Lack of support for male victims of sexual harassment at LSE

According to LSE’s website, support available for students who have faced sexual harassment includes a team of academics who volunteer to be safe contacts and a sexual violence support worker from Rape Crisis South London, who is independent from the school. However, the sexual violence support worker can only accept female students.

Sexual Violence Support Workers come to LSE once a month and can meet students up to three times either face-to-face or by phone. This is a way for the LSE to facilitate independent support. Rape Crisis South London only works with female victims, which means that male students who have faced sexual violence are left with few other options for support, and no options for independent support. An LSE spokesperson told The Beaver that the university “has coordinated and funded the service from Rape Crisis on a trial basis for 6 months.”

Other universities employ the services of similar organisations. UCL, for instance, offers an Independent Sexual Violence Adviser from Survivors UK.

Other avenues for help within LSE, such as the safe contacts, also seem to offer little support for male victims: out of the 7 safe contacts, only one is male. LSE told The Beaver that “the School has proactively approached Survivors UK to discuss the possibility of providing a similar service to Rape Crisis and we have recently advertised that we are recruiting more safe contacts. We want to encourage greater diversity amongst these safe contacts including men, people from ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals and people with disabilities.”

Additionally, whilst the website outlining how to contact safe contacts details “Some of the Safe Contacts have received enhanced sexual violence training and can support those who have experienced sexual misconduct or sexual violence,” and LSE states all members of staff have received “relevant training”, only two – Jennie Stayner and Dr. Bingchun Meng – explicitly mention they have “received training for sexual violence and harassment support.”

After The Beaver reached LSE for a comment on this story, a spokesperson for the university added: “Survivors UK will now run a training session with LSE’s newly-recruited and existing safe contacts in December 2019. The EDI team are also work ing with different parts of the School for key staff to attend Survivors UK training, including Wardens, SWS, the Counselling service, and HR.”

Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA) & Operations Manager Alan Robertson, of Survivors UK, said to The Beaver: “many male victims come to us telling us that they don’t feel like they have spaces welcoming to them,” adding that “there aren’t
enough services for men, but in fact there’s not enough services for anyone.”

LSE’s website reads: “At present, we are only able to offer this service to students who identify as female, but we hope to be in position to expand this service in the near future to include staff and those that identify as male,” signposting male
students to LSE’s sources of support site, which provides details of safe contacts and links back to the sexual violence support worker from Rape Crisis South London, and external organisations.

The President of the Women in Politics Society Ella Holmes said to The Beaver: “the issue of sexual harassment and violence against men should not be overlooked. LSE cannot continue to provide minimal services that barely accommodate female needs and exclude male victims.” She added that “a permanent sexual violence support worker needs to be implemented who can support everyone who needs help.”

Other internal sources of support for LSE students include SU advisors, who can signpost to information on internal and external support and are trained in receiving disclosures of sexual harassment.