Service attributes rise from last year to greater awareness among children and increase in online targeting
The number of child sexual exploitation victims counselled by Childline has risen by 16% in a year, with perpetrators believed to be increasingly preying on targets online.
The NSPCC’s round-the-clock service delivered 4,500 counselling sessions in 2018-19 to children and young people who were coerced or forced into sexual activity, with the youngest victim aged just nine.
Birmingham school is focus of long campaign to halt LGBT equality messages being taught
A high court judge has been asked to extend an exclusion zone permanently banning activists against LGBT equality lessons from demonstrating outside a Birmingham primary school.
Protesters went head to head with a local authority during the five-day trial to stop protests outside Anderton Park primary school. The school, in the Sparkhill area of the city, has become the focus of a long campaign to halt LGBT equality messages being taught in the classroom.
“People of quality respect equality,” says Aisha, shyly sticking rainbow feathers on to the peace posters she’s just made. The teenager is one of half a dozen Muslim pupils from South and City College Birmingham attending a creative workshop promoting LGBTQ rights in the city.
They are joined by Muslim girls and women, mothers, students and refugees, who have crammed into the Ort gallery to meet and collaborate with members of the local Muslim LGBTQ community. A two-year-old careers between the tables, which are scattered with paint pens, rainbow paper and pots of glue. One mother in a niqab who homeschools her three children tells me she’s here to make sure they understand “how to respect other people who might be different”. Another, a migrant from Iraq, listens carefully to the experience of Mayzar Shirali, who runs a Persian LGBT asylum and refugee support network, and is hoping today is “an icebreaker”.
It isn’t an ‘LGBT programme’. What we have are books … with a representation of all families
I’m delighted that, in a slew of cultural projects, discussion of vulvas takes centre stage
Are vulvas having a moment? It’s a ridiculous question, I know, given that more than half of us have them. It’s like asking if bicycles are finally fashionable, or if fingernails are now a thing. But in these supposedly enlightened times, our lady-parts continue to be overlooked, misunderstood, bossed about and violated. Still, it’s been heartening of late to see vulvas (or vaginas, or fannies, or foofs – let each woman decide what she calls what’s in her pants) discussed more openly, shown off in museums and celebrated on television and in books. This isn’t about the vulva-shaped soaps and cushions flooding gift shops, or Gwyneth Paltrow and her daft vaginal eggs. I’m talking about cultural conversations and artefacts that illuminate and educate us all on matters that, by rights, should be common knowledge.
Earlier this year, Channel 4 aired 100 Vaginas, a joyful, taboo-busting documentary in which Laura Dodsworth interviewed 100 women and photographed their vulvas. The series highlighted how little the issues that have most impact on women’s lives, from sexual violence to childbirth, infertility and menopause, are openly discussed. This spring, the pop-up Vagina Museum – the first of its kind in the world – opened in Camden, north London, with the hope of breaking the stigma surrounding women’s bodies and sexuality, and has since launched a crowdfunding campaign in order to secure a permanent home.
Angela Eagle challenges those protesting against LGBT equality teaching during Commons debate
Former Labour minister Angela Eagle has insisted: “We aren’t going to get back in the closet,” as she challenged those protesting against LGBT equality teaching during a Commons debate.
Eagle, who was the first openly gay female MP when she came out in 1997, said such education is not “propagandising” or about “trying to turn people gay”, but about respecting their rights to have an “equal welcome in school” and not be bullied.
MP reported to party whip after he told Birmingham school demonstrators ‘you’re right’
The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said she had reported fellow Labour MP Roger Godsiff to the party’s chief whip over comments about LGBT teaching in schools, as other party colleagues criticised him for saying “you’re right” to protesters against such teaching at a Birmingham primary school.
“This might be the personal views of Mr Roger Godsiff but they do not represent the Labour Party & are discriminatory & irresponsible,” Rayner wrote on Twitter.
Related: ‘We can’t give in’: the Birmingham school on the frontline of anti-LGBT protests
Related: Progressive Muslims, Jews and Christians must stand together for LGBT rights | Michael Segalov
Angela Rayner calls Tory leadership candidate’s views ‘illegal, immoral and dangerous’
Labour has accused the Conservative leadership hopeful Esther McVey of being unfit to be an MP after she repeated her view that parents should be allowed to take primary-aged children out of lessons on same-sex relationships.
Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said McVey’s arguments in favour of letting parents take young children out of LGBT education were “illegal, immoral and deeply dangerous”.
Birmingham city council wins injunction to stop demonstrations and social media abuse
Demonstrators protesting against primary school children being taught that people of all genders and sexualities should be treated equally have been served with a high court injunction.
Birmingham city council made the application following several weeks of protests outside Anderton Park primary school in the city.
Related: ‘We can’t give in’: the Birmingham school on the frontline of anti-LGBT protests
Potential PM says ‘final say’ on children learning about same-sex relationships is for parents
Tory leadership hopeful Esther McVey has come under fire from within her own party after she said it should be up to parents if they want to withdraw their primary-age children from lessons on same-sex relationships.
The remarks by McVey, a former work and pensions secretary, sparked a backlash from equality campaigners and one of her own colleagues, Justine Greening, who was the first openly gay female cabinet minister.
Related: Fear of LGBT-inclusive lessons harks back to 80s, says Peter Tatchell
Introduced by the Thatcher government, Section 28 of the Local Government Act stated that a local authority shall not ‘intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.
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