A group of students and parents took part in a press conference and a demonstration outside of Massey-Vanier High School-English (MVHS) on the afternoon of March 20. The demonstration was meant to shine light on claims of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and bullying that students have reportedly experienced at the school.
After hearing about these claims, Anastasia Spanos, a parent of MVHS students and an advocate for the students that have made said complaints, organized the demonstration alongside a collective called “La voix des jeunes compte.”
Directly addressing MVHS and the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) at the press conference, Spanos expressed that students and parents feel that the school and the school board are not doing enough to protect its students and that they are not taking the claims seriously.
According to Michael Murray, chairman of the ETSB, the school board is taking the complaints seriously and the Sûreté de Québec (SQ) launched an investigation into the complaints over a week ago. The ETSB was asked not to get involved until the investigation is complete.
“We organized our press conference and the protest in order for us to speak out as parents, as students, that our voices are not being heard. This has been going on for a year and a half and it’s been over a week now that I just got the news that this is going on in our schools,” explained Spanos. “I was oblivious that this was going on in schools. I know it happened in the past for me when I was a teen, but never to this extent.”
Spanos noted that she is not a parent of a victim, but that it was time for someone to step up.
“There’s been reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, bullying, and it has not been taken care of. Like I say in my speech, it is just being transferred from one place to another. Nothing is being done, the girls don’t feel safe. I don’t know what else I can do for them to help other than to speak for them and the rest of the parents that don’t have their voices heard,” she said.
Spanos described the situation at MVHS as a “global problem” and that it’s not just something that is happening within one particular school.
Following the demonstration at MVHS, the situation was brought to the attention of Minister of Education Bernard Drainville. In a meeting with the National Assembly of Quebec on March 21, he acknowledged that allegations of sexual misconduct have been on the rise in elementary and high schools across the province. As a result, he announced the launch of an investigation into sexual misconduct in schools in Quebec.
“I’m happy that the Minister of Education is doing the investigation, but what we want is that it’s done from an independent company or however it works because of the fact that you can’t investigate on yourself. We need to have someone that is neutral, no ties to anything, to do the proper investigation from top to bottom and bottom to top,” emphasized Spanos. “This is a bigger problem than what we think.”
According to Spanos, another concerning factor for the students and parents is that MVHS is the only English high school in Brome-Missisquoi and its surrounding communities. She expressed that parents shouldn’t have to move in order to send their child to another school because they don’t feel safe.
“Schools are a safe place, a second home to our children. It’s going away from home to go to another place they call home. If they’re not feeling safe in their schools, why transfer one thing to another instead of taking care of the problem right away?,” she said.
Spanos mentioned that she helped the students concerned with filing their police reports, but she doesn’t think the students would have taken that step if they did not openly speak with her.
“A lot of police reports wouldn’t have been done when they were done because of the fact that they are tired of repeating themselves over something that nobody is listening to, and that’s the sad part,” she highlighted.
Moving forward, Spanos hopes to see strict policies and protocols around sexual misconduct and inappropriate behaviour in ETSB schools to help ensure the safety of all students.
“To have the staff trained to deal with this stuff, to contact the appropriate authorities when it’s necessary, and communication with the parents is the number one key, when something happens to communicate with the parents right away and not find out down the grapevine (…),” she explained. “To have an advocate for the girls that could be there to speak with them because I don’t find it fair that the school speaks to each student individually or puts them in the same room, but no parent is there to advocate for their child.”
According to Murray, the ETSB has a protocol set in place if a student makes a complaint. As a part of its “general philosophical approach to keeping kids safe and also productive, happy, and comfortable at school,” the ETSB has an “attachment theory.” The attachment theory involves students finding one adult in the school that they can trust.
“All it takes for a student that is feeling uncomfortable in any way or that there are inappropriate things happening either to themselves or others, all they need to do is approach any adult in the school and that’s what begins the process of addressing that student’s discomfort or that student’s complaint,” Murray explained.
Murray said that it has been publicized that the ETSB is not listening, but he iterated that the school board is “extremely sensitive to how students feel” and that the board goes out of its way “to make it easy for students to express that they have some kind of discomfort or bad feeling about what’s happening.”
“Once a student has spoken to an adult, (…) that is relayed to the student services team. At that point there’s no filter, there’s no judgment exercise by the adult to say that this is or isn’t a thing to report. (…) We have an entire team that follows up, that attempts to establish with the student complaining, in the most comfortable and discreet way possible, what is their perception of their and problem and how we can alleviate that,” he said. “If there’s an accusation against another student, then there’s certainly contact with that student to determine whether in fact the student acknowledges that behaviour was inappropriate or not.”
The ETSB tries to investigate the complaints and resolve them within the school, with the help of the student’s family, and they try to ensure that every complaint is taken seriously, mentioned Murray.
“Talking to the families is an essential part of this process. Sometimes we have difficulties because the family isn’t comfortable talking to us. (…) If we run into difficulties that go beyond the scope of our internal investigation we have all kinds of outside resources,” he noted. “Our first call outside of the school would go to the board team. If they still lack resources it would go to Youth Protection (…) and if it’s something more along the criminal nature, then we immediately alert the police.”
Murray confirmed with CIDI that the SQ has launched an official investigation into the recent claims.
“The police have not publicly confirmed, but I can confirm that they told us that they have opened a file and are conducting an investigation of the incidents that have been alleged by the students in question. Part of the protocol that the police have is to instantly request us, when they open a file like this, to not comment on the specifics of the situation, do not do anything or say anything that can expose the identity of any of the students involved,” he said.
Murray urged parents and students that feel uncomfortable to speak to any adult within their school to "launch the process."
“It’s really frustrating to be told that whatever incident that has been going on for days, weeks, or months, but we have not heard of it. We have not had any student come forward or any of the adults to say that this is a source of unhappiness or discomfort to me. Once we have that, we can get into action. But if we don’t know about it, we’re still in the dark,” he told CIDI.
For the full story listen to the interview below: