Teaching children about consent is critical: expert
Posted June 12, 2016 11:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Parents outraged over the case of a Stanford University student who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster may want to look at what they’re teaching their children about consent.
Lindsay Reid with Safeteen.ca speaks with boys in schools and his message is if you can’t ask when it comes to sex, the answer is always “no.”
If parents don’t bring it up, kids are left trusting friends, TV and the Internet for information on what consent means says Reid. He believes there is a real lack of information out there for them on this topic. “A lot of the boys in the class had admitted they had definitely committed some sort of sexual assault not even knowing it.”
He says one of the more shocking examples he’s heard of how kids get things wrong came from a boy in a Grade 5 class who was picking up ideas about consent from the video game Grand Theft Auto. “What they learned was that they could have sex with a prostitute and then kill her to get their money back and the classroom laughed and roughed and high fived him so he is being praised for this conversation in this moment.”
Reid adds parents would be surprised by the level of sexual knowledge their kids have thanks to the Internet.
