St. Paul’s developing sex-ed action plan in wake of student-misconduct revelations By: Maggie Macintosh Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2020

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St. Paul’s High School is overhauling how it teaches sexual education amid accusations the private all-boys school has done little in the past to address students’ severe misogynistic misconduct and implement cultural change.

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President Kevin Booth confirmed this week the prestigious Catholic Jesuit school has started developing an “action plan” to address how topics such as consent are discussed on the Winnipeg campus.

“We recognize that sex education across Manitoba needs reform — we are not going to wait for that reform. St. Paul’s High School is committed to transformative change in our school’s approach to sex education,” Booth wrote in a lengthy email Tuesday. He declined several interview requests.

“As a Catholic Jesuit School, we are looking at sexual education holistically and at how better to incorporate topics of consent, rights and harm reduction, abuse, healthy relationships and communication in a greater capacity to augment the existing Manitoba provincial curriculum.

“Change that is truly transformative takes time — we continue to be committed to this change. It simply can’t be rushed. We are dedicated to getting this right, not just within our walls but society at large.”

The announcement comes after a Free Press report revealed St. Paul’s students collected and uploaded hundreds of private photos of young women to folders on a file-hosting service during the 2015-16 school year.

It remains unclear what consequences students involved in creating the folders on the Dropbox platform faced. After the nude photos of the underage girls were taken down, the student who allegedly orchestrated the collection continued to participate in a school sports team and later graduated.

The coach of the sports team in question declined an interview this week, directing inquiries to the president.

Booth previously said “disciplinary action” was taken and the school co-operated fully with the Winnipeg Police Service’s investigation into the matter. Police declined to provide any information, citing Youth Criminal Justice Act-related privacy concerns.

One woman, now 21, told the Free Press she was 16 when she saw the contents of the folder named after her: topless photos she had sent in confidence to a former boyfriend when she was 14.

The 21-year-old took to social media to reflect on the incident in recent weeks, joining dozens of other young women across Winnipeg who have posted about allegations of sexual assault, date-rape drugging and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.

While some of the accounts — many of which have been posted to anonymous Instagram pages — do not name the accused, others do. A handful of former St. Paul’s students are among those who have been called out by name. A now-deactivated Twitter account, @StPaulsAbusers was set up to share accusations against former students.

As the posts started to make the rounds on social media at the end of June, St. Paul’s emailed alumni to address the “troubling” online activity and offer words of sympathy to any of the people who had been hurt. Around the same time, William Caldwell, a member of the St. Paul’s Class of 2016, started an online petition to demand “answers and cultural changes” from the school.

In Booth’s Tuesday email, the president said the school is reaching out to all those who have expressed concerns to hear their stories and inform the way forward. The action plan, he added, is being created in collaboration with students, staff, faculty, coaches, counsellors and other community members, as well as the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Caldwell and Booth met Monday afternoon to discuss the recent graduate’s concerns about his limited experience with sexual education at St. Paul’s and his petition, which has gathered more than 280 signatures.

Following the meeting, Caldwell said he felt optimistic about the school’s commitment to ensuring incidents such as the 2015-16 Dropbox don’t reoccur. He said the president expressed an interest in offering robust sexual education from both male and female teacher perspectives.

“I felt someone needed to do something and, as an alumnus, I had the responsibility to not wait and hope someone else dealt with it,” Caldwell said, adding he plans to follow the school’s next steps.

The 21-year-old woman whose photos were shared without her consent said Tuesday she was “glad” to hear St. Paul’s is updating its approach to sex education.

In Manitoba, lessons about human sexuality fall under the Physical Education and Health curriculum, which last underwent a major update in 2000, before widespread social media use and texting.

A need for an update was brought to the K-12 education commission’s attention last year. The Sexuality Education Resource Centre (SERC) submitted seven curriculum-related recommendations: centring sexual education on consent, pleasure, rights and harm reduction; updating sexuality components; introducing age-appropriate sexual education before Grade 5; decolonizing curriculum; ensuring curriculum reflects sexual, gender and relationship diversity; eliminating the opt-out for sexual education; addressing gender and power in relationships; and providing culturally safe and trauma-informed training for teachers.

“Sexuality education is about peoples’ bodies and identities and relationships, which are core to how we are as people, so that education is really a right for all youth, to be able to help them make those healthy decisions,” said J Fiedler, who authored the submission.

The training institute facilitator at SERC applauded St. Paul’s for engaging its community in an action plan and suggested the school connect with SERC and other similar organizations, such as the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, to update its sexual-education lessons.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

Maggie Macintosh
Reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Winnipeg Free Press. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

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