requent sexual harassment. In general, 85 percent of the females and 76 percent of the males had at least at some point in their school lives experienced a form of sexual harassment.
Of those students who reported being harassed, 82 percent was found to be student-to-student sexual harassment and 18 percent was adult-to-student sexual harassment. Much of this behavior was said to start in the elementary grades with about one/third of the cases occurring before seventh grade.
Often sexual harassment issues have been referred to as "the hidden hurt" because students rarely talk about it to adults (in school or home) and only occasionally discuss it with their friends. Mostly, they suffer in silence (American Association of University Women, 1993).
The impact of sexual harassment on students is significant. The quality and quantity of harassed students' schoolwork decreases, their grades decline, and absenteeism and lateness increase (Charney & Russell, 1994). There is often a tremendous loss of self-esteem and confidence when children and teenagers experience sexual harassment; further, they often live in fear (Martinez, 1998).
The pervasiveness of sexual harassment and the serious consequences and impact of sexual harassment on young people has been responded to by the educational system in a variety of ways. Responses include: (1) expanding the role of the school counselor to handle cases of peer sexual harassment (Rowell, 1996); (2) developing programs to improve harassers' interpersonal relations skills and intellectual growth (Hassenpflug, 1996) to assist parents and teachers in motivating students to report offensive behavior to an adult and to help them handle the procedures associated with filing formal complaints (Manatt, 1994); (3) providing inservice training for teachers as well as sexual harassment courses for students (Stein, 1996); (4) training peers to actually teach a sexual harassment unit (Sabel...