Universities should have to record sexual violence claims, says expert

Prof Graham Zellick, whose work shaped how UK universities deal with allegations, says statistics should be mandatory without need for new law

Sexual violence and harassment on campus is becoming an increasingly high-profile issue. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

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The author of a 1994 report responsible for shaping how British universities deal with allegations of sexual violence has told the Guardian that universities should have a mandatory duty to record such claims.
Following the announcement in September of a new task force to investigate the issue, two decades after his own report was published, Prof Graham J Zellick said institutions should be mandated to record statistics on sexual violence without the need for legislation.
Zellick’s 1994 report, for the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals (CVCP), which specifically advised universities not to conduct their own investigations into serious sexual violence, is expected to come under scrutiny by the taskforce (paywall).

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However, Zellick welcomed the new inquiry by Universities UK, formerly CVCP, into the issue. “This taskforce may have a role in stimulating universities to think about what their responsibilities are,” Zellick told the Guardian. “It should be able to identify the issue and provide the kind of non-legal advice for today’s situation that my taskforce offered to the university system in 1994.”
Sexual violence and harassment on campus has become an increasingly high-profile issue in recent years, with one in seven female students reporting serious sexual or physical violence, according to the National Union of Students. Yet few universities keep proper records of allegations or any subsequent criminal investigation, so the full extent of the problem remains unknown.
A Guardian investigation in May, which focused on Russell Group universities, found fewer than half of them were monitoring the extent of sexual violence against students, while one in six said they did not have specific guidelines on how students could report allegations to the institution or to police.
Universities have been under pressure to take a more active role in investigating sexual violence, from the NUS, End Violence Against Women, End Rape on Campus and student survivors of sexual abuse.

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Zellick said he stood by his original conclusions. “In my view there have been no legal developments or legislative changes that would require a word of the 1994 report to be modified or rewritten,” but stressed that his report – which was commissioned after a King’s College London student was cleared of rape after insisting claims against him should be investigated by police rather than college authorities – dealt only with discipline.
“It is not to say that there are not other responsibilities laid upon universities in connection with how they handle these matters,” said Zellick. “But this report dealt with only discipline, dealing with exclusion and suspension of a suspect in an investigation.”
In his report for the CVCP, now Universities UK, the law professor and former vice-chancellor advised universities not to conduct their own investigations into such “serious criminal offences” as sexual violence, which he said should be handled by the police.
A former Oxford University student, Elizabeth Ramey, attempted to challenge this policy in the high court for what she saw as Oxford’s failure to properly investigate her alleged rape by a fellow student in 2011.
Ramey and others critical of the policy of universities not to investigate sexual violence on campus cite the Human Rights Act, which was not in place when the Zellick report was written, as placing a duty of care on institutions to safeguard female students and ensure they are treated equally to male students. This duty should include investigating crimes of sexual violence, they say, particularly as the majority of sexual assault victims do not go to police.    
Universities are not bound by the Zellick report, but its influence is clear: many universities have policies not to take any action in sexual violence cases unless a student goes to the police.

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The End Violence Against Women Coalition has argued such policies have contributed to a culture within academia where sexual violence is seen as purely a police matter and sexual assault survivors who do not go to police are not properly supported by their institutions.
Home Office figures show that only 15% of sexual assault survivors go to the police. When they do report, only a fraction of alleged assaults make it to prosecution.
Zellick, who was in academia for 30 years in a series of posts ranging from private tutor to vice-chancellor of the University of London, said he was “very much alive” to universities’ duty of care to students. But he argues that the Human Rights Act “does not translate into a legal duty to launch legal proceedings in what effectively are criminal offences”.
“We have to balance people getting away with things with miscarriages of justice,” he said. “You get into trouble when you lose sight of the fact that it’s a balance. Due process is sacrosanct.
“If anything, legal changes in the Human Rights Act would reinforce that view rather than detract from it. You need very compelling evidence to bring someone’s university career to an end.”
Zellick said that he understood why victims of sexual offences would hesitate to go to the police, but that there was a danger in universities taking on an investigatory role. “There are limits to what can be done, as that person against whom the complaint has been made also has rights in law and is also owed a duty of care.”

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Zellick said that recording statistics on sexual violence could be made mandatory without the need for legislation and that it was important to record allegations and outcome. “You could put it into different categories, with columns for what [the] allegations [are], whether there was police involvement and for what the outcome was.”
He said that more could be done by universities to work with alleged victims of sexual violence who did not want to go to the police, in terms of counselling, understanding and conflict resolution – for instance ensuring students are not living in close proximity to their alleged attackers.
“The first thing a university must do is to give a great deal of support and counselling and that might include whether the police should be involved,” he said. “More people could be supported to go to police. But if they don’t, the university is faced with two students in conflict. They can’t fling that student out, but you have two people who should, as far as possible, be separated.”
Zellick, who has recently retired from the Valuation Tribunal, is a former head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, as well as a member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeals Panel (CICAP). He drew parallels between alleged student survivors of sexual abuse and alleged victims of child sex abuse who appealed to the CICAP.
“No one was interested and no one believed them and in the end they came to us. We believed them and we gave them compensation. They quite often broke down in tears,” said Zellick. “We weren’t able to punish the perpetrators, but I believe they felt differently because someone in authority at last was able to take them seriously.”