According to the Georgetown Dish:
When she picked up her 12-year-old son at Hardy Middle School last Tuesday afternoon, “Susan” knew something was wrong. Her son looked “disturbed,” his father said later. Susan asked her son what had happened at school. A test had been given in a health/physical education class filled with 7th-grade boys and girls.
One classmate called it a “sex test.”
“What is your gender?” was the first question. The choice of answers:
a) Male
b) Female
c) Transgender (M to F)
d) Transgender (F to M)The 12-year-old was slightly bewildered. He noticed other children seemed confused.
The questions became more graphic:
“How sure are you that you….
…Can name all four body fluids that can transmit HIV.
…Know the difference between oral, vaginal, and anal sex.
…Can correctly put a condom on yourself or your partner.
…Will avoid getting yourself or your partner pregnant if you have sex.
…Can convince a reluctant partner to use barrier protection (i.e. condoms, dental dams) during sex.”The 12-year-old, even more confused, asked an instructor about some of the terms. “What is this? I don’t know what this is,” he told the facilitator. Children ventured guesses as the instructor — brought in on a DCPS contract — started to define “anal sex” and “oral sex.”
Susan (not her real name) called her husband at the office. She was practically in tears. He was outraged.
Other parents heard about the “sex test” from their kids. “The school is making us take a sex survey,” one child told his mother.
Whatever the intent of the program, neither Susan nor her husband had given informed consent allowing their son to be part of a program that went far beyond how they would have handled instruction in the mechanics, responsibilities, ethics and moral behavior of sexual activity of their 12-year-old. Also of considerable concern, they had not been informed that, nor had they been asked for consent for their son to be involved in a pre- and post-program evaluation probing his response to questions about sexual practices and illegal drug use. As far as Susan and her husband were concerned, the program came out of nowhere and was totally inappropriate for their child. When they demanded an explanation, their strong feelings were at first brushed off by school administrators, who told them that the survey had been administered following normal procedures.
Meanwhile, upset parents called, texted and e-mailed each other to try to understand what had happened. One child was so upset by the test, a parent told The Georgetown Dish, he hyperventilated.
How was the sex survey launched at Hardy with so little vetting and how was it determined that it was appropriate for a 12-year-old?
The story continues at GD.
The Washington Examiner also reported the story:
Seventh graders attending Georgetown’s Hardy Middle School were forced to participate in an explicit survey of sexual habits without their parents’ knowledge or consent, according to the Georgetown Dish.
The Metro Teen AIDS survey required 12- and 13-year-olds to choose between four “genders,” state that they could “correctly put a condom on yourself or a partner and convince a reluctant partner to use barrier protection,” and list how many people they had oral, vaginal or anal sex with so far.
The non-profit has received over $750,000 in federal research funding from the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in addition to its contracts with D.C. Public Schools.
But parents told The Dish that a letter informing them they could “opt-out” was distributed during the same class the survey was conducted, and they only saw it after the “sex test” had already been administered to their children. If so, this is a clear violation of informed consent regulations that were adopted after the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, in which federal researchers deliberately withheld penicillin from African American men who were promised treatment for syphilis.
“Our main objection is that parents should have been notified about a survey involving sex, which is a very personal, emotional and moral issue with deep spiritual implications,z’ Emmett McGroaty, director of the Washington-based Innocence Project, told The Examiner. “Our view is don’t marginalize parents. Let them see all the material beforehand. There should be complete transparency, complete disclosure, and an ‘opt-in’ provision that requires a signed permission slip from parents before a child is allowed to participate.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner.
And if your blood isn’t boiling by now… I include the final paragraphs of the story from the Georgetown Dish:
Metro TeenAIDS’ letter to parents, which was distributed to the children during the class in which they took the sex survey, said that due to the sensitive and potentially incriminating information being gathered from the students, “The questionnaire is confidential — no one will be able to match your child with the answers that he/she provides.”
Yet, when a parent demanded that her child’s test form be returned, Metro TeenAIDS officials identified the correct child’s test and returned it to his parents, despite the organization’s guarantee of anonymity.
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