Courtney alleges she was raped by a classmate when she was six years old. Now she’s taking action

More than 2600 reports of “concerning incidents” of a sexual nature between students have been reported at Victorian state schools in the past three years, as experts warn of a crisis in gender-based harmful behaviour.

Figures obtained under freedom-of-information laws show there were 2645 incidents recorded by state schools between January 2023 and August last year.

A rise in incidents was recorded in 2024 compared with 2023 in primary, secondary and prep-to-year-12 schools, and the figures continued to climb in the eight months of 2025 for which data was released.

Over that 2025 period, there were 817 incidents reported, at least 368 of them in primary schools.

“Peer-to-peer incidents of a sexual nature” refers to student-to-student behaviour considered inappropriate, harmful or concerning and recorded by schools in line with department policy.

The severity of each incident can depend on age . A problematic incident for five to nine-year-olds might be continually rubbing their genitals in the presence of others, while a harmful behaviour could be grooming other children or forcing them to play sexual games. “Sextortion”, often involving online blackmail, can be a problem among older students.

More incidents have been recorded since 2022, when strengthened reporting systems were introduced, but that earlier data was not made available.

Dr Gemma McKibbin, a senior research fellow in the University of Melbourne’s Department of Social Work, said the 2645 incidents reported were probably a vast under-representation of concerning sexual behaviour in schools.

She said researchers were seeing a crisis in gender-based harmful sexual behaviour, whereby adolescent boys were sexually harassing, assaulting and exploiting adolescent girls or non-binary young people.

“I don’t think that schools have quite worked out how to manage the kind of group dynamics that fit into that form of harmful sexual behaviours, such as the manosphere and hypermasculinity, exposure to pornography,” McKibbin said.

Courtney Livingston alleges she was raped by a classmate when in year 1. He had exposed himself in class before asking her and another girl to meet him and another boy at a basketball court, where she says the boys abused the girls.

Now 24, she is suing the State of Victoria in the Supreme Court, claiming her school, Redan Primary, on the rural-urban fringe near Ballarat, failed to protect or supervise students in 2008, when she alleges the abuse occurred.

A writ filed on July 8 states, “there was a not insignificant risk that students in primary school may be sexually abused by other students”.

According to the 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study , adolescent boys are the most likely to inflict child sexual abuse in Australia. Of the people surveyed, 18.2 per cent said they had experienced child sexual abuse perpetrated by an adolescent, compared with 11.7 per cent who said an adult had abused them.