It happened to someone I know

Any form of sexual misconduct, assault or harassment is never okay.

Sexual misconduct is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. It can include: sexual harassment; unwanted conduct which creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment; sexual assault; rape; physical unwanted sexual advances; intimidation or promising resources or benefits in return for sexual favours; distributing private and explicit images or video footage of an individual without their consent. 

 

Sexual assault is a criminal offence and contrary to the University’s Sexual Misconduct Policy. A person commits sexual assault if they intentionally touch another person, the touching is sexual and the person does not consent. 

 

It involves all unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature and ranges from pinching, embracing, groping and kissing, to rape and sexual assault which involves penetration without consent. 

 

Sexual harassment is unwanted and unwelcome words, conduct, or behaviour of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, embarrassing, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the recipient. It is a misuse of personal or institutional power and often based on a person’s gender although it is rarely about sexual desire. 

Sexual harassment can range from behaviour that stems from obvious to anyone or subtler behaviour less obvious to either the person responsible for the behaviour or to the recipient. Often the impact is not felt or witnessed immediately. The impact may go beyond the recipient to people who see or hear what happens or who try to offer support.

Sexual harassment can include but is not limited to: catcalling, following, making unnecessary and unwanted physical contact, sexual jokes and comments, giving unwelcome personal gifts, wolf-whistling, leering, derogatory comments, unwelcome comments about a person’s body or clothing, unwelcome questions about a person’s sex life and/or sexuality, engaging in unwelcome sexual propositions, invitations and flirtation, making somebody feel uncomfortable through displaying or sharing sexual material. Sexual harassment does not necessarily occur face to face and can be in the form of emails, visual images (such as sexually explicit pictures on walls in a shared environment), social media, telephone, text messages and image based sexual abuse, such as revenge porn and upskirting. 

If you think you have been the target of sexual misconduct, assault or harassment, it may be hard to know what to do or how to feel. What happened was not your fault. What you do next is your choice.

Report - If you are a mandatory university reporter, you are obligated to report the disclosure made by a member of the University’s community as soon as possible, using the Report and Support platform. 

Talk - If someone you know has been affected, you can encourage them to seek support. 

Seek Support - There are a number of specialist organisations that provide specialist support, including counselling for those affected by harassment. You could encourage your them to reach out to such support. 

A list of organisations can be found here:

Rape Crisis - https://rapecrisis.org.uk/

Samaritans - www.samaritans.org

Mind - https://www.mind.org.uk/

NHS - https://111.nhs.uk/