Leading child safeguarding expert Maha Melhem joins MTR in staff professional development in 2024
For many years in my engagements in schools around the country, I have been privy to the accounts of vast numbers of girls who have shared with me their experience of routine sexual harassment by male peers.
These stories – relayed by girls from primary school to end of secondary – have become increasingly more concerning. They include accounts of touching, groping, being sent unsolicited dick pics, rape threats if they don’t share nudes, being subjected to sexist taunts, body judgement and daily experience of sexual moaning, groaning and sexual gestures.
It is clear that much of this behaviour is an out-working of mass exposure to pornography, along with a normalisation of sexist, racist and violent behaviour across social media and gaming platforms and the malign socialisation of ‘manosphere’ influencers such as Andrew Tate.
The rise of adolescent-on-adolescent sexual abuse and the role of pornography as a contributor to attitudes which lead to abusive behaviour, is acknowledged in Australia by Our Watch and in the National Plan to Address Violence Against Women.
The global research also acknowledges violent pornography as a factor, most recently in an analysis by leading Australian researchers in the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect which found “By far the most common child sexual abuse perpetrator in Australia is another under-18 known to the victim.” (See MTR Twitter thread summary).
Schools have a duty of care to keep students safe and to abide by legal and moral obligations to ensure an educational environment free from sexual harassment and violence. Schools are struggling to meet these obligations, and may become legally liable when students experience harm in school settings.
I have been increasingly asked to assist educators to develop their response, to prevent and ameliorate inappropriate behaviours and to assist students harmed by these behaviours.
To meet this need and fill a significant gap in the education space, I am delighted to announce that lawyer and child safeguarding expert Maha Melhem will join me in high level staff professional development sessions this year.
Maha’s insights from extensive professional experience will help our clients improve responses to harmful sexual behaviour and promote the safety of students in school settings.
Maha Melhem
Bio
Maha Melhem is a lawyer and child safeguarding expert whose advice and reform work has been relied upon by independent regulators, national inquiry and reform bodies, schools and other child and youth-serving organisations.
Maha is the Director and Principal Lawyer of Melhem Legal & Consulting. She established this practice following her work with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Se*ual Abuse, where she led development of some of the Royal Commission’s key recommendations for law and policy reforms across Australia.
She previously led reform work as Director of Policy and Legal for the NSW Children’s Guardian; she was a senior lawyer with the Australian Law Reform Commission on the national Family Violence Inquiry and sole in-house legal adviser for the NSW Commission for Children and Young People.
What we offer:
- A description and critique of the problem drawing from global research and first-person accounts of young people
- An overview of key legal obligations to respond to risks and incidents of harmful sexual behaviours in schools
- Insights for policy and practice – protecting students from harmful sexual behaviour.
If you’d like to know more please contact me at melinda@tankardreist.com.
See also: ‘Porn’s grooming starts young’, Melinda Tankard Reist, Eureka Street essay.
Daryl Higgins, Gabrielle Hunt, The Conversation, January 31, 2024