Sex pests common at UCT

UCT’s discrimination and harassment office (Discho) has provided assistance in 16 complaints of sexual assault and rape and seven of sexual harassment between January and July 14 this year.

This is according to a mid-year report by the institution’s sexual assault response team (Sart), which said the office had received fewer complaints of sexual harassment compared with previous years

It is not known how many complaints the office had received previously.

In seven of the sexual offences cases, the suspects were not known to the alleged victims.

Ten of the sexual offence incidents occurred on campus – the majority of which took place in student residences, the report showed.

Lisa Vetten, a researcher specialising in gender and violence and working with higher education officials to develop policy and strategy frameworks to address gender-based violence on campuses, said: “While there has been a great deal of protest on rape on campus, there has not been much attention paid to sexual harassment. The report makes it clear that sexual harassment is a fairly common problem.”

Two senior members of UCT’s student representative council (SRC) who were suspended after being accused of rape and sexual harassment were recently cleared of charges.

SRC secretary-general Sinawo Thambo had been accused of raping a student.

Undergraduate academics co-ordinator Masixole Mlandu was alleged to have sexually harassed a student.

The incident allegedly took place in Mlandu’s room in Liesbeek after a night out in Rondebosch.

The report read: “Discho has highlighted a number of challenges they have faced in providing assistance and support to survivors. They specifically cite a case where a survivor was raped at an event outside Cape Town.

“When the survivor reported the incident to the police in the area where she was assaulted, she was informed by the SAPS member on duty that she could not open a criminal case as ‘she did not see the perpetrator’. She was also not helped with obtaining medical assistance. It was only on her return to Cape Town that she was assisted at Victoria Hospital in Wynberg.”

The report said Sart has been consulting with non-UCT psychosocial support structures to secure longer-term, post-trauma counselling for survivors.

The team is analysing the various policies, practices and procedures that are in place to deal with sexual harassment at UCT.

International models at centres of higher education are also being analysed.