NUS sexual violence poll: reaction

Responding to new poll findings from the National Union of Students showing, among other things, that only a small minority of Women's rights's rightss rights's rights's rights's rights students who have been seriously sexually assaulted have reported it to either their institution or the police, Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

“With research showing that a third of the UK population habitually blame a woman who’s raped if she's been ‘flirtatious’ or worn sexy’ clothing, it’s sadly not that surprising that so few students report sexual violence.

“We’re never going to break a vicious cycle of low levels of reporting meaning few perpetrators being brought to justice if we don’t tackle this issue of Women's rights's rightss rights's rights's rights's rights feeling they may be disbelieved or even blamed.

“We need a public information campaign to challenge this ‘blame culture’ and university campuses should be a key location for this.”

Note to editors
In 2005 Amnesty International UK published an ICM opinion poll showing that a third of people in the UK believed that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she had behaved in “a flirtatious manner”, had been drinking, was wearing “sexy” clothing or was perceived to be promiscuous.

The poll can be accessed at: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=16618