Sad but not a surprise – Freshers’ Week victim
A FORMER St Andrews student who was raped during Freshers’ Week is ‘saddened but not surprised’ by the fresh allegations of sexual assault.
The woman, known only as Miss M, was out with friends at the beginning of her second year of studies when she was raped by Stephen Coxen.
She reported the attack to police in the Fife town and Coxen was charged and taken to court – but the jury returned a verdict of not proven.
Miss M then successfully sued her attacker, with a sheriff in a civil court agreeing that Coxen had raped her.
Last night, she spoke out about the whistleblowing social media account that has had more than 100 women report allegations of sex attacks.
Miss M said: ‘It saddens me but it doesn’t surprise me. Everyone thinks of St Andrews as a safe town but bad things happen everywhere and my message to other women and all the students is that, actually, wherever you are in the world, you need to be on your guard to stay safe, that’s the sad reality we live in.’
She said the latest allegations at St Andrews may be a wake-up call for other universities across the country where others have not yet reported incidents.
Miss M fought for five years to get justice after Coxen, from Bury, Greater Manchester, raped her in St Andrews in September 2013.
Coxen was 18 at the time and had driven from Manchester to visit a friend at the university. He met Miss M, who was also 18, at the Lizard Lounge in the town, but he was ejected at about 2am. Miss M said she could not recall leaving the nightclub and her next memory was standing outside her flat with someone and panicking because she did not know who it was.
She dropped her keys and Coxen pushed her away when she tried to pick them up. He got into the flat, raped her and left.
After the not proven verdict, following a High Court trial in November 2015, Miss M successfully sued her attacker at the Personal Injury Court in Edinburgh three years later and was awarded £80,000 in damages.
The rape survivor is campaigning to have the controversial not proven verdict abolished.
She has spoken to the woman who created the social media page and arranged a meeting between her and the university who, she said, provided ‘world class’ support to her.
She said: ‘It is a wake-up call that people need to start realising this happens a lot more than people think.
‘We need to wake up to the fact that there are a lot of unreported rapes and the reason why that is.
‘The best thing here is people have now come forward with allegations.’
‘This happens a lot more than people might think’