Summary
That brings our coverage of the AHRC’s landmark survey to a close.
Here are the report’s main points:
- One in 10 female university students say they have been sexually assaulted in the past two years
- Half of all students were sexually harassed in 2016
- Only 4% of students believe their universities are doing enough to provide sexual assault support, and only 9% of those who had been sexually assaulted on campus reported it to their university
- The report called on universities to develop specialist support services, and to establish a national independent review into sexual assault at residential colleges.
Submissions from survivors themselves told us how:
- Students were deterred from reporting by universities failing to provide anonymous reporting, or by being forced into face-to-face “mediations” with their abusers
- Residential colleges were particularly high risk due to “degrading” hazing practices, sexist attitudes towards women and a strong drinking culture.
Universities have promised to implement the report’s recommendations, but given how vocal advocates have been of past “institutional failures”, the strength of their response and the timeline of implementation will be something to keep an eye on.
Updated
Here’s a final submission from someone who used to work as a residential tutor, who contacted Guardian Australia anonymously to share their story:
I was working in one of the residential colleges as a member of the staff, and was supporting a student through a case of sexual assault.
It was escalated to the university and an internal investigation was conducted (I was not involved in the investigation, but sat in during the interviews). Basically, it was a case of the student’s word against the perpetrator’s and therefore the university concluded that there was not enough evidence to take any action.
Based on our experience and from the testimonies given by both sides, my colleagues at the college who were involved in supporting the student and I knew that the victim’s account is more likely to be true than not, but we could not do anything without proof. And because the report came back without any conclusive result, we could not take any official action against the perpetrator.
It was frustrating and I felt that we had truly let the victim down. To make it worse, the victim and the alleged perpetrator had to remain staying in the same college till the end of the year.
Updated
Some personal stories from Twitter that have been shared with my colleague Calla Wahlquist. All have been published with their permission.
As undergrads, my classmates & I were harassed & stalked by the same student. He followed us & did PUA experiments on us 'for his writing'.
— alisonwhittakergold (@AJ_Whittaker) August 1, 2017
@callapilla pic.twitter.com/7FHtaZ58fr
— Sarah B (@flythehighlife) August 1, 2017
“The universities often actually make it worse”
Here’s a video from Fair Agenda featuring speakers from End Rape on Campus, Hunting Ground Australia and student councils.
They speak a bit more about how university processes let students down, either by acting too slowly or not at all.
As we’ve seen in the report, there are a number of barriers that contribute to the “damning statistic” that only 4% of students believe their universities are doing enough.
Updated
Here’s some more on methodology. The End Rape On Campus ambassador, Nina Funnell, has criticised the final report for scaling back its own sample size from an earlier census-esque proposal.
The original survey was planned for all 1.3 million Australian university students but was reduced and only sent to 300,000, according to Funnell.
Of those 300,000, only 31,000 answered.
“Perhaps the response rate would have been higher had the AHRC not trusted universities to select when to send the survey out,” she said.
“Left to their own devices many of the universities sent the survey out during student exams when students have more pressing concerns.”
Updated
Sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins speaks
“In a lecture theatre of 100 students, two have been sexually assaulted.”
Here’s the sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, talking through the report’s findings this morning.
She said one in five students had been sexually harassed in a university setting last year, with women twice as likely as men to be sexually harassed and three times as likely to be sexually assaulted.
It’s also worth noting that Jenkin’s hypothetical lecture theatre example only counts on-campus incidents of assault. If we count all incidents, that number rises to seven students out of 100, and one in 10 for female students.
Updated
No disciplinary recommendations for offenders
Today’s report has been criticised by some advocates for implying that universities only have an obligation to deal with incidents that happen in a university setting – either on campus or at a university event.
But the co-women’s officer at the University of Sydney, Imogen Grant, told Guardian Australia today that assaults that occur outside of university grounds can still be reported to universities because they involve student perpetrators.
She says we should keep in mind that student offenders can be disciplined by their university:
Most incidents of assault occur around the broader university community, in share houses and at social events.
But the perpetrators are still fellow students. And if the perpetrator is a fellow student, you can report that to the university and you can expect disciplinary action as well.
It’s also an issue raised by End Rape On Campus ambassador Nina Funnell, who said in today’s media conference that the report’s 10-point plan had no recommendations for improving disciplinary proceedings against offenders.
In response, the chair of Universities Australia, Prof Margaret Gardner, said she had “begun a conversation” with universities about new misconduct proceedings.
Here’s a submission from the report itself that claims this issue has been overlooked:
A woman who was sexually assaulted on numerous occasions by her intimate partner, a fellow university student, was told the university had “no power to do anything, because none of it occurred on-campus”.
She felt that the university should have taken action, because she was aware of the perpetrator sexually assaulting at least two other women at her university.
Updated
I lived on campus. The results of this report do not surprise me.
At some point in the pub crawl, usually on the walk between pubs two and three, one of the guys at the front of the group would tip their head back and start singing: “I wish all the women.”
It’s a classic rhyming song, where the lead singer makes observations like, ‘I wish all the women/were waves in the ocean/and if I was a surfer/I’d ride them with my motion,’ and everybody else sings it back.
By the train ride home even the most devoted singers would have run out of verses and switched to ‘Beastiality is best’. The hook is everybody chanting: “Beastiality is best, boys, beastiality is best. Fuck a wallaby!”
My two years living at a residential college at an Australian university were some 10 years ago now, so I can only remember what we were supposed to do to an owl.
Details about the culture of sexual harassment and prevalence sexual assault at residential colleges contained in the AHRC report were appalling, but they did not surprise me. That’s just O-week. We had a golden bed springs award.
I liked living at college. I was new to the city and did not know anyone and at college I had ready-made friends, some of whom remain close friends now.
It’s only later that you think about what happened and realise it’s not normal. The Eagle Rock thing? We did that. There was a weekly newsletter about who had slept with who. Everyone told rape jokes. We drank so much we couldn’t move.
People who did not join in were ostracised. I remember one occasion where a woman from another hall said she had been raped from a male from our hall. The universal judgment was that she was a slut, she was just making it up. Women did that all the time, didn’t they?
Updated
The many barriers to reporting
As mentioned earlier today, only 9% of students who had been sexually assaulted on their campus reported the attack to their university.
Here are some examples, in survivors’ own words, of why they decided not to pursue the perpetrators of their assault or harassment.
Multiple submissions said they were deterred by their university’s failure to provide anonymous reporting:
Our cohort for our course is incredibly small. I felt too scared to report these incidents. I couldn’t have action taken against him because everyone would find out.
Another student had their identity disclosed to their rapist’s friends:
The university broke confidentiality by informing organisers of the camp (i.e: the rapist’s friends) what I’d done. People spread lies about me and I was ostracised from the club.
Another said the university forced them into a process of face-to-face “mediation” with their harasser:
When I complained to the head of school I had a “mediation” session with the professor who was harassing me ... he stormed out and slammed the door. He wasn’t told to change his behaviour, the “mediation session” was all that was done.
For many respondents there was always an underlying social pressure not to report, stemming from a fear of being ridiculed, ostracised or shamed for not doing enough.
Said one:
It was my word against his. He’s known as being a really nice friendly guy so I didn’t think a lot of people would believe me or care.
Updated
I’m going to hand over the reins to my colleague Naaman Zhou, who was at the launch in Sydney today.
Updated
Residential colleges particularly high risk
Residential colleges at Australian universities are full of students from regional and remote areas, as well as international students, many of whom are living away from home for the first time. They’re usually co-ed.
They’re also one of the highest risk places on campus for sexual assault and sexual harassment, according to the AHRC survey. Twelve per cent of women and 3% of men who were sexually assaulted at a university in 2015 and 2016 said it had occurred at a residential college.
The report found that hazing practices at colleges often involved excessive alcohol consumption and humiliating or degrading acts, “and, in many cases, sexual harassment and sexual assault”.
According to one submission:
The aim is to get the freshers as drunk as possible. Maybe a secondary aim is to make them look as ridiculous and embarrassing as possible, giving them costumes, props, and even sometimes smearing food all over them.
Said another:
You had to participate, there was nothing you could do about it. The administration knew about this and they condoned this. The students had no power whatsoever, you couldn’t say anything.
Hazing practices described in the report included getting female students to “run the gauntlet”, which meant running down a hallway where male students stood in every doorway with the nozzle of a cask of wine sticking out their fly.
Female students were required to kneel before each male resident and “drink from his sack”.
Another college had a ritual where all first-year female students had to remove their top when a certain song was played. They would be surrounded by male students and unable to leave the dance floor with their top still on.
Other submissions described year-round traditions that focused on residents’ sexual exploits.
Conquests of guys getting girls from other colleges were broadcasted weekly in this gossip session the whole college had, where you would submit your experiences to an executive, and on weeknights we would gather and hear about everyone’s conquests that week ... women were described as objects or trophies.
The report also found that power relationships between resident advisers – usually senior students – and first-year students, as well as the close proximity created by living in residential colleges and the easy access to both alcohol and bedrooms, were contributing factors in the high rates of sexual assault.
Updated
Dropping out because of sexual assault
In addition to the survey data, the report contains details from almost 2,000 written submissions, mostly from students and former students sharing their experiences of sexual assault and harassment.
Some said they dropped out of university to avoid bumping into their attacker.
One person wrote:
I left the course and tried studying by distance education but have now been so traumatised by “higher education” institutions that I don’t feel able to set foot into study again.
Said another:
He delayed my education by a year and made me afraid to go to uni and at the time I truly didn’t see how bad the impact he was having on me, not even when I dropped out.
The release of the report prompted other people to share their stories. This tweet is posted with the author’s permission.
The reality of sexual assault and feeling unheard/unwelcome was one of the main reasons I dropped out of my phys/chem undergraduate degree.
— Xanthea (@Xanthrax_) August 1, 2017
Updated
Fact check: who actually initiated this survey?
There has been a fair bit of debate about whether Universities Australia was correct in saying that it commissioned the AHRC survey, when the process began two years earlier with lobbying from the Hunting Ground Project Australia.
One of those who raised this issue is Anna Hush, an ambassador for End Rape on Campus Australia. She was at the launch today.
She writes:
We’ve heard a lot today from Universities Australia, the peak body representing all 39 universities. Let’s fact check some of the claims they made.
Belinda Robinson, the chief executive of UA, wrote an op ed in the ABC yesterday, claiming that ‘vice-chancellors at 39 of our universities asked an independent body [the AHRC]’ to survey students’. However, when the prospect of a national survey was first raised by the AHRC in 2014, residential colleges flat out refused to participate, citing risk to their reputations as a major concern. Indeed, this survey was originally proposed by the Hunting Ground Australia Project, who raised $150,000 in seed funding. Only once it was clear that it would go ahead with or without them, did universities decide to get involved.
Hush said many vice-chancellors had been “resistant” to calls for a national survey before making that public commitment. She echoes the words of National Union of Students president, Sophie Johnston: This is not a day for universities to congratulate themselves on what they have done, it’s a day to acknowledge the victims and the enormous amount of work still to do.
Hush writes:
It is only through the hard work of students, survivors and advocates that this issue has been brought into the national spotlight. And glossy press releases aren’t enough from universities – we need to see decisive and rigorous action taken to prevent sexual violence.
The Hunting Ground Project campaign director, Allison Henry, confirmed that it provided the seed funding in 2015 to support a national student sexual assault survey.
Henry says:
We would not have this report today but for the thousands of students and former students who participated in the survey or provided a submission. For many, we appreciate that telling their story was a harrowing experience and we thank those survivors for their vital and courageous contribution. We hope that today is a turning point and that the necessary changes will now be implemented.
Universities Australia pledged $1m to fund the survey in February 2016 and asked the AHRC to conduct a national survey of Australian university students, as part of the national Respect. Now. Always. initiative. That is the support the UA president, Prof Margaret Gardner, was talking about, when she said UA had commissioned the survey.
So, who’s right?
Well, both of them, but it does seem UA might be overselling it by saying it commissioned work that had already begun.
According to the sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins:
The Hunting Ground Australia Project’s advocacy was instrumental in driving this work from its early stages. The Hunting Ground Australia Project also provided the commission with $150,000 in seed funding to conduct the national survey.
Universities, though their peak body Universities Australia, contributed the bulk of the funding to conduct the survey, without which the commission would not have been able to implement the survey at all 39 Australian universities.
Updated
How have universities responded?
The Australian Human Rights Commission may not have provided an embargoed copy of the report to media or advocates, but universities have had it for a week. Their responses, and that of their peak body, Universities Australia, have been quite polished.
Some, like the Australian National University, sent a prerecorded video around to all students and staff explaining the findings.
First off the rank was Universities Australia, which provided its 20-page response under embargo to ensure journalists were familiar with it before the AHRC report was released.
It announced a 10-point action plan:
- Develop an evidence-based respectful relationships program.
- Recommit to the Respect. Now. Always initiative as a long-term program to prevent and address sexual assault and harassment.
- Establish new principles for interaction between postgraduate students and staff, in collaboration with the National Tertiary Education Union and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Association.
- Provide a new, university-specific education and awareness training program to the leadership groups and staff of Australian universities to create awareness of unacceptable behaviours.
- Provide more specialist first-responder training to frontline university staff about how to effectively and compassionately respond when someone discloses that they have been sexually assaulted.
- Provide specialist professional development for university councillors to provide better support to people affected by sexual assault and sexual harassment.
- Develop a set of best-practice guidelines for all universities outlining how to respond to reports of sexual assault and harassment in a timely and compassionate way.
- Establish an interim 24/7 support telephone line, operated by Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, to support students and the university community in the three months immediately after the release of the report. That phone line began operating yesterday and will run to 30 November.
- Undertake a follow-up survey in three years to measure the effectiveness of changes put in place in the wake of this report.
- Make Respect. Now. Always campaign materials available to residential colleges and halls to assist them in preventing sexual assaults and harassment, and talk to colleges about providing first-responder training.
What about the universities themselves?
All 39 Australian universities have published the data from the survey that relates to them specifically, and most have already committed to implementing all nine recommendations in the report, as well as the initiatives outlined by University Australia.
The University of Tasmania (survey results here) has appointed its dean of law, Margaret Otlowski, to the new role of pro-vice-chancellor of culture and wellbeing to oversee its response to the survey. ANU (results here) has appointed external consultants to undertake an independent review of its policies, commissioned former diplomat Donnell Wheeler as chair of its steering group and appointed a full-time rape councillor. Sydney University (results here) has appointed the former sex discrimination commissioner Liz Broderick to work with its residential colleges.
Deakin University (results here) has begun delivering more training to frontline staff with the assistance of the Barwon Centre Against Sexual Assault. The University of Melbourne (results here) has formed a “respect taskforce”, chaired by deputy vice-chancellor Richard James, and “making the fact that the university finds sexual assault and sexual harassment unacceptable more visible on campuses”.
A number of universities have either already rolled out compulsory online training in consent and respectful relationships to all students, or announced they plan to do so next year.
Updated
Why did people choose not to report sexual assault?
The majority of students who were harassed or assaulted did not make a formal complaint to their university (94% and 87% respectively). Students were also much more likely to seek support from outside the university rather than from the university.
For those who did not make a formal report on harassment, the most commonly cited reason was they did not think it was serious enough (68% of respondents).
However, a significant proportion of students did not report it as they were unaware of how to do so (16%) or who to make the formal complaint to (12%):
The results for not reporting sexual assaults were worse, with 25% of respondents not reporting it as they did not know who they could make a formal complaint to:
This issue was common across all students who responded, with the majority of students (60% and 62% respectively) having little or no knowledge of where to go to make a complaint about sexual harassment or sexual assault.
Updated
What are the recommendations?
The AHRC report is 264 pages long and very detailed. While we comb through it, here is a summary of its nine recommendations, which can be found in the report starting at page 168.
Recommendation one: Vice-chancellors should take direct responsibility for the implementation of these recommendations, including decision-making and monitoring and evaluation of actions taken. They should also establish an advisory body within their own institution, with representatives from the university’s senior leadership, students, academic staff, affiliated residential colleges, student services and a frontline sexual assault service. That advisory body should publicly report on the university’s progress towards implementation of these recommendations within 18 months of the release of the report, so by the end of 2018.
Recommendation two: Universities must develop a plan for addressing the drivers of sexual assault and harassment which includes education for students and staff about behaviours that constitute sexual assault. Those education programs should target all levels of the organisation and be based on best practice and research, as well as consultation with students
Recommendation three: Universities should widely disseminate information to both students and staff about: how to report sexual assault, the university’s procedures for responding to a report of sexual assault, and available medical and counselling services.
Recommendation four: Within a year of the release of this report, universities should commission an independent, expert-led review of their existing policies and response pathways to sexual assault and harassment to assess the effectiveness so existing policies and make specific recommendations to each university about the best-practice responses to sexual assault and harassment. Internal reviews should occur in the mean time.
Recommendation five: Universities should conduct an assessment to identify staff members and student representatives within their institution most likely to receive disclosures of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and provide those people with training in responding to such disclosures.
Recommendation six: Universities should ensure that information about individual reports of sexual assault and harassment is collected and stored confidentially, including details of steps taken following the complaint, support or assistance received, and time taken for the university respond. Every six months, vice-chancellors should review those de-identified reports to ensure their processes are working correctly and identify any gaps.
Recommendation seven: Within six months of the report universities should conduct an audit of their counselling services to assess their capacity and whether they have received training in working with sexual assault survivors.
Recommendation eight: Universities should engage an independent body to conduct the national university student survey of sexual assault and sexual harassment at three-yearly intervals to track progress in reducing the prevalence of these incidents at a sector-wide level.
Recommendation nine: Residential colleges and university residences should commission a separate, independent, expert-led review of the factors which contribute to sexual assault and sexual harassment in their settings.
Updated
Where were students most likely to be assaulted?
The report from the AHRC shows that students who were sexually assaulted in the university setting were most frequently assaulted at a social event, such as a university or residence pub crawl or party:
For sexual harassment in the university setting, the report shows the most frequent location was on public transport:
There were some differences between genders also, with males more likely to be harassed in a university teaching space, while females were more likely to be harassed on public transport. Trans and gender diverse students were more likely to be harassed on the university grounds.
Updated
The education minister, Simon Birmingham, says he has written to all Australian universities asking for their response to the Australian Human Rights Commission report.
My statement on the @AusHumanRights survey on sexual assault and harassment @uniaus #RespectNowAlways pic.twitter.com/6beKzYmHL2
— Simon Birmingham (@Birmo) August 1, 2017
Here’s the heart of that statement:
To ensure our institutions lead the world in tackling these problems I have today written to each university to seek their response to the survey’s findings and recommendations given their legal obligation to provide a safe learning environment ...
Our government will work with universities to ensure they address the findings and recommendations of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report and implement changes that will make them safer and more inclusive environments in the future.
Updated
How the university figures compare with other surveys
It’s difficult to directly compare the results of the university report with other surveys that measure the rate of sexual assault, such as those produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as each survey has different methods for collecting and displaying data.
With that caveat in mind, here are some national figures for some wider context. The 2012 personal safety survey from the ABS found 2.2% of women aged 18 to 24 had experienced sexual assault within the past 12 months. This is consistent with the 2.3% figure of on-campus sexual assaults of females reported in the university survey, but much lower than the 10% figure for all sexual assaults experienced by females in 2015 and 2016.
The university report’s rate of sexual assaults is generally higher than those contained in the ABS victims of crime survey for 2016 also, though the same patterns of gender are consistent between both – that is, females are much more likely to be the victims of an assault.
Updated
Call to ‘acknowledge the complicity of universities in the harm suffered by survivors’
End Rape on Campus Australia founder and director, Sharna Bremner, says she was “devastated” by comments by Universities Australia today, which she says underplayed the role of sexual assault survivors in bringing the report about.
Bremner writes that the AHRC survey began as part of the Hunting Ground Australia project, with Universities Australia joining at a later stage. Even the support hotline, she said, was prompted by lobbying by advocates:
As someone who was part of the Australian Human Rights Commission working group, the launch of today’s report was devastating. It wasn’t the data that emerged, however, that was upsetting. We already suspected that’s how the results would look. The true devastation came from listening to the AHRC and Universities Australia’s Margaret Gardner take credit for the work that was done by survivors, students and advocates.
Despite being part of the AHRC working group, I was not provided with a copy of the report until the public was able to access it at 10am today. Universities, however, all received it last week. Enough time to digest the information and release glossy PR statements, telling us that they “take sexual assault very seriously”. It’s disappointing that, at no point during the launch today, did Margaret Gardner acknowledge the complicity of universities in the harm suffered by survivors.
True change begins with transparency and an admission that there’s a problem. If universities can’t give credit to survivors for their hard work or even admit that they too have played a role in the harm suffered by students, we may never see that true change eventuate.
Updated
‘These numbers are incredibly damning’
Abby Stapleton, national women’s officer at the National Union of Students, says the report shows that sexual assault and harassment is occurring at levels universities simply cannot ignore, marking a turning point for students and survivors of sexual assault.
She writes:
Fifty-one per cent of students are harassed at university and 6.9% are sexually assaulted or raped. These numbers are incredibly damning and indicate the extent of the institutional failings of Australian universities.
Ninety-four per cent of students who were sexually harassed did not report to their university, 87% of students who were sexually assaulted or raped did not report to their university. This is perhaps the strongest evidence to argue for change and reform at university, an issue that student activists have been campaigning on for decades. This low reporting rate is strongly attributed to inadequate and ineffective reporting mechanisms at university. Students simply don’t know where to seek help.
Survivors also do not report because so often universities choose to support the perpetrators rather than the victim, university management would rather sweep sexual assault under the carpet than take steps to prevent it.
This is simply not good enough, universities have failed to protect students and provide vital support to survivors. Universities need to acknowledge their short comings and apologise to the students who have been left unprotected.
Updated
Just on that question of under-reporting, here’s a comment from Ellie Greenwood, an ambassador for End Rape on Campus Australia.
The report shows that a significant number of survivors indicated that they didn’t report to the university because they didn’t think the issue was “serious enough” or because they “didn’t need help” from their university. Universities might say that this demonstrates that they aren’t doing anything wrong, but that’s not the case.
It is common for sexual assault survivors to downplay what happened to them. Many don’t identify their experiences as sexual assault even if they were. It is also common for survivors to struggle to reach out for support because of the stigma associated with sexual assault, and because they don’t want to be a burden to others. In the case of universities, it is common for survivors not to know that their university has the responsibility or ability to provide them with support. Thinking that an assault wasn’t “serious enough” to report to the university might mean that the survivor believes that the university won’t think it is “serious enough”, even if it has had a significant impact on them.
Universities that are serious about encouraging reporting of sexual assault will take these results as an impetus to provide more holistic support to survivors, as well as to make it clear what other action the university can take. If survivors feel truly supported by their universities, and believe their university will take action on their behalf, we might see a rise in reporting.
Greenwood is one of a number of advocates invited by Guardian Australia to share their thoughts on the survey in this blog. If you’d like to do the same, email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com
Updated
A few responses to that question about whether the methodology of the survey could lead to under-reporting.
The harm has been done anyway! Ugly Qs are hard indeed but if you dont ask about the ugly, you wont know about it. Underreporting is worse. pic.twitter.com/nLHR29sdCE
— Aurélie Pankowiak (@AureliePanko) August 1, 2017
You are talking about young people at an age when they may not realise they are being harassed, so yes: under-reporting
— Carl Di Stefano (@GruntledChalkie) August 1, 2017
Before we get into the responses and reaction to the report, I want to go back and look at the introductory comments from Rosalind Croucher, the new president of the Australian Human Rights Commission.
It was quite an interesting speech.
Croucher said the overwhelming feeling she got from the report was the importance of support from bystanders – friends, peers, fellow students – both in helping victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment come forward, and in changing the culture so those behaviours were no longer acceptable. It was, she said, not unlike the sentiments seen in anti-bullying campaigns, or from survivors of family violence.
She said:
They want to feel safe. They want to feel respected. And they want others to acknowledge the pain of their experience. They want others to support them in their healing. And they want things to change so others were not subjected to what they were, and this means a change in culture.
She said cultural change “has a long horizon and happens incrementally” and required universities to:
... understand the difficulties and delicacies of sexual exploration at a time when young people are spreading their wings both personally and intellectually.
That means watching for:
... where lines are crossed into unwelcome and unlawful zones.
As Kate Jenkins later explained in more detail, she said residential colleges were:
Places where things can go wrong.
Updated
A few final questions.
Prof Margaret Gardner is asked if universities would look at stripping the degrees of people who were convicted, after they graduated, of a sexual assault that occurred on campus while they were students.
Gardner says they have not “fully debated” that issue but it will be looked at as part of a broader investigation into responses to student misconduct. The exact rules and punishments will be up to each individual university to decide and administer.
Kate Jenkins is asked what effort was made to engage international students in the survey.
She says a number of international students were sent the survey, as part of efforts to get a representational sample of respondents, but the survey was only available in English.
Updated
Methodology corner
The AHRC has received a lot of criticism from people who work in the sexual assault support sector about the design of the survey. Firstly, the survey was originally intended to be sent to all university students in Australia but was instead sent to a representational sample of students, and only received 30,000 responses.
The survey questions themselves have also been criticised. The questions relating to sexual harassment were detailed and behaviour-based. That is, they listed a number of behaviours that constitute sexual harassment – being groped, catcalled, whistled at – and asked students to nominate if they had experienced those behaviours.
The same format was not used for the survey questions relating to sexual assault, which basically meant responders had to nominate whether or not the had been sexually assaulted rather than just identifying behaviours that they had experienced. The concern of advocates is that by not using behaviour-based questions for sexual assault, the prevalence of sexual assault would have been under reported.
Kate Jenkins was asked about the decision to design the survey in that way:
The advice we received at that time was it might be more harmful to ask the same details with regard to sexual assault.
Jenkins said the survey still showed “significant experiences of sexual assault” and was approved by an independent review, which found the statistics gathered by the survey were consistent with previously reported rates.
She added:
We have absolutely most definitely heard students raise the concern that that might not be the most effective way to do the survey.
Updated
Should we warn parents about this?
The AHRC press conference has moved on to questions, and Kate Jenkins has been asked whether parents should be warned that their students could be exposed to higher rates of sexual assault and harassment, particularly at residential colleges.
Jenkins says yes, both parents and students need to be aware.
The next question is directed at Prof Margaret Gardner. Universities Australia has been heavily criticised for “taking over” the report and for not taking action sooner.
Gardner:
We are very sorry for what has happened to people who are victims or survivors of sexual assault. It is unacceptable. We are committed to taking action to ensure we can better prevent sexual assault and sexual harassment on our campuses and we can provide better support to students who may have been victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment. That is our commitment today and it is a commitment of all 39 universities.
She continues:
There have been things that have happened that are not acceptable … but our commitment here today is we have been listening to what has been said and we are prepared to act.
Updated
Data editor Nick Evershed has been combing through the report.
Sophie Johnston, president of the National Union of Students, says universities must acknowledge that “every sexual assault is a tragedy” and that all universities in Australia have handled this issue poorly.
The findings of the report will be confronting for universities, she said, but it will be much more confronting for the “countless” survivors and victims of sexual assault and harassment.
Johnston said:
We will not accept hearing universities congratulating themselves on being slightly below the national averages.
There is nothing to celebrate ... There is nothing to revel in having a few less sexual assaults or rapes than the university next door.
Updated
The Universities Australia national chair and Monash University vice-chancellor, Prof Margaret Gardner, said Australian universities were committed to implementing change, starting by introducing those 10 initiatives mentioned earlier.
Gardner said universities were committed to working in partnership with students and the AHRC to address the issue.
She also spoke directly to victims:
We are sorry that this happened to you. Sexual assault is a crime. The person who sexually assaulted you had no right to do what they did. It is not your fault.
Updated
Recommendations: residential colleges need further review
The report made nine recommendations, the most significant of which is a call for an “independent expert-led review” into residential colleges to identify measures to address the high prevalence of sexual assault in that setting.
Other recommendations include: strong and visible leadership from universities with a clear and transparent approach to these recommendations; targeted education campaigns to change attitudes and behaviours to sexual assault and harassment; improved responses to sexual assault and harassment including new reporting measures; and monitoring and evaluating the measures taken by universities to ensure they are evidence-based and effective.
Updated
Kate Jenkins is running through the damning submissions the AHRC received when compiling the report. The backbone of the report is data from the 30,000 students who completed the sexual assault survey, but it also received 1,849 submissions – a record for the commission.
The report found “unacceptable rates” of sexual assault and harassment at Australian universities, and particularly, “worryingly”, high rates at residential colleges and on-campus accommodation.
She mentions a student who was harassed and kissed by a lecturer on a bus and was so scared she asked her sister to call her at the same time each day so she could avoid him; a student whose classmate flashed her his genitals in class; and a student who was groped by a classmate.
At residential colleges, she said, sexual assault sometimes occurred on the very first day. She spoke of O-week camps, held for students from regional and remote areas to get to know the fellow students at their residential college before the semester began.
A woman told us she was raped by a senior student leader who was running one of these camps. She later heard that he had previously raped another student at one of these camps and no action was taken a result.
Jenkins said students said the colleges were aware of the culture that led to high rates of sexual assault and harassment.
Perhaps most worryingly, there was a perception that colleges were aware of this behaviour and they condoned it.
Updated
The sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, is running through the key findings.
#ChangeTheCourse @Kate_Jenkins_ 1.6% of students sexually assaulted in a university setting in 2015 & 2016 pic.twitter.com/4nAwyNd7QN
— AusHumanRights (@AusHumanRights) August 1, 2017
You can watch the livestream here or read the full report here.
Updated
Half of all university students sexually harassed in 2016
The report has been released. My colleague Naaman Zhou has a copy and has sent through this summary of key findings.
- 51% of all university students were sexually harassed on at least one occasion in 2016.
- 10% of female students were sexually assaulted in 2015 or 2016. This was three times the rate of male students (2.9%). Women were also twice as likely as men to be sexually harassed.
- A quarter (26%) of students were harassed in a university setting – which includes on campus, while travelling to or from university, or at an off-campus event organised by a university.
- Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students and students with a disability were more likely to be sexually assaulted.
- The “vast majority” of students who were sexually assaulted or harassed did not make a formal complaint to their university. Students said they did not know where to make a report, or were unsure of how serious their experience was.
- Only 6% of students thought their university was doing enough to provide clear sexual harassment procedures. Only 4% thought they were doing enough for sexual assault procedures.
- The amount of on-campus sexual assaults was surprisingly low – only 1.6% across both 2015 and 2016.
Updated
Watch the livestream of the launch
Universities Australia is livestreaming the launch of the report on it website. You can watch it here.
UA will announce a range of initiatives in response to the report, as part of the same launch. The bulk of those initiatives are embargoed to 10am but I can tell you two.
One: it will develop a “respectful relationships education program” for university students.
Two: it will upgrade or extend first-responder training at universities to more frontline staff, so more staff are trained to respond to sexual assault.
Updated
Once the report is released we will start sharing reaction and comments from students, survivors and people working in this sector.
If you want to share your story, email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com. If you’re happy for me to share it here, please say so, otherwise all details will remain in confidence.
Alternatively you can share your thoughts with me and everyone else on Twitter. I’m @callapilla.
Updated
Sophie Johnston, president of the National Union of Students, is one of those who received a briefing about the report yesterday. She told ABC news this morning that the results were “heartbreaking”.
... after decades and decades of silence from so many victims, to actually hear the voices and see these stories is very confronting.
You can read Johnston’s full comments here:
Updated
Updated
If you find today's media coverage distressing, support is available. pic.twitter.com/aZfNoLIvqE
— EROC Australia (@EROCAustralia) July 31, 2017
‘Today belongs to you’
End Rape on Campus Australia launched a powerful campaign on Saturday featuring the voices of survivors of sexual assault. The campaign is called #BelieveSurvivors
It posted a message of support on Facebook this morning urging them not to let universities take credit for the release of the AHRC report, which it says is the result of months of student campaigning.
Whether you took part in the survey, made a submission, reported to your university, or not: we believe you. Whether you’ve told your story publicly or if you’ve never told anyone at all: we believe you. We stand with you. You are not alone.
Irrespective of what you hear in the public statements, news coverage and media releases, today belongs to you. We didn’t arrive here because of the “bravery” of universities, or the determination of vice-chancellors. We got here because of the strength and determination of survivors and their allies. Today belongs to you.
Updated
What can we expect?
According to the briefing given to some stakeholders yesterday, the report will make a number of statistical findings before making nine recommendations. Eight of those recommendations will be aimed at universities themselves, while one will be aimed at non-university-owned residential colleges.
The key findings, Guardian Australia understands, are:
- Women are sexually assaulted at higher rates than men
- LGBTIQ people, particularly trans people, are sexually assaulted at a much higher rate than women
- More than half of people who reported being sexually assaulted knew the perpetrator
- About two-thirds of perpetrators are male
- Post-grad students are more likely to have been sexually assaulted by a staff or faculty member
- The majority of sexual assaults occur at residential campuses/on-campus accommodation, or at university parties
- The majority of reported cases of sexual harassment occurred on public transport
- About three-quarters of university students had never witnessed sexual assault or harassment, and of those who had two-thirds took no action
This is certainly not an exhaustive list of all the findings made by the Australian Human Rights Commission. It’s also not particularly surprising to anyone familiar with studies on the prevalence of sexual assault. As one stakeholder said: there’s nothing new here.
Updated
Sexual assault on campus report to be released today
The Australian Human Rights Commission will release its long-awaited report on sexual assault at university campuses at 10am.
The report is being launched in Sydney, at a joint event with Universities Australia, the peak body representing Australia’s 39 universities. All of those universities received a full copy of the report last week but no one else, including media, victims’ groups, or even people who were part of the working group, has been given a copy.
Some stakeholders who represent victims’ groups received a one-hour briefing yesterday, and have told Guardian Australia they were not impressed.
We’ll get into those key findings and some of that criticism in a moment, but first, survivors of sexual assault should know that this blog will contain details and first-person accounts of sexual assault, and could be triggering.
Universities Australia has set up a hotline to help people affected by the release of the report. It is 1800 572 224.
Alternatively, you can call 1800 RESPECT, the sexual assault and family violence support line. That’s 1800 737 732, or online counselling here.
Updated
