Results will soon be out for The University Of Wollongong National Student Safety Survey that will highlight statistics of reported sexual assault and sexual harrassment incidents on campus.
In 2021 the results for UOW had only 1,052 participated students that showed sexual harassment reports for differently-described genders at 11.6 per cent and for females 14.5 per cent.
The reports showed that for sexual harassment approximately 29.4 per cent of LGBTQIA+ students reported experiencing harassment overall, compared to 13 per cent of heterosexual students. While approximately 8.8 per cent of LGBTQIA+ students experiencing assault overall, compared to 3.4 per cent of heterosexual students.
University of Wollongong Safe And Respectful Communities project coordinator Angela Cowan said that it’s quite common for the SARC team to see queer students come in and report an incident.
“We know from the evidence that sexual violence towards the queer community is really high, disproportionately high actually,” she said.
“It is common, but we also know it’s also underreported from the queer community.
“That could be because they don’t feel like the services are for them, there’s a lot of shame, potentially they’re not out and by coming forward and talking about what’s happened to them, so there are a lot of barriers.”
University of Wollongong theatre student River Gleeson has had previous experiences of sexual assault and harrassment outside of campus and has said that during the time it reduced his trust in people, specifically in the LGBTQIA+ community.
“It’s not talked about enough,” he said.
“We all have our own experiences, a lot of people have similar experiences especially when it comes to sexual assault.
“There’s queer people doing it to other queer people or “straight-curious” people thinking they have all the power rather than having a share of it. It’s very common, unfortunately, because kinks are a thing.
“It is 100 per cent not recognised enough.”
Mrs Cowan said that consent is universal.
“Sexual violence and gender based violence it needs to be talked about more in society,” she said.
“I think that seeking support should be normalised as well, we need to remove that shame for all victims it’s not their fault there’s only one person who’s to blame and that’s the perpetrator.
“Nobody asked to be assaulted regardless of their sexuality or gender.”
As a result from the NSSS, the government released the Action Plan Address Gender-based Violence in Higher Education which was implemented in February.