I’ve taught over 4,000 young people about consent - here is why the MAFS Panorama Documentary is part of a bigger problem.
As a sexuality educator, I spend my weeks in schools, colleges, alternative education provisions, and youth groups delivering sex education. There's always one thing every teacher, youth worker, and safeguarding lead asks me to cover; consent.
In the UK, the cup of tea video is considered the gold standard. It's honestly a great starting point. I love hearing young people quote it back to me - "unconscious people don't want tea." Some of them even push back on it: "Why does it even mention unconscious people? That's obvious." And they're not wrong. It is obvious. But it's also the bare minimum. The gaps in how we talk about rape, sexual assault, and what a real "yes" actually looks like have been exposed, painfully and publicly, by the stories coming out of MAFS this week.
What happened
BBC Panorama aired The Dark Side of Married at First Sight, in which three women describe being sexually assaulted and raped by their on-screen "husbands". All three said producers didn't do enough to protect them. Channel 4 pulled every previous series from its platforms and announced an external review.
One woman described being raped and threatened with an acid attack. A second woman reported her rape to both Channel 4 and CPL before her episodes even aired but they broadcast them anyway. And Shona Manderson, the only one of the three to go on record, describes the moment she realised Bradley Skelly had ejaculated inside her without asking her permission: "I was shocked, I was confused — we said we weren't doing that."
These are not rare or extreme stories. They are, almost word for word, the scenarios I use in my teaching every week.
Why consent scenarios work
One of my favourite tools is consent scenarios, written situations that I ask students to read aloud and discuss: is this consensual? Why or why not?
Here's one I use regularly:
"Kirsty meets Pete in a club and after kissing goes back to his. He fingers her in the taxi but once they are back at his house, she tells him she's changed her mind and doesn't want to have sex now. He tells her that she's a tease and could at least give him a blow job. She feels really guilty, so she does it."
What makes these so effective is the distance they create. When you're inside a situation, especially one with coercion or pressure involved, it can be impossible to see it clearly. Shona Manderson described it perfectly: "I completely lost my light... there were behaviours in my relationship which were not okay, and at the time I excused a lot of behaviour. I wasn't in a position to advocate for myself."
Giving young people a safe space to work through these situations before they're ever in them builds recognition, language, and the ability to ask for help earlier.
The marital "myth"
Marital rape only became illegal in England and Wales in 1991. Before that, marriage was legally considered implied, permanent consent. One of the "husbands" in the documentary used this logic, claiming he couldn't rape his "wife" - in a relationship that isn't even legally binding. This is just a legal hangover and a pathetic excuse.
I have genuinely never met a young person who believes this. They're usually horrified to learn the law only changed a few years before they were born. It's the adults in the room, teachers, support workers, professionals, who are more likely to be shocked. By the fact it changed, by how recently, or by the realisation that they themselves may have legal standing for something that happened to them. The generational gap is real, and it's a reminder that consent education isn't something you do once in Year 9 and tick off.
FRIES
I use the FRIES acronym when I want to go deeper than "did she say no." Because consent has layers, and all of them matter.
F — Freedom. Consent only counts if you're free to give it, and equally free to withhold it. Threats, guilt-tripping, and manipulation all take that freedom away. So does the kind of isolation and pressure that comes from being on a show like MAFS, filmed far from home, emotionally dependent on a stranger, with cameras everywhere. Being threatened with an acid attack is not a context in which anyone can freely consent to anything.
R — Reversal. Consent can be taken back at any point, and this is where so many people's understanding still falls short. Rape is very rarely a stranger, a dark alley, and a forceful attack. The Kirsty and Pete scenario explores this - what happened in the taxi does not carry over to what happens in the house. Any of these women could have consented to sex and then wanted it to stop, if their “husbands” didn’t stop then, that’s rape… simple.
I — Informed. You have to know what you're consenting to. Shona Manderson's experience is a textbook example. In the UK, stealthing, removing a condom without permission, or not withdrawing when that was what had been agreed, is illegal and classed as sexual assault. This is something I cover explicitly in my sessions because most people have never heard the word, let alone know it's a crime. Shona may not have known she had legal rights. More should have been done to tell her.
E — Enthusiastic. Both people need to be genuinely, actively into it, every single time. Not just going along with it to keep the peace. One of the women in the documentary describes her "husband" becoming rough and aggressive with her during sex. Exploring different kinds of sex can be exciting and fun, but only when there's enthusiastic consent to all of it. You cannot assume someone is into something because they haven't said they're not.
S — Specific. Saying yes to one thing is not saying yes to everything. Saying yes last time is not saying yes this time. Every act, every time, needs its own yes.
Beyond "she didn't say no"
Consent education has to grow up and get more honest about how sexual violence actually happens, through coercion, pressure, assumed permission, and control. These aren't edge cases. They're the norm. And the victim-blaming that's already followed these women coming forward is all the evidence we need that a huge part of the public still doesn't understand consent in any real way.
These women were incredibly brave. The reaction some of them have faced is exactly why most people never come forward.
What actually needs to change
Channel 4 and CPL have called their welfare system "gold standard." I'd challenge that, not just for MAFS, but for every reality dating show. You cannot genuinely claim to prioritise people's wellbeing while building a format that depends on manufactured intimacy, emotional isolation, and pressure.
If they're serious about change, here's where to start: every participant goes through real consent training before filming. Not a tick-box. Not a leaflet. Actual education covering coercive control, withdrawal of consent, stealthing, and what to do if something goes wrong.
We do it in schools every single week. A television production company with significantly more resources has no excuse.
