Edinburgh has one of the highest number of sexual harassment claims made against uni staff

A recent investigation by The Guardian has discovered that there have been nine sexual harassment claims made against Edinburgh staff over the last five years.

The investigation delving into Freedom of Information requests from 120 Universities across the UK, revealed that students and staff alike had filed 296 accusations of sexual harassment against university staff between 2011/12 and 2016/17.

Other universities that have had high numbers of sexual harassment allegations were Oxford with eleven, Nottingham with ten, University of the Arts London and Essex with seven, and Cambridge with six. Only five of the universities had actually compensated the students financially.

This doesn’t account for the number of unreported cases however, which could cause the numbers to be “staggering” says Anna Bull, co-founder of the 1752 Group which was set up to address staff-student sexual harassment in higher education.

It is suggested however that the numbers are far greater than these reported, due to the number of incidents that aren’t reported due to the victims’ fears about the impact they will have on their education and careers. As there is rarely an effective plan for dealing with this type of accusation against staff members on campus, many of the incidents that do get reported are played down and kept quiet by the universities, with informal settlements being made.

For many who chose to report their cases, investigations conducted by the universities often disregarded the cases and undermined them due to the fact that they said there was evidence of a relationship between the victim and the staff member – something that was frequently untrue.

A statement from a University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “We recognise that, on occasion, there will be legitimate complaints that individuals wish to raise and we actively encourage the reporting of concerns and maintain an effective complaints procedure for that purpose.”