One in five festivalgoers – and more than two in five of those who are female and under 40 – say they have been sexually assaulted or harassed at a UK festival, according to a survey.
YouGov found that 22% of all festivalgoers, 30% of female festivalgoers of all ages and 43% of those under 40 said they had faced some kind of unwanted sexual behaviour, the most common being “unwelcome and forceful dancing”.
The survey of 1,188 people who had attended a festival found that 11% of women and 3% of men reported having been sexually assaulted while conscious, while 4% of women and 2% of men said they had been sexually assaulted while unconscious or asleep. Just 2% of those who had been assaulted or harassed said they had reported it to police.
Paul Reed, the chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals, said festivals “have a duty to make their events as safe and secure and enjoyable” as possible, and encouraged festivalgoers to report incidents if they witnessed them.
“If people don’t intervene, then this behaviour becomes normalised,” he said. “People shouldn’t feel that they need to tolerate [at festivals] the type of behaviour that they wouldn’t tolerate in the street.”
Jen Calleja, a co-director of Good Night Out, an independent initiative helping the night-time economy tackle harassment, described the findings as “shocking but not surprising”.
She said: “We know that the vast amount of harassment and sexual assault is not reported and we know this comes down to stigma, fear of not being believed and a minimisation of what harassment is.”
Tracey Wise, the founder of Safe Gigs for Women, welcomed the research. “We have struggled to find anyone with any definite statistics on this before now. It gives us something to show to festival organisers so we can say you need to take this on board.”
In response to longstanding concerns about sexual assault at British music festivals, many events such as End of the Road and Boardmasters have adopted explicit zero-tolerance policies and provide dedicated welfare teams and hotlines.
- This story was amended on 18 June to clarify Paul Reed’s statement on the role that festivalgoers can play in reporting assault and harassment.
