Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s wife Louise Clegg has lashed private school parents for letting underage teenagers get “stumbling drunk” at parties and then blaming wealthy schools for a “toxic” rape culture.
The former barrister has penned an opinion piece criticising “anonymous” parents at Scots College in Sydney who are calling for the headmaster’s job over rape allegations, suggesting some of the parents should look closer to home.
The arrests of boys from two separate Sydney private schools on sexual assault charges have sparked a nationwide debate about boys-only schools.
On August 13, three students from Scots College in Sydney’s east, which charges up to $47,000 a year in school fees, were charged over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl.
A week later, two 17-year-olds from St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown, in Sydney’s southwest, were among three teens charged with the rape of a 17-year-old girl.
The Sydney Morning Herald has subsequently run a series of stories quoting “anonymous” school parents suggesting the culture at Scots College was “toxic”.
In an opinion piece for the same newspaper, Ms Clegg said that while the allegations were a matter for the courts, broader questions about parental responsibility and school culture could not be ignored.
“Perhaps there is a boys’ culture problem here. But before commissioning another consent seminar for 13-year-olds, might we look at the behaviour and culture being displayed by the anonymous parents?.”
Ms Clegg, a mother of four adult children, said she had experienced eastern suburbs private school culture first-hand.
“We have been here before,” Ms Clegg wrote in her piece. “When Chanel Contos’ campaign exploded across Sydney’s private schools in 2021, the accounts of teenage sexual behaviour deserved to be taken seriously,’’ she said.
“A legitimate question arose: what had schools failed to teach? Principals met, curriculums were examined and consent education was expanded.
“Yet I remember being struck at the time by another aspect of eastern suburbs adolescent culture, which I knew first-hand.
“I knew parents who dropped young teenage daughters at parties with bottles of gin tucked beneath coats.
“They knew their children were drinking illegally and excessively. They collected them in the early hours, stumbling drunk onto the footpath, and they would recount the exploits with amusement and a vicarious pleasure in their children’s participation in the ‘right’ social scene.
“God knows what went on inside those homes, in unattended bedrooms.”
Ms Clegg stressed she was not suggesting that the women were in any way to blame for being sexually assaulted. Nor was Clegg’s column about Contos in any way, as she acknowledged her campaign raised “legitimate” questions about behaviour amongst teens.
“Nothing about being drunk diminishes a girl’s right not to be sexually assaulted. But this does raise an obvious question for adults,’’ she wrote.
“If parents permit teenagers to drink themselves senseless on weekends at unsupervised parties, why should foreseeable consequences be diagnosed as a failure of school culture?
Ms Clegg noted that Scots College’s correspondence with parents explained that the alleged incident occurred away from school and outside school hours.
The college said it had no first-hand knowledge of what occurred and would not prejudice the legal process or disclose individual arrangements concerning the children.
Consent and respectful relationships have been taught from kindergarten through senior school for at least 15 years.
“ … a school is not a parent. And criminal charges against three young teens is not evidence of failure by a school,” she wrote.
She suggested that parents who did not like the private school culture could vote with their feet.
“Some of the anonymous parental commentary is bewildering. For the father who complained the accused boys should be expelled apparently the solution is to punish three children before their guilt has been determined,’’ she said.
“Another declared: ‘It’s just not the culture I want my son in’.
“There is an obvious solution for these parents … if you believe your son’s school has a toxic culture, then take your son out.
“None of this tells us what happened or about the four families involved – about whom we should have the decency not to speculate,’’ she said.
“Good parents can have children who make terrible choices and children themselves do have moral agency.
“The childish response by some adults to these serious and unhappy allegations is another reminder that civil society depends upon culture and habits that neither the law nor institutions such as schools can compel.”