Websites trumpeting high school sexual slanders to the world

''Root-rater'' and teenage gossip sites, based around schools or suburbs, have exploded in poularity in recent months but schools appear to be unaware of the extent of the problem.Northern Beaches Root Rates, a typical Facebook version, was pulled down on Thursday night when it had more than 1200 friends, drawn from schools including Mater Maria Catholic College, Barrenjoey High School Cromer High School, Narrabeen Sports High School, Northern Beaches Christian School, Pittwater High School, Stella Maris College, Brigidine College St Ives and Ravenswood School for Girls.A number of users had attended Freshwater Senior Campus which is part of the Northern Beaches Secondary College. Two students from another campus, Mackellar Girls, were targetted. About one girl an anonymous poster wrote: ''She goes all right but she had a really hairy bum whole [sic] and she squirts too much.''Another poster wrote of a girl: ''Chunky thighs, huge arse ... always available for a root for those who are hard up.''Ms Christine Del Gallo, principal at the Mackellar Girls campus in Manly Vale, said she had received no recent complaints of cyberbullying until contacted by the Herald."Action is being taken to identify the authors of this offensive material, which has also been referred to the department's Child Wellbeing Unit and the department's Safety and Security Directorate," she said.

"Any sexual references in cyber-bullying are offensive, and appropriate measures need to be taken to deal with them and to support the victims.''Most of the vile comments are made about girls and young women, although youths too are subjected to sexual ratings and abuse.NSW Police said vile gossip posts could lead to criminal charges such as stalk/intimidate or using a carriage service to threaten or menace.  In a Sydney court last year a women was successfully prosecuted over threatening and inciting violence against another women on a social networking site. Similar charges were brought against a Sydney man in 2008.

A post on another site said: ''0/10 dirty as! Eyes rolled into the back of her head.'' The response was: ''Funny coz someone said I was there [sic] best ... honestly, this shit don't phasee [sic] me, coz I know im a straight up 10.''Susan McLean, who was Victoria Police's first cyber safety officer and is now an online safety consultant, said the Facebook gossip sites had ''exploded in the last two or three months''.''What i'm seeing is they're becoming more localised, so rather than covering a large area ... they've really quickly moved to be school-based or location-based,'' she said.''People say it's a bit of harmless fun, it's just being cute, but it's not. It's not harmless, it's not fun and it's disgraceful.''Ms McLean said Facebook was generally quick to remove them once alerted.''What Facebook don't do is ban the administrators. I might set up a hate page today, you make a complaint about it and it gets taken, but I can start another one tomorrow,'' she said.Ms Mclean said Facebook users had an obligation to report the sites and police could have a significant impact with ''a few strategically placed charges'' or ''hauling a lot of the kids in and have a chat with them''.Debbie Frost, director of communications and public affairs at Facebook, said it did not tolerate hate speech or bullying. ''[We] make it easy for anyone to report content that is inappropriate using the social reporting tools on the site, which may not be found in places like the playground and in classrooms,'' said Frost.Thomas Tudehope, a director of SR7 Social Media Intelligence, said the sites beg the question of what sort of social media education young people are receiving from their educational institutions.''Young people, especially those at school should be wary of the viral nature of social networking and the risk that malicious content poses,'' he said.''The moderators of the page may well in breach of Facebook's own privacy guidelines not to mention possible defamation.''Like other aspects of social media that are crass and contain aspects of sexual deviancy, content often goes viral, shared across networks and between users.''This week the federal Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety called for a nationally consistent legislative approach to add certainty to the authority of schools to deal with incidents of inappropriate student behaviour to other students out of school hours.This week the European Commission released a report saying social netowking sites including Facebook were not doing enough to protect children from online bullying. A South Australian Family First MP earlier this month announced he was working on legislation to force Facebook to give parents a bigger say in the online activities of their children.''Let's say these sites are being set up by kids by and large - where are their parents?,'' McLean said.

''That's parenting in the 21st century - not putting your head in the sand and saying 'oh that's too hard I don't understand it'.''