By Joanna Panagopoulos - May 28, 2025
Young teachers are demanding action from parents and schools, as they confront what they believe are the effects of online misogyny, violent pornography, diminished expectations from schools about behaviour, and a lack of parental supervision.
Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist said “more and more” female teachers, particularly young graduates, were leaving the profession from instances of sexual harassment and “how they’re treated by male students”.
“The kids are porn sick,” [a] regional Queensland public school teacher said, adding that teenagers had watched porn at the back of her classroom or air-dropped explicit content to her computer while she was teaching.
“I’ve had a student walk up to me and literally say to my face that he wants to f..k me. He was 14 years-old … I’ve had my bottom pinched by a student in class, in front of others, and then he basically said he didn’t do it. I’ve had a penis drawn on a light, and when I had it taken down, a student said ‘You look like you can handle cock really well’,” she said.
“That’s a standard public school experience … And it’s not just boys. Girls too are hyper-sexualised, (and) extremely disrespectful.”
She said the “worst one” was when an 18 year-old male student said “he wanted to make a rape dungeon for me, to eat me out for breakfast, to tie me up. At the time I was so shocked, I froze. And so I didn’t report it until I went home and I got extreme anxiety coming back to work the next day. I was asked Are you sure that’s what you heard? … Students are protected quite a lot.”
She said it was a common refrain for teachers at her school to say “another day of being paid to be abused”.
Ms Reist said teachers often did not feel safe to disclose what had happened, and were told that “boys will be boys” and to just ignore it.
“There’s no clear policies and procedures for them to follow … I rarely come across a school that has a sexual harassment policy for peer-to-peer or peer-to-teacher. It needs to happen at a systemic level.”
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See also
Sexual Harassment of Teachers Report - Collective Shout with Maggie Dent
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