Half face sex pests in Australian universities

A survey of more than 30,000 students at Australian universities found that half of the respondents had been sexually harassed and almost one in 50 had been assaulted on campuses – but few made a formal complaint.

The Australian Human Rights Commission, which surveyed students across all 39 of the country’s universities in 2015-16, concluded that sexual assault and sexual harassment occurred at unacceptable rates.

The survey found 51 per cent of students were sexually harassed at least once in 2016, 6.9 per cent reported being sexually assaulted in 2015 or 2016, with 1.6 per cent saying the assaults occurred in a university setting. But only nine per cent of those sexually assaulted and two per cent of those sexually harassed made formal complaints.