Reading the posts on Everyone’s Invited is truly a trip into darkness: the darkness of teenage party culture, the darkness of our society, the darkness of the human heart, but, above all, the black hole of toxic masculinity. It is a date with shame in every sense.

Overwhelmingly, we see the shame inflicted on thousands of girls, by thousands of boys, in page after page of sexual encounters, from the inept and boorish to the horrific and traumatising. Their pain and humiliation is sometimes made worse by friends or adults - and occasionally better. 

Their shame, petrifying and mortifying as it always is, falls on us all. Whatever other responses may rant and rage within us - and they will - that collective shame needs to be tasted in all its rank bitterness: truly, everyone’s indicted.

The phenomenon has brought some of the darkest days I have known as headteacher, and not only because my school is one of those named in some of the testimonies. Shame spawns shame, and I wonder how it is that violations unthinkable when I left school 35 years ago are now commonplace, and why, despite decades of legislation and progressive initiatives, things are getting worse, not better. As an adult, a man, a headteacher, I weep.

Everyone’s Invited sex abuse allegations: What do schools do?

The key question, of course, is what to do about it. While most of the testimonies name a school, many of the incidents are well beyond the direct jurisdiction of schools. Are we being asked to take the blame for what students do at the weekend? 

In any case - we might object in our defensiveness - the naming isn’t consistent. In some cases, it seems to be the victim’s school, in others the perpetrator’s school, and in some, it could be both…or neither. 

These are valid questions, even though they miss the point by some distance. The anonymity of the Everyone’s Invited website is both its strength and its danger. Giving a voice to the voiceless is vital, but encouraging unaccountable and anonymous allegations, with no right of reply, risks alienating allies and dulling the sensibilities of those who could and should join the cause.

It may well alienate the very people who are best-placed to make things better: those same school leaders who already devote hours and weeks of patient heartache to investigating allegations, counselling the traumatised, involving other agencies, issuing sanctions - doing so discreetly, in order to preserve the dignity of victims. 

Perhaps so, but we need to get beyond that. Yes, anonymising institutions would be more comfortable for school leaders, but it would also remove a powerful and necessary incentive for us to confront the darkness that may lurk on our own watch. Besides, the comfort of school leaders is not the goal here.

In any case, there is a dark irony that the sheer volume of testimonies, and the absence of a search facility (I speak as one with experience…), puts the focus on the whole body of testimony rather than the parts. Obsessing over uncheckable details turns abuse and shame into a competitive activity, the spectre of toxic masculinity hovering, dementor-like, over the league table. 

A #MeToo moment for schools

Instead, let us heed the kick in the zeitgeist that has been delivered, and get back to that painful, patient transformative process that is our vocation. If this is a #MeToo moment for schools, then bring it on. 

Let us have those overdue conversations, hear those unheard voices and listen hard to those who are emboldened to come forward in person. Let us bring those fresh eyes to examine our curricula and our habits of thought, and look again at what we do. And - crucially - let us do so as the educators we are.

Schools in the main are moral institutions, run by experienced and reflective professionals aiming to work with integrity. The best ones know how far they are from perfection, and will be ready to listen, open to change, keen to see where there are individual or structural failings that need confronting. That is, after all, what we seek to do for our students at every moment.

We need to channel that spirit, and partner up the righteous fury of youth with the educational wisdom of schools. Together, we need to ask the forward-looking question: what do we all need to do better? It would be a mistake to pre-empt that process, but a few things already urge themselves on to the agenda: 

• How do we make it less difficult to report experiences? 
• How do we improve everyone’s communication around consent? 
• How do we counter the fears, falsehoods and fantasies of pornography?
• Given the number of testimonies that feature them, how do we manage our relationships with social media, and with drugs and alcohol?
• How do we stop the harming and shaming of girls without demonising boys?

These are painful and contentious issues, make no mistake. There are forces that conspire against institutions - and school leaders - seeing truths before their eyes, and make the powerful side with perpetrators. That is why we need young whistleblowers. 

On the other hand, truth is complicated, human beings are nuanced, and there are rules about confidentiality, integrity and fairness that we ignore at our peril. That is why we need wise educators.

We need to bring the energy of Everyone’s Invited into our schools for balanced consideration and exposure to challenge, so that it can be refined into a fuller and deeper version of itself, ready to make a vital contribution to society. 

That is, after all, what schools do for students - and they are shaped and improved themselves along the way. By the power of education let the dethroning of shame commence.

Patrick Moriarty is headteacher of the Jewish Community Secondary School, in the London Borough of Barnet