 12th February, Tanya Carter, Safe Schools Alliance spokeswoman, attended a meeting hosted by Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls (@UNSRVAW) as part of her UK and NI visit. We joined other groups that advocate for the rights and protections of women and children. We wanted to share our concerns regarding global attacks on the rights of women and discuss how safeguarding is being eroded in UK schools and how detrimental this is, particularly to girls.

In advance of the meeting, we sent this letter:

We would like an investigation into how academic concepts such as Queer Theory have been allowed to influence education for and undermine safeguarding and girls’ ability to develop and maintain their own boundaries. 

We are enclosing an open letter which we have written to Professor Arif Ahmed, Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students. We have not had a response. We would like a response. 

We gave evidence to the Women’s and Equalities Committee on inappropriate RSE materials. We would like assurances that our concerns have been taken seriously and that girls are given accurate information on their bodies and their rights, rather than be subject to sexualised adult content that lowers their boundaries. 

Globally we are concerned about ‘comprehensive sex education’ that seems to not have a foundation of child protection and promotion of children’s welfare, this particular affects girls who are the predominant victims of sexual violence. We are enclosing our report into UNESCO and WHO. 

Pushing boundaries: ‘Sexuality education’ from UNESCO and WHO

We would like a particular focus on Wales in the UK visit. We are extremely concerned at their rollout of RSE which has undermined parental responsibility and completely broken trust between parents and teachers. We are enclosing our report on how this has been informed by Queer Theory rather than child safeguarding. 

Here is the speech reproduced in full:

My name is Tanya Carter, and I am a spokeswoman for Safe Schools Alliance.

We’re a grassroots group of parents, teachers, & other professionals upholding safeguarding in UK schools. We were launched in May 2019. I’m the mother of four grown children. I was formerly an early years educator and have over twenty years of safeguarding training.

During my role as Chair of Governors, I implemented safer recruitment including hiring for Head Teachers. Although SSA does not campaign for women’s rights, we know that children need protective adults in their lives to keep them safe from harm. We recognise the global attack on women’s rights to be part of an orchestrated campaign to undermine the effective safeguarding of children. We are increasingly alarmed at the lack of understanding of what constitutes safeguarding; the undermining of safeguarding; and the refusal to embed Safer Recruitment or the learnings from the Bichard Inquiry and Warner Report.

The infiltration of feminist organisations by those invested in gender ideology is actively harming children. Daily, we see RSE materials that have entered schools claiming to promote equality, but whose real intention is to blur boundaries between adults and children. Safeguarding is thus being attacked in a pincer movement. It is caught between the adult notion of ‘sex positivity’ and its cousin, gender ideology. Often carried out in the name of feminism, sex positivity takes the form of non-contact abuse via online grooming, exposure to hardcore porn & sites and social media sites. And there is no escape for children once in school. The evidence we have seen over the last nearly 5 years amply demonstrates that UK safeguarding frameworks are failing. If properly applied, these frameworks are robust and designed to keep dangerous ideologies and individuals out of schools.

Somewhere along the line, safeguarding has been sacrificed on the twin altars of equality laws and gender identity ideology, resulting in adults unable to identify their primary responsibility amid a forest of spurious and emotive competing claims. We must put an end to this neglect. Safeguarding training must be mandatory and apply to all those who work directly with children and those who write policies affecting children, including the authors of the UN’s own ‘sexuality education’ document, the critique of which we have forwarded you.

In 2021 we attended FILIA where we heard Vaishnavi Sundar speak about the perilous position of women and girls in India and the ever-present risk of sexual violence they face. When asked what UK women can do to assist her fight, Vaishnavi responded we should ‘Hold the line’ so that women around the world can point to us as an example. This has stuck with me. Recent ideas masquerading as pro-feminist and pro-gay rights are being used as swords with which to attack the infrastructure of women’s rights and child safeguarding. However, spurious notions of equality must not be used to undermine their foundations. It is time for adults to act responsibly by reinforcing the foundations designed to shield all children from harm.

The UK government MUST hold a public inquiry so that we can understand how, why, and when our public institutions were infiltrated and weaponised to undermine effective child safeguarding. Lessons learned then need to be widely disseminated, including globally, to inform our response to the next attack on safeguarding.

We followed up with Orlagh and Reem the next day to thank them for giving us the time and space to share our concerns.

1. Listening to the testimony of women from the MVAWG sector and the appalling abuse women in political parties have faced we were reminded of the FOVAS response to Stonewall in 2019 pointing out how damaging the Stonewall position was for women and girls, particularly for survivors of sexual violence. Many of us sent the report to our MPs, shared on our social media channels, and tried to amplify these women’s words as much as we could. We pointed out that we were seeing a serious crisis in child safeguarding and an outright attack on the rights of vulnerable women. We called for an urgent investigation into Stonewall. The report is as powerful today as it was nearly 5 years ago when it was published and the same concerns apply.
2. The CPS also came up during the meeting and so we shared information on the legal action SSA supported in 2020. A teenage girl was compelled to take action and whilst the schools’ pack was withdrawn we were very unhappy with the outcome of the case. As the CPS withdrew, the claimant lost standing and there could therefore be no further scrutiny of stonewall. We are still encountering materials from the pack circulating in schools.
3. We reiterated the call for an urgent public inquiry into the widespread undermining of safeguarding. Attempts to ‘balance’ the ‘employment rights’ of unsuitable individuals against the protection of children must be recognised as an attack on safeguarding. Findings from such an inquiry will need to be used to educate the public as well as professionals. Safeguarding must never be undermined on this scale again.

Response to Stonewall

Safeguarding must never be undermined on this scale again.

Safeguarding is not a policy, it is not a one-off police check, it is not a box to be ticked on a form. It is a culture, in which each and every adult must play their part in each and every day.

As a group of mothers, many of us to teenage girls and young women, we thank Reem Alsalam for all she is doing to protect women and girls.