Restorative justice for harmful sexual behaviour in schools
The Olive Tree Project is a pilot program supporting restorative justice processes in response to harmful sexual behaviour in schools, designed to supplement — not replace — existing responses. Led by OneResolve in collaboration with partner organisations, the project takes a children's rights approach that promotes young people's agency and voice, and runs across a two-year period of development, delivery and evaluation.
Born out of The Continuum Project
The Olive Tree Project grew directly out of The Continuum Project, a Stage One Report (April 2025) examining how schools respond to harmful sexual behaviour, with its restorative justice section authored by Anna Tydd. That report's findings on restorative justice are what shaped the pilot you see today.
The research found that a criminal justice response, on its own, does little to address the underlying causes of young people's harmful sexual behaviour, and is limited in its capacity to deliver a meaningful sense of justice to the person harmed — leaving many people who go through it unsatisfied. It also found that a children's rights approach, giving young people real agency and voice in how harm is addressed, aligns closely with restorative justice principles, and that no established restorative justice scheme existed anywhere in Australia specifically for harmful sexual behaviour occurring in schools.
That gap — and a clear framework for how a school-based restorative response could work safely, without ever replacing a school's core safety obligations — became the evidence base and the objectives that The Olive Tree Project was built to put into practice.
A crisis playing out largely without adult support
Young people are navigating rapidly evolving social, relational and political contexts — often without adult guidance. Against a backdrop of normalised gendered violence, harmful sexual behaviour between young people is far more prevalent than most adults realise, and it carries real consequences for everyone it touches.
Schools are left to balance safety, accountability, repair and reintegration, often with approaches that were never designed for this. We need responses that address the impact of harm, are genuinely just, avoid shaming, and actually shift the dynamics that allow this behaviour to continue.
See the evidence behind this →Every child's needs, at the centre
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child prioritises children's agency and voice — the ability to express, understand and have their needs met. That principle sits at the heart of restorative justice, and at the heart of this project.
We also know that punitive, exclusionary systems tend to compound trauma rather than resolve it: research consistently shows the large majority of children in detention have already experienced multiple traumatic events in their lives. The 2022 National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children recommends restorative justice be made available to young people and children who have experienced violence, where appropriate. In 2025, the Australian Law Reform Commission went further, recommending legislative and funding reform to make restorative justice genuinely accessible to people who've experienced sexual violence — recommendations this project is helping put into practice.
Five commitments guiding this work
Promote health and wellbeing
Create a transparent, efficient pathway for addressing harmful sexual behaviour that complements schools' legal, regulatory and investigative responses — and build trauma-informed practices that centre the needs of the student(s) harmed, their families and carers, and the wider school community.
Provide access to real support
Connect all students — including the student(s) responsible for the harm — with appropriate support to address the underlying causes of the behaviour.
Support ongoing safety
Contribute to the assessment, understanding and support of the ongoing safety needs of students impacted by harmful sexual behaviour.
Build capability in schools
Provide knowledge, skills and training for school leadership and staff, so schools can support students and their communities through restorative engagements and processes.
Offer skilled, independent facilitation
Deliver a trauma-informed restorative process, facilitated by external, independent and skilled restorative practitioners, in response to complex situations involving harmful sexual behaviour.
Why restorative justice offers something different
Restorative justice is provided in a school context only after police and other reporting obligations have been met — and where students don't want, or can't pursue, a criminal justice response, or where one has already concluded. It offers an alternative to punitive and carceral responses, without the adversarial process that so often puts the person harmed on trial themselves.
Restorative justice
- Sees wrongdoing as harm done to people and relationships, not just a violation of rules.
- Is concerned first with repairing the harm that's been caused.
- Puts the people most affected at the centre of defining what justice and repair look like.
Criminal justice
- Treats wrongdoing as an offence against the state and the law.
- Is focused on determining guilt and imposing punishment.
- Often leaves the person harmed without a meaningful role in shaping the outcome.
Scope & eligibility
What's in scope
A targeted program using restorative justice practices in schools, taking a children's rights approach. The behaviour must include harmful sexual behaviour, though the response may also address associated harms — primarily student-to-student. All students involved must be school-aged, and the process can involve students from different participating schools.
When a referral proceeds
Only when engaging in a restorative process will be safe for everyone involved. Referrals are considered after the harm has been reported to police, and where the student(s) harmed do not want to pursue — or cannot pursue — a criminal justice response, or where that process is already complete. Every referral is assessed case by case.
The response pathway
Each stage is paced to the people involved — timing varies considerably depending on how many participants there are and how ready each person is to move forward.
Referral & intake — student(s) harmed
A referral is received and assessed against eligibility: is this within scope for the project?
Initial suitability assessment
Intake appointments are held with the student(s) harmed and their support people, to explore their willingness and suitability to participate.
Invitation to the student(s) responsible
If assessed as safe and appropriate, an invitation is extended in a format suited to the context — through professional supports, or community and family connections.
Intake — student(s) responsible
Intake appointments are held with the student(s) responsible for harm and their support people, to assess willingness and suitability.
Preparation meetings
Often the longest stage. Individual preparation meetings — sometimes running over several months — explore the goals of the person harmed, support the responsible student's steps toward meaningful accountability, and continually reassess readiness, suitability and safety.
Facilitated dialogue or restorative engagement
Independent facilitators support a facilitated dialogue (in person, shuttled, or online), a shared recorded video, or a letter exchange — whatever best fits the needs and safety of those involved. This may lead to an agreement setting out commitments for how to be in shared spaces going forward.
Post-process reflection
Facilitators meet with participants to debrief and reflect on how the process went.
Independent evaluation
Participants, and others in the school community involved in responding to harmful sexual behaviour, are invited to share their experience through a de-identified survey and, potentially, an interview.
What justice can look like
People are different, but survivors of sexual harm who choose to engage in a restorative process often express one or more of these needs.
| Need | What it means |
|---|---|
| Voice | To be able to tell their story in their own words, and be heard. |
| Validation | To be believed, and to have their experience acknowledged. |
| Information | The ability to ask questions of the person responsible for displaying harmful sexual behaviour, to make sense of what happened. |
| Accountability | To have the person responsible for displaying harmful sexual behaviour take responsibility in active, meaningful ways — apology, acknowledgement, or actions of repair. |
| Relationships | The ability to repair or reset relationships that have been affected, including new agreements about how to be in shared spaces, particularly at school. |
| Prevention | To play an active role in making sure the person responsible has learned from the harm, and that others don't experience the same thing. |
| Resolution | To feel that their needs, in relation to the harm, have genuinely been met. |
What accountability offers the student responsible
Young people who are responsible for displaying harmful sexual behaviour often carry their own histories of harm, and may feel shame, guilt or regret at having acted in ways that don't align with who they want to be. Restorative justice treats every participant with dignity and respect, while ensuring no further harm occurs.
Through the process, a young person responsible for harm may come to acknowledge what they did and offer a genuine apology or expression of empathy; build a clearer understanding of what led to their behaviour and its impact; commit to acting in line with their own values and hopes for the future; and take real steps toward repairing relationships that matter to them.
Collaboration, funding & evaluation
Collaboration
We work alongside the Weaving Repair Project (Open Circle), based at RMIT's Centre for Innovative Justice — a parallel restorative justice program addressing harmful sexual behaviour occurring in a familial context. Current joint work centres on developing a shared practice manual. Learn more about Weaving Repair →
Funding model
The pilot's development and evaluation are funded through The Snow Foundation, a family philanthropic organisation. The pathway itself is open to any school and runs on a fee-for-service basis, with the referring school covering the cost of workshops and facilitation. We're advocating for government to recognise and directly fund those costs, so price is never the reason a school or a child can't access it.
Evaluation
Independent evaluation isn't an afterthought here — it's how we find out whether this pathway is genuinely working for the people who matter most. Social Outcomes, experts in evaluating the impact of initiatives and projects of community importance, have been engaged to assess whether children impacted by harm are experiencing real repair, and having the power taken from them in the context of that harm restored. We're grateful for their partnership in holding this pilot to that standard.
Where we are
Project establishment and design, July to December.
Facilitation of restorative processes begins, continuing into early-to-mid 2027.
Project evaluation and close.
Advocating for systemic change
A pilot can only reach the schools we're funded to work with. So alongside delivering the program, we're advocating directly to government and the Department of Education to recognise how widespread harmful sexual behaviour in schools actually is, and the gap that exists in how it's currently addressed.
Our aim is for restorative justice to be understood not as an add-on, but as a properly resourced part of the system's response — informed by the evidence this pilot generates, and by the Australian Law Reform Commission's own recommendation that restorative justice be funded and made genuinely accessible to people who have experienced sexual violence. Every school and family we can point to as evidence strengthens that case.
Want to bring this pathway to your school?
This pathway is open to any school — referrals, workshops and information sessions are coordinated directly with your school once you get in touch.