200 students and other teens celebrate end of school term with outdoor orgy
The Telegraph reports that 70 students from the Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, were joined by over 100 other youths to celebrate an end of term party by "having unprotected sex in a village square."
Alison Hughes, the deputy head of the Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, was so concerned that she detailed the "catalogue of disasters" in a two-page letter to parents, warning them about the sexual activity, violent behaviour and alleged drug abuse that took place.Link (Via Arbroath)She wrote: "We have had to help a disturbingly high number of girls through the aftermath of having unprotected sex that evening, most of whom have told us they were too drunk to be in control of themselves. The risks are real. Assume the worst."
Neil Taplin, the landlord of the nearby George and Dragon pub, said that youths had urinated against his wall and sworn at him when he refused to sell them cigarettes. "They were a law to themselves," he said. "It was upsetting for people in the village. We are all quite close and look out for each other."
A resident involved in the clean-up said that she saw evidence of drug use, blood stains and broken glass and said that a newly fitted sink had been smashed.
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I seldom laugh out loud at a BoingBoing post topic line. Congratulations.
was there an empty gallows and a perfumed hankerchief found at the scene?
There were not a lot of sex orgys around in my high school days.
I laughed too... but that is also very disturbing. I know that kids will be kids, but have these kids been watching girls gone wild, or something? WTF?
Mindy
Nothing new...This is how I end my day.
I think this along with the "anti-Emo pogrom" story today both sort of funny titles, but the realities are pretty upsetting.
Mindy
At least it was a healthy OUTDOOR orgy and not in some stuffy basement or something.
Every time I leave the country. This is why I need a rocket pack.
Takuan- dead on, man, I was thinking the exact same thing! Only the broken glass and bloodstains don't fit.
Now that's what I call a party.
Think that one Australian kid struck again?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rin1_XUuVY
This is a job for that cat from 'Hot Fuzz,' I think.
WOW, I celebrated the end of school by skipping my last class and going for Pizza. of course, this was a LONG time ago, and? if the opportunity for outdoor orgy was there, I'd have chosen that instead.
Woo hoo>
Pictures?
Once again, I learn that I went to the wrong high school.
I can't even get five people to show up to my orgies. Damn you Britons.
I bet it was a very small percentage of people who were actually having public sex. Don't they know that outdoor fucking doesn't start until the First of May?
Orgy? How can they be sure the kids weren't just freak-dancing...
on the downside, this being Britain, all 200 of those students were male. :)
Not the newly fitted sink!
That's VERY funny! British indeed!
Seriously though, why do I never find out about these parties until it is too late!!! ;-)
Jeez, I didn't realise that they were FOURTEEN!!! At that age I was still using it to stir tea!
...evidence of drug use, blood stains and broken glass and said that a newly fitted sink had been smashed
...or, as I call it around my house, "Tuesday night".
Apparently it's all the rage these days, and it's the internet's fault:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article3582292.ece
The Times helpful explains (read heavily implies) how YouTube leads to orgies.
They weren't doing anything that they don't do all the time in smaller groups. It's only news because they all did it together. But Cumbria?!? Remind me not to go swimming next time I visit the Lake District.
Fourteen? What? Jeez.
This is just like watching movies involving teenagers and asking where in heck 'rainbow parties' and 'pill parties' and just in general huge mansion parties come from. Not anywhere I've ever been, evidently.
Though I can't say I'd be interested. Kissing a Briton's got to be like kissing my dog. I can't get a toothbrush in his mouth, either.
I'm surprised no one has commented on the appropriateness of the first three letters of the town's name.
Oh, wait.
In CUMBRIA? In MARCH? I'm astonished they're still alive. You could catch your death out there.
The kids are not alright.
picts?
In Nomine Babalon
Every orgy I attended during my teenage years occurred in the smallest room in the house. Also, I was alone.
I just find myself worried about the consequences to unprotected orgy funness. Bad enough when one 14 year old ends up pregnant, but to have a slew of them, not to mention the STD cleanup later. Yeeesh.
People try to put us d-down, just because we get around.
Oh, to be in England in the spring...
Wow, can anyone say Moral Panic?
I'm assuming the above comments are all from non-Brits, because guys? It's the TELEGRAPH.
The Telegraph is the most consistently right wing Christian main stream newspaper (the Daily Mail doesn't count because it's not a newspaper) in the UK. It thrives on these types of stories.
And really, fourteen isn't that young to be having sex, like, with other fourteen year olds I mean.
But yeah, condoms, condoms are good.
@#29, nae. pictsies
They could've played it from a different angle.
"200 young Britons braved the elements to engage in the traditional end of term village park orgy. John 'whippersnapper' Smith explained that he felt it was his duty as a Brit to have it off in this manner, ensuring that future generations of public school youngsters could enjoy the same experience for years to come.
You know, I get the feeling that this is one of those ideas that's a whole lot more pleasant in theory, than in actual reality. "Let's get together and have a huge, drunken orgy in public!" They never seem to factor in the STDs, pregnancies, and blood loss.
Man STDs sure ruined orgies.
As JGriffiths says, this is one of those exaggerated stories that the Telegraph uses to induce moral panic about the state of the youth; we should lock them all away, send them to the army etc.
The likely situation was probably nothing more than a you normal post-term party. So don't go travelling to Cumbria yet guys....
70's back? w00t!
Wow, life imitates St. Trinians!
#35: "And really, fourteen isn't that young to be having sex, like, with other fourteen year olds I mean."
Met a lot of fourteen-year-olds? I don't know too many I would consider mature enough for that particular activity. Then again, I'm a high-school teacher so I might be jaded.
But yeah, I read this and my BS-meter automatically went off, especially considering it's from the Telegraph.
I might be the lone buzzkill in this, but I'm bothered by the quote from the article that says: "The event is said to have involved "a disturbingly high number of girls" having sex while they were too drunk to know what they were doing."
That's rape. The article should be titled "End of term party becomes village square rape." The word "orgy" characterizes the teens as having uncontrollable animalistic appetites thus dehumanizing them which we too often do with adolescents. Using the word rape would mean that the adults involved failed to protect these children from alcohol and violence which is the real story here.
This is not a slam against Mark or boingboing. I just want us to reexamine what's being discussed.
People must've been awfully close to see that the sex was unprotected...
If not mentioned already, thisll go nicely right up there with those Argentinian 'Pokemon' orgy kids profiled not long ago.
And in other news, a word to the wise, do not cheese grate your thumb.
@43: I'm a high school teacher, too, and I know some fourteen year olds who are more mature than some thirty year olds I know.
I was having sex at fourteen. Dunno if that's good or bad, but it is, and I definitely was not unique in that respect in my group of peers. I suspect plenty of my students are already having it off. I just hope they have the sense to avoid doing it publicly, in large groups, without the aid of contraceptives.
And I agree with you and #35 that the story should be taken with a grain of salt, given its source.
Mmm, the article says "Year 11"; doesn't that imply 16-year-olds, rather than 14-year-olds?
This is the most disturbing part of the article:
First, to express sympathy only for the scummy females involved in this escapade and not the scummy males implies that the females were victimized-- that's pretty horrible. When women tell girls that they are weak and being controlled, everybody loses.
Second, drunk people are not victims either-- if you choose to drink and then you do something dumb, well, you chose to do something dumb. Blaming alcohol is an excuse for people who shouldn't be drinking-- they don't understand that people are always responsible for themselves.
Third, props to the kids-- hope everybody got off and nobody got any cooties.
Well, so yes, pinch of salt. There are very few reliable news sources in the UK. Besides, if you read between the lines, this was just a village hall party at which a few kids had unprotected sex, and probably even fewer did it in the village square. It most certainly was not an orgy.
#44 Well, I'm sure the UK has a strong gender bias in its definition of rape, but if they were all drunk, who was raping whom? (South Africa has very recently removed gender from its definition of rape. IANAL, but I'm curious as to how that has affected things like the sex-under-the-influence-is-automatically-rape argument. Does the sober partner automatically become the rapist? Has rape occurred if both are off their faces? Does anyone know any precedents for these?)
this must be the first mass teenage gathering in the last 5 years to have produced no photos or youtube vids. links anyone?
anyone? ... really, there's nothing from the whole event? wow. something tells me none of this really happened.
That said, I understand teen pregnancy is a huge problem in the UK.
This was driven home to me when I was working at a charity in Hackney a few years back. I captured a request for funding for baby clothes, reading something like "You helped me with my last one, and now I'm pregnant again, won't you pretty please help me again?"
This all passed through my head like most of the other cases until I was typing it in and did a quick mental sum on the girl's age. She was 14.
I mentioned this to my supervisor. Her response?
"Oh that's nothing. You want to know what's the youngest we've had? 11."
In a country with a falling birth rate as a whole, it's disturbing to note what a large proportion of births are unplanned, and to mothers who are financially, emotionally and psychologically poorly equipped to be raising kids. This is a problem which can only self-perpetuate, and result (has already resulted in?) in a very scary society.
ROACH:
No. As a high school student, you are neither jaded nor wrong. I am seventeen years old and I know many people my age engaging in sex, and many younger. The girls that are younger always go for the older guys and usually in the most desperate, demeaning ways. They get overobsessed and are unable to compensate with the emotional fallout of being dumped or being rejected.
Fourteen year olds are not mature. I know. I was one very recently, and I recognize the great increase in maturity from now and then. Sure, fourteen is of appropriate breeding age and the eighteen line is arbitrary- but I honestly think there is extended childhood. Maturity takes a lot longer to engender in today's youth than that of yesteryear. I could be looking at it from the nostalgia perspective, but I really don't think I am.
I've called 911 because I found a young girl bleeding from her wrists because she'd been dumped by her 'fiance'. I've watched a girl two years younger than me hit on my boyfriend and sit on his lap, all the while ignorant as to his staring at me over her head in absolute befuddlement. I've helped out friends who have been practically stalked by young girls.
And boys are no better. They get obsessed with a relationship just as well as girls- but I do think there is an emotional difference.
Men love to ****. Women **** to love.
I didn't realise that British people even had sex.
Kieran,
highest teen pregnancy in Europe, as a matter of fact. I've always speculated it to be a function of cultural prudery, if that makes any sense. Just because something isn't talked about, doesn't mean it doesn't happen; in this case it happens only less well. There was an English version of that film Kids came out a few years ago call Kidulthood. To be honest I don't think it really helped to open up the issue at all.
to #53 - you can't be a high school student. You write well, make perfect sense, and read boingboing. You aren't fooling anyone! (I'm teasing...I was the same at 17)(btw - keep up the good work, our kind seems to be getting rarer with each generation)
Kieran, Scottfree-
America beats Britain! We're better in -everything.-
CTP,
Why, thank you. And indeed, so it seems, though I try to convince myself that's my own pride instead of losing further faith. There are several of 'us' in my circle of friends- but none of them are technophiles.
I tried to find a link to a news source for something I heard about happening: I swear [or was it really good dream?] a few years ago, a bunch of Oxford students celebrated completing exams by jumping off the Magdalene bridge, only the water was particularly shallow that year and they all broke their legs. Anybody remember?
Anyway, funny.
...if your mates jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?
Sounds to me like orgies in South Park...sex, blood, alcohol and drug. Hope that nobody kill someone to get the blood.
Ha ha! It happened in the UK, so let's go ahead and mock the British!
It will appear terribly witty and sophisticated, and not at all like culturally isolated Americans demonstrating their general ignorance of the world.
Whoever said 'moral panic' and dissed the Telegraph was spot on, to me. I would worry less about USA Today publishing one of those "Deadly Daycare" or "Dirty Dining" blurblets we have to endure on the local news channels. Teens acting like, well, teens. Wotta soo-prize.
I CAN HAZ INFOGRAPHIC?
I seem to have gone to the wrong school.
"aftermath" of unprotected sex?
Please. It's not like a plane crashed into the building here.
Look...
Pix or it didn't happen.
Year 11 is 16, so whoever came up with 14 was way off, not that, as I said above, there would be anything wrong with that (consensually), but in this story it appears that the vast majority of participants (if there even were any) were over the age of consent.
I agree with whoever pointed out that to act as if the girls are immediately the victims because they were drunk (and the boys weren't? yeah right), not a single girl has said that she felt she was raped, just drunk, as was I expect the person she was having sex with.
And yeah, no youtube, corroborating reports, all the signs point to this being either made up or hugely exaggerated.
@58
You mean this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/4554769.stm
Storm in a teacup.
Wray is not a big town, so any big gathering of exhilerated, noisy and mostly drunk kids will have been perceived as far worse than it actually was.
If you ignore the speculation and emotive language, the paper is describing a party that got a bit out of control (aren't they the most fun ones?) and at which a few 16 or 17 year olds had drunken sex.
Also, the smallish number of "village hall chairmen" and other local officils I've met have all been quite conservative types. I wouldn't be surprised if some over-enthusiatic kissing and groping was misinterpreted as "sex standing up", inflating the number of couples reported to have had sex there.
I'm not saying that underage drinking and drunken sex aren't important problems, just that they do tend to get sensationalised by journalists who're all too aware that stories like this one capture all of the "hell in a handbasket", "think of the children!" and "uninhibited sex" box that gets their readers going. You can tell I'm not a journo because I'm a buzzkill and just wrote one of the lonest run-on sentences in the history of the language.
http://pressthebuttons.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/lovejoy.jpg
The irony really is that, generally speaking, those students who are mature aren't having sex at a young age, and those who aren't mature enough are usually the ones who are (and rarely with someone their own age, either, as was suggested earlier - there's a high degree of girls with much older boys/adult males).
TENN -
Always good to hear from students like you. We teachers have just about as many horror stories as you do.
Oh for goodness' sake.
Kids Get Drunk!
Kids Have Sex!
Kids Horrify Their Elders!
Full story at 11!
C'mon folks. Who really gives a rat's @$$? This sort of kvetching about the youth has been going on for as long as humans have had language to use for kvetching. I recall, back in my college days, taking a course in classic Greek literatue, Aeschylus and the like, and boggling at what one writer said. To paraphrase him (badly), "The kids these days have no respect for their parents, they have no respect for the gods, they have no respect for the State, and if they continue down this road Civilization Will Collapse!"
(Of course he was right, Greek civilization DID collapse, but blame should be placed less on the youth than on Alexander's generals being pricks and the Romans being so DAMNED good at warfare.)
I call Shenanigans on the whole story. (assuming it's true at all, which considering the source, I doubt.
-abs
While reading this article, "The Village Green Preservation Society" by The Kinks came up on my music player. I laughed heartily.
I, too, immediately thought of "Hot Fuzz." I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned it.
This also makes the last-day-of-school shaving cream fight my peers and I had in the park (around the year 2000 or so) seem quite tame.
i go to the school, the articles are so blown so much out of proportion!!
its really not as bad as they made out
its amazing how this got in the news so far after the party actualy took place.
my whole year found the event very amusing!!
im not suprised it happened though year 11 are the worst year my school has had. it also wasnt an end of school party either.
how very amusing
You have saddened us, Taylor32. Many of us were reliving our youths through this tale. When I was a high school junior, half the teachers got a day's suspension for turning the school play into a drunken orgy. I miss the 70s.
Hunty 18: Now I really wish I'd gone to that high school!
Gareth 30: Babilonis, I think.
Tenn 53: Add me to the list of people who are astonished that you're a high school student.
Taylor32 74: Nice to have confirmation from someone a bit closer to the action...I guess we can conclude that it was exaggerated but not (as I suspected from the comments) outright fabricated.
You know anything else? Was there actually a writhing mass of naked bodies on the town square, in which case (as someone pointed out above) pneumonia just became an STD? Or was it as others have said, just a party that got out of hand, and a few kids wound up they-knew-not-where doing they-knew-not-what with they-knew-not-whom?
Antinous 75: Yeah? Well WE had drunken orgies in a box in the middle of the road! Uphill! BOTH WAYS!
Yeah, but we didn't have air. Or gravity.
really sorry if i made the party sound boring. it really probably wasnt. i do know that all the windows in the place got smashed. the head teacher Mr Clarke didnt know about the letters sent home as he was on a school trip to washington and so Mrs Hughes is in a bit of trouble for sending the letters..it was only really year 11 that went to the party maybe a couple of year 10's but the letter got sent out to years 9, 10 and 11. my year wasnt included because im in 6th form. my year was meant to have a party last thursday night to raise money for the school but Mrs hughes cancelled it because she thaught we were going to do the same. it was supposed to held in the village that i live in which was a shame because i could have gone..got wasted and stubled home quite easily..and to add to that no orgies, or broken sinks because i do believe my year is much more stable. its dissapointing that they ruined my schools reputation and the fact that we cant have parties because all the venues in the area have been told not to hire to under 25's.
Taylor32;
Thanks for the info. It seemed unlikely, but if it had happened it would be pretty messed up. Media makes everything sound 'better'.
Roach;
Thanks. I've got a lot of respect for teachers. Anyone who can tolerate handling my procrastination and excuses and people's general behavior in order to mold minds, so to speak, has nerves of steel. I could never do it. I am not the teaching sort.
Xopher;
Thanks. I enjoy astonishing people!
Taylor32 78: For those of us who aren't familiar with British schools, could you explain how "6th form" relates to "year 9, 10, and 11" -- or doesn't? I have to admit I'm pretty confused about forms and years and A-levels and all that stuff, none of which we have in the US.
Well, we have years. I have rather too many of them, in fact. :-)
I blame a severe lack of Jonathan Coulton.
Everyone with any sense of culture knows that outdoor fucking starts on the first of May.
@79
British secondary schools are sorted into three sections (though within the same school, with an exception sometimes of sixth form):
Years 7-9 (following on from primary school which was years 0-6), which is basically the same as American middle school.
Years 10 and 11, which is where we take our first mandatory exams, GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education).
After Year 11, pupils may leave school to seek employment, go to a technical college to take practical courses (plumbing, carpentry etc.) or move on to Sixth form (years 12 and 13), in my school this was in the same building/institution I had taken my GCSEs at, but there are also separate Sixth Form Colleges.
In Sixth Form you take your AS (in Year 12) and A2 (in Year 13) Levels (Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Levels), you then either seek work with slightly more qualifications than those two years before you, or move on to further education.
(You may also see these years written as Forms 1-6, with form 1 being year seven and form 6-2 being year 13).
Hope that answers your question.
@ Taylor 32
In my experience, you barely have to cause any damage to get banned from places nowadays, just the presence of underage drinking is enough (even though it is completely legal within a private, ticketed event so long as its not sold to them).
I organised my Sixth form dinner dance in my last year (like a prom), I have since found out from friends in the year below that we are no longer welcome at that venue, despite their being not a single fight, nothing broken more than a glass (and I'm just assuming at least a glass was broken) and very happy and satisfied security staff.
So this party might have been a bit out of control, but you'd probably have trouble booking venues anyway. Just go to the pub mate.
JGriffiths 81: Yes, it does, and a more straightforward and clear explanation cannot easily be imagined. Thank you!
Er, Wray doesn't have a village square. Kirkby Lonsdale does, and there was a similar 'orgy' there in 2000, so it sounds as if the journalist might have been confusing/conflating two events. Or faking it, to invent a red-telephone-village-bobby-roses-round-the-thatched-cottage-door stereotype.
Whatever; it's still a storm in a teacup.
Incidentally, Wray is in Lancashire, whilst Kirkby Lonsdale is 7-8 miles away on the Cumbria border, but nowhere near the Lake District. It's safe to go back in the water.
@Agent86, in #59: Funny you should mention jumping from bridges, as that's precisely what people do from Devil's Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale.