The allegations that a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by three boys (aged 13 and 14) from one of Sydney’s most prestigious boys’ schools, Scots College, has prompted a reckoning well beyond the eastern suburbs laneway where police allege the assault took place.
In the past few days, understandably, parents at the school have questioned Scots College’s response. The school has faced broad public scrutiny over what safeguards it put in place and how it communicated with its community. And questions have been raised widely about the prevalence of these assaults implicated with affluent, private, all-boys’ schools.
Into that debate has stepped Louise Clegg, former barrister, prominent conservative figure and, significantly, the wife of Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.
In an opinion piece published in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, Clegg criticises what she describes as the bewildering response of some Scots parents. She questions those who have called for the boys to be expelled before the allegations against them have been determined, and argues that the conversation has focused too heavily on the school while overlooking the responsibilities of parents.
Her piece staggeringly centres the issue of teenage girls supposedly being dropped at parties with bottles of gin tucked beneath their coats, with Clegg questioning what parents were thinking. And then comes the line: “God knows what went on inside those homes in unattended bedrooms.”
“Nothing about being drunk diminishes a girl’s right not to be sexually assaulted. But this does raise an obvious question for adults. If parents permit teenagers to drink themselves senseless on weekends at unsupervised parties, why should foreseeable consequences be diagnosed as a failure of school culture?” she writes.
Clegg is, of course, entitled to her own views. She has her own career, her own public voice outside of simply being someone’s wife. At the same time, her comments are hardly apolitical either. Being married to the man leading the Liberal Party, she has long been an active and influential presence in his political life.
So when she enters one of the most fraught public conversations of the moment with a casual dousing of victim blame disguised as “parental responsibility”, it’s reasonable to ask what her words tell us about the political instincts and worldview of the Coalition.
Clegg’s position isn’t problematic because of the suggestion that parents have responsibilities. Of course they do. Schools don’t replace guardians and underage drinking isn’t harmless or without risks. This goes without saying.
But there’s a very dangerous place this conversation can go when a girl is allegedly sexually assaulted and our attention starts travelling towards the bottles hidden beneath their coats, the parties they attended and what happened (naturally) in “unattended bedrooms”.
(Having gone to a public school in Canberra, I can’t claim much familiarity with bottles of gin tucked beneath expensive coats, but certainly of concealed goon bags in rapidly fraying backpacks.)
But, I digress. This is not an argument about the scourge of underage drinking, it’s an argument for remembering what drinking is not.
Clegg’s opinion, seems to wildly confuse drinking with consent; that drinking is an invitation to overexcited boys, too silly to know better.
If teenagers are drinking together, whether their parents know about it, allow it or are completely horrified by it, our first question can’t be what the girls were doing to place themselves at risk.
The question is, and always should be, what are we teaching boys? And that is exactly why the culture of Scots College matters.
The school has said it has worked to address consent, respectful relationships and healthy masculinity, while also making clear that the allegations occurred outside school hours and remain before the courts. (Ergo, it wasn’t on their watch, so why should they be blamed?)
But schools don’t stop shaping kids when the bell rings at 3pm. Particularly, eye-wateringly elite schools like Scots.
Institutions like Scots aren’t simply teaching the syllabus. They’re shaping ideas about status, success, masculinity and belonging. They produce future leaders and offer, as part of their hefty fee, a powerful sense of identity and connection.
That’s why asking questions about school culture isn’t an attempt to absolve parents, but recognising that parents and institutions are both raising these boys.
As for the parents asking difficult questions of the school and the culture it breeds, isn’t that to be expected? These boys are entitled to the presumption of innocence and due process, sure. But due process isn’t synonymous with institutional inaction.
The Sydney Swans recently stood down five players for the remainder of the season while a police investigation into sexual assault allegations continues. The players haven’t been charged and deny criminal wrongdoing. The club’s actions were about its own standards and protocols, rather than a criminal finding.
Schools have obligations in the same way to weigh the wellbeing and safety of their entire communities while legal processes unfold. That doesn’t require anyone to prejudge guilt.
Disgruntled parents aren’t declaring the boys guilty without trial, they’re asking the school what it stands for when issues like this arise and what it will do when those standards are allegedly breached. Scots’ response has so far objectively failed parents.
If our strategy for keeping girls safe depends on girls being perfectly supervised, perfectly sober and perfectly risk-aware, then we are saying that boys’ behaviour is inevitable. There’s nothing that can be done.
Perhaps the most important question for parents isn’t simply what their daughters are doing at parties. But what their sons are learning long before they get there. At home and at school.