A PROGRAMME teaching young Islanders about the signs of domestic abuse and female safety has been introduced at a local school in partnership with a UK charity, as part of a growing effort to combat violence against women and girls.
The Hollie Gazzard Trust is a UK charity founded in memory of Hollie Gazzard, a 20-year-old hairdresser from Gloucestershire who was murdered by her ex-partner at her workplace in 2014.
Her family, including her father Nick Gazzard OBE, set up the charity following her death, which was directly a consequence of domestic abuse, stalking and coercive control.
Working nationally, the Trust actively raises awareness of domestic abuse and stalking, while educating young people through tailored programmes about unhealthy and controlling relationships.
This school year, Beaulieu is working in partnership with the Trust to introduce a whole-school programme.
Students will receive assemblies, training sessions, workshops and tool-kits, with these being tailored to introduce more in-depth mature examples and themes gradually as students progress through year groups.
The Trust runs programmes with schools, police forces and business across the UK, designed to help young people understand domestic abuse, stalking, coercive and controlling behaviour, healthy relationships and how to support friends who may be experiencing abuse.
Mr Gazzard said: “Looking back now with all the knowledge I’ve got, I can see all what was happening to her, and if I had that knowledge then, I would have taken a different course of action.
“I firmly believe I could have saved her life. And that’s how important education is. It’s powerful.”
While nothing can change the events of that tragic day, the Trust was created so that something positive could come from Hollie’s death, with the charity focusing on three core aims; awareness, education and prevention.
Mr Gazzard said he “never imagined that it would have grown into a national charity helping hundreds of young women and families”.
“If I could use my voice as a father who had lost a daughter, perhaps I can encourage other men to come forward and help as well. Because we’ve all got a responsibility to help safeguard our young people.”
“One thing that we want to do, particularly at Beaulieu, is to try and educate the whole school around these issues.”
The programme started earlier this month, with Mr Gazzard delivering and carrying out a workshop with teaching staff on INSET day. They received training on coercive control and behaviour, and how to recognise these warning signs in students.
Beaulieu is also hopeful to get workshops, and insight evening talks delivered to parents, “so that young people can have those conversations with their parents when they get home, and ensuring that parents are equipped with the correct understanding, knowledge and support they need”.
In the Key Stage 3 programmes, the focus is confined to understanding healthy relationships, active bystander, rethinking masculinity and creating awareness of knife crime.
Then as students progress to Key States 4 and 5, topics such as misogyny, coercive controlling behaviour awareness, sexual harassment, unwanted contact and stalking awareness are introduced.
All the workshops are 60 minutes long and are set to be delivered in person by the Hollie Gazzard Trust team, which can be run as individual classroom sessions or larger assemblies depending on the content.
Mr Gazzard warned of the dangers of an ever-changing digital age, where laws cannot keep up with the advancements in social media and AI, making now, more than ever, an important time to “protect our young people.”
“You can stalk someone via social media. You can plague someone and harass someone by social media. By the things you say, the times you say certain things and constantly contacting them, putting a post about them, which are derogatory or putting photos, and even creating deep fakes.”
The Hollie Gazzard Trust has strived to change the negatives of technology, by “using it for good”, through the construction of Hollie Guard, a free personal safety smartphone application.
If users ever feel threatened, they can trigger an immediate alert by simply shaking the phone or pressing a button inside the app. The moment it is triggered, the app instantly and discreetly activates your phone’s camera and microphone to capture video and audio evidence.
Alongside this, it pins users exact GPS coordinates and sends a secure SMS/email link to their designated emergency contacts so they can track their location and view the real-time footage.
The evidence is uploaded straight to secure servers rather than the phone’s local storage. If an attacker smashes the phone, the evidence is safely saved for future police or court use.
In partnership, Beaulieu and the Trust are encouraging all students and wider Islanders to download Hollie Guard and hope other Islanders will follow suit and join them in their “approach to safeguarding and keeping people safe”.
Matthew Burke, headteacher at Beaulieu, said: “I think there’s a perception that in islands like Jersey, these crimes can’t happen here or doesn’t happen here. Yet it can and it does.
“We believe it is vital that we provide our students with all the tools necessary for them to be safe, but also to help their family and friends remain safe the ability to be confident young adults when they leave us, prepared for whatever life might throw at them.
“An education isn’t just about the grades that a student secures at the end of Year 13 or Year 11. It’s our job as educators, and I firmly believe my job as head of Beaulieu, to ensure that our students are prepared and as prepared as they can be for life when they leave our school.”
Mr Burke shared his hopes in encourgaing other schools to follow Beaulieu’s lead and for parents, staff and friends of the Beaulieu community to help implement the work of the Hollie Gazzard Trust into other workpalces and organisations, so that as an Island we can achieve “a positive impact beyond the walls of Beaulieu”.
Beaulieu has a co-educational Sixth Form, were they hope young men will takeaway a much deeper understanding and “think twice about the way that they speak, the way they interact, the actions that they do,” from the Hollie Gazzard Trust training,” Mr Burke said.
“We cannot work in isolation and we should not work in isolation. It’s all about having that joined up approach to safeguarding and keeping people safe.”
Whilst being on Island to kick-start the programme, Mr Gazzard met representatives from domestic abuse charity Freeda and Assistant Home Affairs Minister Lucy Stephenson.
