\n<\/p>\n
Teachers and parents in the UK need to be brave and discuss Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s crimes with children and young people or risk them looking for answers from dubious or dangerous sources, according to experts who will host the first public seminar for schools on the issue.<\/p>\n
Thrive, the education consultancy hosting the online seminar on the convicted child sex offender, said: \u201cMany children and young people are encountering this material often without context, warnings or adult support, leaving educators to manage the emotional and safeguarding impact in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adele Gladman, a specialist in child sexual exploitation who will take part in the event, said she was not surprised that children as young as six had been asking about Epstein, given the sustained media coverage and huge public interest.<\/p>\n
Gladman said schools and parents needed to get ahead of the curve and prepare to answer questions about Epstein and his involvement with figures such as Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor that would inevitably come from young people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing is to be brave, because these are difficult conversations to have but they are also important conversations to have. And make no mistake about it, if you don\u2019t have the conversation, those children will seek information elsewhere, and it\u2019s the elsewhere that isn\u2019t healthy and presents a risk,\u201d Gladman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf children aren\u2019t given the opportunity to talk to trusted adults about it then they are going to go online, they are going to go into forums, they are going to talk to chatbots, and that\u2019s where the risk lies because that\u2019s where the misinformation and disinformation is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viv Trask-Hall, Thrive\u2019s head of theory and practice and one of the speakers, said more than 2,000 educators had already signed up to the webinar on Wednesday, an indication of strong interest from professionals in the sector.<\/p>\n
Trask-Hall said the decision to hold the webinar came after hearing about questions and comments coming from pupils, and the difficulties of responding given Epstein\u2019s horrific crimes as a sex offender and exploiter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are reaching out to an adult or a professional, they obviously trust the adult, so we need to give them a suitable answer,\u201d Trask-Hall said. \u201cYou might think that young people will only hear about Epstein if they go out and look for it, but sometimes it is being served up by the algorithm connected to whichever social media they are using.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what we are finding, that it comes from lots of the social media content that the algorithms are sending to children and young people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gladman, who was one of the first to uncover child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, said the level of exploitation exposed by the Epstein files was a \u201crevelation\u201d for society.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really highlighted, I think, the need for dialogue around vulnerability, and what is it that draws young women in particular into involvement with things like this,\u201d Gladman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt comes at a time when we\u2019ve almost become desensitised to exploitation. I think some people will talk about child exploitation as only going on with gangs or happening in the past, but when you talk to young people about things like OnlyFans, it\u2019s become very normalised, that it\u2019s OK to sell nudes and images. But we still don\u2019t get what makes people vulnerable to being exploited.\u201d<\/p>\n
However schools choose to approach the subject, Gladman urged them to keep parents informed. \u201cA lot of parents and carers will be struggling with how to talk to their children about the Epstein story because it\u2019s too distressing, it\u2019s too big to comprehend. I think it\u2019s good for schools to communicate with parents and carers about what they are saying to children and how they are doing it, to reassure them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teachers and parents in the UK need to be brave and discuss Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s crimes with children and young people or risk them looking for answers from dubious or dangerous sources, according to experts who will host the first public seminar for schools on the issue. Thrive, the education consultancy hosting the online seminar on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[166,7411,7296,4157,630,588,213,436,322],"class_list":{"0":"post-45609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-crimes","10":"tag-epsteins","11":"tag-jeffrey","12":"tag-parents","13":"tag-schools","14":"tag-talk","15":"tag-teachers","16":"tag-urged"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}