Member's statement: Young People and Misogyny

Member's statement by Mr Jon Burrows on 26 May 2026.

MLA

Mr Jon Burrows

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

26 May 2026

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Young People and Misogyny

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5582354

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Last week, I brought to the public's attention the extraordinary number of physical assaults on our teachers and classroom assistants. There have been 2,500 assaults. What is even more shocking, however, is the sexual harassment, abuse and extreme misogyny to which some young boys are subjecting our female teachers and female pupils. Up and down the country, I have heard shocking evidence, which has been repeated at Committee and in my constituency office, of upskirting, downblousing and cyber-flashing. I have heard of young boys openly telling teachers what they would like to do to them, where, how and when, and of them standing in front of a female teacher saying, "You can't tell me what to do. Only a male teacher can". I have heard about deepfakes and extreme objectivisation. When a teacher raises the issue on behalf of a pupil or themselves, they are often made to feel as though they are the problem. The school asks, "What do you want us to do?", because, too often, their hands are tied when it comes to making decisive interventions. We need parents to get a grip on what their young people watch, because, at home, they are watching extreme porn and extremely misogynistic influencers. That is polluting their young brains. The extreme outworking of that is what we saw in England, where two 14-year-old boys raped two schoolgirls, videoed it and put it on social media. Followers called the schoolgirls "slags". What signal did the judge send? Not one single day will be spent in prison by those two boys, who were aided and abetted by a 13-year-old. What signal does that send to people about reporting that kind of extreme misogyny? We therefore have to get a grip on the issue in our society. The case has now been dealt with, so I can comment on the following aspect. The judge laboured over all the mitigating factors but not over the aggravating factors. I see that happen time and time again. I was with Women's Aid last week. The crime of non-fatal strangulation was brought in by this place to great fanfare. It seeks to put men who strangle women behind prison bars. The vast majority of men who commit non-fatal strangulation do not get a custodial sentence, yet that crime is at the far end of the homicide timeline. It is a red flag that a man will murder a woman in the community. For some reason, the human rights lobby, which has a role to play, has got us into a position in which public authorities focus on the rights of suspects and perpetrators and attach greater weight to them than they do to the rights of the victim. A recalibration is needed. We need parents to step up and make sure that their children are not watching extreme porn online. We need to support decisive interventions being made when boys treat women and girls in our schools like that. It has to end, and we need to address it.

503 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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