Children should be taught how to keep themselves safe from sexual abuse from the age of four or five, with compulsory lessons in their first year of primary school, a shadow Home Office minister has said.

Sarah Champion, a leading campaigner against sexual exploitation in her Rotherham constituency, said teaching children how to protect themselves from predators was the most important way of preventing abuse.

The Labour MP made the proposal as she launched a new website called Dare2Care, which aims to provide advice on stopping child abuse and recognising the signs.

Champion said she wanted to persuade the government that there should be compulsory primary education about the “underwear rule”, devised by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

This tells children to remember the mnemonic “pants” in which P stands for ”privates are private”, A for “always remember your body belongs to you”, N for “no means no”, T for “talk about secrets that upset them” and S for “speak up because someone can help”.

Champion said: “With even the best legislation we put in place you cannot protect a child 24/7, whereas from a very young age, I would advocate as soon as they go to school, if you teach young children about respect and boundaries they can understand that.

“You are not teaching them about sex. It is teaching children what’s in their pants is private to them and if anyone tells you otherwise, you need to tell someone about it. If your uncle is telling you he is doing this because he loves you and it is your little secret, how are you as a six-year-old meant to know that is not appropriate behaviour?

“But if you had an example in school that what’s inside your pants is yours, you might tell your mum. It should happen in every school, as soon as you go into school.”

To those who think the start of primary school is too young, she said: “I think there have now been four chairs of parliamentary committees asking the government to make relationship education rather than just the biology of sex education statutory. The pressure is on them enormously.

“If we want to protect our children, we have to stop being embarrassed about sex and be grown up and give them the tools to counter it. Across the country now, police forces are taking their resources and prioritising investigating child abuse. The evidence is you cannot ignore this any more.”

She points to NSPCC figures that suggest 500,000 children are being physically, sexually or emotionally abused, and highlights research suggesting that one in four girls and one in eight boys have experienced inappropriate sexual advances by the time they reach adulthood.

Sex education is compulsory from the age of 11 in council-maintained schools, while academies and free schools are asked to have regard for the guidance.

Before the election, Labour called for “age-appropriate” teaching about sex and relationships to be compulsory in all state schools, but the government is not keen to change the rules.

Before children reach primary school age, Champion also wants to teach their parents to spot the signs of abuse, given that two-thirds happens within the family.



This could potentially happen as part of David Cameron’s proposed parenting classes, she said.

“Child abuse exists in the shadows so as long as we’re embarrassed that will continue. I really do believe, if we can take it out of the shadows, if we can arm the children, educate the parents, we have got a much better chance of preventing it because it is not inevitable,” she said.

Champion became a campaigner against child abuse after becoming MP for Rotherham, where gangs of men groomed and sexually exploited an estimated 1,400 children.

Simon Bailey, the lead officer on child abuse at the Association of Chief Police Officers, subsequently said more scandals like that in Rotherham were likely to emerge.