Labour MP: My terror at seeing men in gang-rape threats when I was at Cambridge
AN MP has revealed that she was threatened with gang rape by fellow students while at Cambridge University.
Labour’s Stella Creasy said this was just one instance in a two-year sexual harassment campaign waged by a group of young men at Magdalene College in the 1990s.
The MP said college authorities ‘admonished’ her instead of punishing her abusers when she made a complaint.
Miss Creasy, then about 19 and now 45, said she remains ‘terrified’ of seeing the men, who have gone on to become doctors, civil servants and ‘high-fliers’.
The MP, who represents Walthamstow in London, said a culture of ‘privilege and entitlement’ is behind the recent ‘Pestminster’ allegations and warned it is not unique to Parliament.
Miss Creasy, a campaigner for women’s rights including fighting for maternity leave for MPs, said her sexual harassment was from 1996 to 1998. It included abusive posters when she ran for the role of president of the college student council.
The mother of two said: ‘I’ll never forget the night that I was in a room with them all and they threatened to gang rape me, let alone the posters that they put up around the college when I had the temerity to stand for a position in the student union, telling people not to vote for me because of who I’d slept with.’
The former social and political sciences student said sexual harassment remains a big issue in universities, adding: ‘I tell you that because I think that culture isn’t unique to Parliament, where there’s privilege and entitlement, and, frankly, it’s always the men that people think are least likely to do it who are involved in it.’
In an interview on GB News with broadcaster and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero, Miss Creasy said: ‘I’m in my mid40s now and it’s the first time I’ve really felt even willing to talk about it. It was terrifying at the time, I’m terrified I’ll ever run into those young men again.
‘And I say that because, several years after I left university, I did exactly that – I walked into a bar and they were all sat there, and I collapsed inside and left as soon as I could.’
Cambridge University apologised to Miss Creasy for her ‘horrific ordeal’ and said: ‘In recent years the university has taken significant steps in order to provide support for victims of sexual misconduct, to improve systems for reporting any incidents, and to take action as a result.’
‘They were all sat there’