NB Telegraph-Journal | Saint John
As published on page B1/B2 on March 2, 2006
Guidance counsellor says oral sex traded for such things as rides or cash to buy designer jeans
By Jeff Ducharme
Telegraph-Journal
Teenage prostitution may be grabbing headlines across the province, but the supervisor of guidance for the Saint John area says the bigger issue is female students trading oral sex for favours.
Young girls are using oral sex as a bargaining chip for a ride to the mall after school or to get enough money to buy a pair of designer jeans.
Susan Holmes has no intention of ignoring the issue. She has sent out e-mails to her 25 guidance counsellors throughout area schools in an effort to quantify the issue. The results aren't yet in, but she knows it's an issue.
"It doesn't matter about numbers," Ms. Holmes said Wednesday. "It matters about dealing with this. I know for sure that young girls are engaging in this behaviour - and boys."
"It's going on," said Ms. Holmes. "It takes quite a bit to get students to discuss this and I know it's a reality and I know it's out there.
"It's everywhere. It's in Prince Edward Island. It's in our world."
Ms. Holmes said the topic is avoided because it's a painful one.
"It is a hollowness in the young girls' spirit when they get involved this
way with their bodies," Ms. Holmes said.
She said it also leads to cutting behaviour - self-mutilation.
"When you are unhappy or hollow or displeased with some of the things you are participating in, sometimes the only way to express that negatively towards yourself is by what I think society would look at as an extreme and pathetic cry and it leaves our girls with scars in some cases."
Julie Dingwell of AIDS Saint John said she's heard the stories and it's a reality the community has to deal with.
"I think that whole exchange of oral sex for a favour happens among their peers in the high school," said Ms. Dingwell.
Getting the young girls to talk and attaching a number to the problem is the challenge.
"I don't think there's a young girl alive who's going to say 'I'm trading oral sex for an exam or something or an essay.' "
There's a fine line between panic and addressing such issues, Ms. Dingwell maintains.
"If we're too quick to pronounce a judgment, we often prevent people from talking to us."
But Kelly Steeves of Moncton's PEERS (Prostitutes Empowerment Education Resource Society), takes the opposite approach.
"Because people are becoming aware of it, we have to pull our heads out of the sand," said Ms. Steeves. "I think we should panic, parents should panic."
District 6 superintendent Zoe Watson hasn't heard of sex being traded for favours by any of her students in the Rothesay to Sussex area. But she does know that students are involved in sexual behaviour that some parents would rather not hear about.
"From talking to teachers and talking to people that work in the sexual health centres, they were saying that our students are involved in oral sex and that many of these girls don't see this as having sex," said Mrs. Watson.
An Ipsos-Read survey for the Canadian Association for Adolescent Health found that one in four students believed that oral sex is a form of abstinence. The survey is based on online responses from 1,171 interviews with teens aged 14 to 17.
Ms. Holmes says it's a discussion that occurs at the peer level rather than making it to the ears of a guidance councilor or parent.
"Unfortunately that's where the biggest problem lies in that our children are talking to other children and they're not bringing adults into the loop," said Ms. Holmes.
Eventually, says Ms. Holmes, she intends to meet with young women at various schools and orchestrate an open discussion on the topic.
"I don't think it's a wake-up call for parents, I think it's a wake-up call for the community "... We all need to wrap around our kids."
