Parents allowing drunken teen parties enable sexual assaults, principals warn

“As a parent myself, I am well aware of the ‘everyone else is allowed to’ argument; yet I cannot stress strongly enough that parents have the right and responsibility to decide when, where, with whom and for how long, their children will be out socialising.”

A letter from St Vincent’s College, the Potts Point girls school, also told parents it was important they knew where their daughter was, who she was with, picked her up at the end of the night, and did not allow alcohol at parties they hosted. “Don’t believe that all teenage sleepovers are like the “movie and popcorn” myths that abound,” the letter said.

“Don’t believe that all teenage sleepovers are like the ‘movie and popcorn’ myths that abound.”

St Vincent’s School letter to parents

Ms Contos has criticised what she described as “victim blaming” sentiments in some messages from principals, and urged them to focus on the core issue of sexual assault. “We live in a society where rape [is] normalised,” she said.

Paul Dillon, the director of Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, or DARTA, has been reluctant to be involved in the debate since news of the petition broke a fortnight ago because he feared conflating the issue of alcohol with that of consent.

“The actual crime here is consent,” he said. However, while general knowledge and understanding of consent was slowly increasing and schools were trying to address it, drinking “muddies the waters”.

“We take two steps ahead with understanding of what consent is, you throw in alcohol and it pulls it back again,” he said.

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Mr Dillon said teaching consent at school would not drive change without reinforcement of those messages at home. “Schools can teach everything positive about respectful relationships, but if [students] go home and do not receive the same information … we are never going to see the cultural change we need,” he said.

Dannielle Miller, from Enlighten Education, which provides workshops on resilience and self-worth for girls in schools, said society should not limit women’s freedoms in response to sexual assaults, but parents should also be aware that alcohol and impulsive teens could be a dangerous combination.

“Not just because of the risk of sexual assault, but because there may be fights, accidents or injuries,” she said. “It is more than reasonable to challenge adults to ensure that if they are going to host events for teens, they provide safe, respectful environments. We all have a role to play in keeping our teens safe.”

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Melinda Tankard-Reist, who speaks to school students about sexuality and porn, said the schools made “a fair point” about unsupervised parties and alcohol. “There’s a lot of intersecting factors,” she said. “It needs a whole of community approach. Everyone needs to be involved in helping to prevent the sexual assaults of girls on a huge scale.”

National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line: 1800 737 732.