Teesside domestic abuse charity educates primary school kids on sexual violence
It's sexual abuse and violence awareness week
A Teesside domestic abuse support charity say they're going into primary schools to educate children on sexual harassment and violence.
EVA Women's Aid in Redcar are hoping to encourage broader dialogue, challenge societal norms and misconceptions from a young age.
Sarah Charlton, programmes facilitator, said: "We know that there's a lot of sexual violence and sexual abuse in a lot of the women's histories as their stories unfold. We find out that for a large majority of the women we work with there's been some form of sexual violence and/or child sexual abuse in the past.
"Sexual violence means voyeurism, sharing of images, taking images without women realising, recording them, spiking is a form of sexual violence. There's lots of different types of sexual violence. Basically, it's being coerced or controlled without your consent. Consent is the key thing. If you haven't given your consent then it's just not OK.
"People have quite pre-conceived ideas that sexual violence is either rape or sexual assault and it involves violence and force. The same with sexual harassment, people think it's much more in your face than what it actually is when it can be very subtle really the behaviours that make up sexual violence.
"We've received funding to go into primary schools about healthy and safe relationships really. We cover quite a bit around sexual harassment, sexual violence and misogyny with our secondary school programme, but it's really good to start getting into the primary shcool-aged group really as the sooner we can start talking to young people the better.
"We have safe housing if somebody needs to escape. We then offer an Independent Domestic Violence Advocate service who are usually the first person that somebody would speak to, we offer advice on benefits or even where you can get your dog fostered because we know for a lot of people, leaving the family pet behind is a massive barrier to leaving the family home and then we have a counselling service as well."