The Australian Human Rights Commission yesterday released its report titled ‘Change the Course: A National report on sexual assault and sexual harassment at Australian universities’ and the unnerving results mean we need to have a serious conversation with our university- student daughters and sons.
The Report was requested by 39 universities and looked into the experiences of around 30,000 students at those institutions on the nature, prevalence and reporting of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
Overall, the research found that around half of all university students surveyed were sexually harassed at least once in 2016, with seven per cent experiencing sexual assault at least once between 2015-2016.
These incidents were found to occur predominantly on campus or while travelling to or from university. Female students experienced sexual incidents up to three times more frequently than male and a significant amount knew the perpetrator in the situation. Most notably, a vast majority of students did not make a formal report or complaint.