Universities traumatise student student sexual misconduct survivors by mishandling cases | Anna Bull and Tiffany Page
Sexual harassment complaints processes in universities are a feminist issue. Our research has shown that these processes systematically place (mainly female) survivors of sexual misconduct at a disadvantage compared to those (mainly men) accused of sexual misconduct.
Why? Because in staff-student sexual misconduct complaints, students are silenced. They have no right to see evidence submitted against them, to attend a hearing into their complaint, to know the full outcome or to appeal it. Universities have even been known to reach confidential settlements with staff members without the student having any input.
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Take the experience of Ellie, a postgraduate student. She informally disclosed to someone at her university the severe ongoing sexual harassment she had experienced from her supervisor, which was escalated into a formal complaint. But more than a year later the complaints process was still dragging on, as her supervisor appealed the initial finding, and also made threats towards her. Suddenly she heard that the whole complaint had been dropped, although she wasn’t told why.
She later discovered that the university and staff member had reached a settlement, and he dropped his appeal in return for having the whole complaint disappear. However, as a witness rather than a party to the complaint, Ellie was not able to have any say in the university’s decision. She was not even allowed to talk about what had happened, and so was unable to defend herself against the rumours he was spreading about her within their academic field. This had a serious effect on her career and her mental health.

Cases like Ellie’s have led us, the co-founders of The 1752 Group (a research and lobby organisation addressing staff-student sexual misconduct in higher education), to introduce new guidance for universities to address this problem.
This has long been a problem we’ve been aware of: we were set up in 2016 following years of activism over sexual misconduct when some of our members were PhD students at Goldsmiths University. We came to recognise that this was a national issue, and that there was a lack of recognition – and resources – to tackle it.
In the past four years we have provided evidence to hold universities to account. In 2018 we revealed with the National Union of Students that 40% of students had experienced unwanted sexualised behaviour from staff. A further study found that students attempting to report staff sexual misconduct to their institution found that the process was lengthy, traumatising, and ultimately failed to keep them safe.
Our new guidance, written in partnership with Georgina Calvert-Lee from discrimination law firm McAllister Olivarius, looks to address the fact that many student complainants feel let down by the process their university used to handle their complaint. This stems from the fact that student complaints procedures and staff disciplinary procedures are maintained as two separate processes.
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After a student files a complaint of discriminatory behaviour against a member of staff, the process is channelled through the staff disciplinary procedure and students are excluded. This separation means that the students are not given many of the protections accorded to the staff member.
We recommend that changes be made to staff disciplinary processes to accord equal rights in the process to complainants and respondents. In Ellie’s case this would mean that any settlement would have to be agreed by all parties, including the complainant.
While many universities say they have a “zero-tolerance” approach to sexual misconduct, in practice they do not. They lack the procedures to ensure that students are not disadvantaged, traumatised and victimised by making a complaint. Along with long-term prevention and cultural change programmes, universities need transparent, joined-up procedures for staff-student complaints, investigations and decision-making procedures. This will help higher education institutions begin to rebuild trust in their complaints processes with students and the wider public.
Anna Bull is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Portsmouth and Tiffany Page is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Cambridge. Both are co-directors of The 1752 Group. Georgina Calvert-Lee, head of UK practice at McAllister Olivarius also contributed to this article.