School officials have learned that Grade 11 and 12 boys in Surrey, B.C. have been competing to see how many Grade 8 girls they can have sex with before graduating.
It's called The Little Girl Slayers Club, said Anita Roberts, founder of SafeTeen, a violence prevention group for youths that was called in to talk to the 150 Grade 8 girls who attend Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School in Cloverdale, B.C.
School official got wind of the LGS Club after some students complained and a staff member found evidence of it on Facebook, said Doug Strachan, manager of communications with the Surrey School Board.
The School Board called the RCMP to investigate and talk to the school's Grade 11 and 12 boys about about the repercussions of their actions, “not only from a health perspective but from a legal one,” said Stachan.
SafeTeen was called in to talk to the girls.
“All the girls knew about it,” said Roberts. “They were more angry than scared.”
That's a good thing, said Roberts, because girls are usually socialized not to get angry, but “anger is the emotion that tells them they have been violated.”
The key is to arm girls with the skills to channel that anger in an assertive, powerful, and non-violent way ‹ which is what SafeTeen aims to do.
“They are hungry for this information,” she said. “You have no idea. ...
I've been on this planet for a long time. Older boys seducing younger girls has been going on forever.”
Strachan said as far as he knows, the contest was limited to a few boys. He said RCMP are investigating how much of it was “male bravado” and how much of it was “real activity.” Police could not be reached as of press time.
“Some of these boys, if not most, have sisters in school, so they take a dim view of that,” he said.
Roberts agrees there were likely only a few culprits but said the SafeTeen workshops did come across a few targets of the contest.
“I do believe it was a small group of boys and it gets really blown up on Facebook,” she said. “But these boys begin their seduction of Grade 8 girls online.”
She said the girls feel more comfortable flirting in an online setting, and they find themselves making sexual commitments they don't feel they can back out of.
The contest exploits the fact that young women are taught that they must compete for male attention, she said.
“If you're not hot, you don't exist. If you're not skinny and pretty, you don't exist.”
Roberts is happy with the school board's response to the contest.
“They were very proactive,” she said. “I would like to see all schools be as proactive as they were.”
“This is a community issue,” said Strachan. “But the school board sees its roll in addressing it.”
Grade 8 students are usually 13 and 14 years old, while Grade 11 and 12 students tend to range from 16 to 18.
In Canada, the legal age of consent is 16, with a close-in-age exception that allows 14- and 15-year-olds to consent to sexual activity with people up to five years older.
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