FOI_25-106 Sexual misconduct reported by students
Date of response: 09 May 2025
We have now considered your request of 09 April 2025 for the following information:
Question 1. The number of reports made by students of sexual assault or harassment each academic year from 2018/19 to 2024/25.
My question relates to reports of sexual misconduct by students against fellow students
a. Divided by year, please break the complainants down by gender (e.g. 2018/19: 5 female, 4 male)
b. Divided by year, how many of these reports were a) investigated and b) upheld?
c. Divided by year, how were the upheld cases dealt with (e.g. 2 expulsions, 3 suspensions)?
Our response:
Please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_25-106 Appendix A.
Values marked fewer than five <5: Section 40 (2) exemption explanation:
On this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains several exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.
| Exemption | Reason |
|---|---|
| S.40(2), Personal information | Disclosure of some of the requested information would be contrary to the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation |
We can confirm that the University does hold this data and we believe that the requested information, constitutes the personal data of individuals, as defined by Article 4(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, due to the small numbers involved, we consider these details are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOI Act.
We believe that disclosure this data would be contrary to the requirements of Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR; namely that information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. These individuals would have no expectation that this information would be made publicly available, and we have not identified a lawful basis that would allow or require us to disclose this information. To ensure that we do not inadvertently release personal data in this response or in combination with other publicly available data, we have replaced all values between 0 and 4 in relation to the number of individuals with the value ‘<5’.
For the outcomes of upheld disciplinary investigations, we have provided the data as a combined total for the requested period.
Explanation of data provided:
The above figures are compiled using information held by several University departments, namely Access and Security, Student Services, the University’s Student Misconduct Investigation Team, our Learning and Teaching Service (Disciplinary Committee) and reports made via our online reporting tool; Report and Support (from 2021 only).
The figures comprise of the number of reports, made by our own students, reporting against fellow students, recorded under a categorisation of either sexual assault, allegation of indecent/sexual offence, allegation of rape, or sexual misconduct.
Please see our General Regulations for students, Regulation 10.1.18.1, for a definition of what we define as sexual misconduct.
Victim gender:
Where the report details the gender of the victim or the victim reporting has stated their gender within their report, we have counted those noted as females or males. Where the gender of the alleged victim was not provided or recorded within the report, we are unable to count those in our figures.
Complaints upheld:
For all reports of alleged sexual misconduct University will contact the victim (only where the victim has been named/identified in the report) to seek their consent to proceed with a formal complaint and commence disciplinary action against the alleged perpetrator (where the alleged perpetrator is named/identified as a student at the University).
Not all victims wish to proceed with a formal complaint/formal disciplinary investigation, therefore not all perpetrators are investigated or sanctioned as a result of a formal investigation.
Where the victim does give their consent to process a formal complaint and formal disciplinary investigation, these are carried out to ascertain whether the alleged perpetrator has breached our General Regulations for Students (in the case of accusations of sexual misconduct made against students, these are General Regulations 10.1.18.1). We do not carry out criminal investigations.
Please note that we are only able to report where outcomes have been recorded or the outcome of investigation resulted in some form of disciplinary action, sanction or penalty being given to the student.
Some more recent cases are still in the investigation process and therefore we are unable to report on whether they were upheld or the outcomes of upheld cases.
In all cases the victim will be encouraged to report the incident to the police, and some will prefer to report the incident to the Police instead of instigating a formal university investigation, but not all victims wish to do so.
Question 2. The number of reports of students forming misogynistic groups (either on campus or online) each academic year from 2018/19 to 2024/25
a. Divided by year, how many of these groups were on campus and how many were online? Please provide as much detail as possible about the nature of the group(s)
b. Divided by year, how many reports were a) investigated and b) upheld?
c. Divided by year
Our response:
On this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information. In line with your rights under section 1(1)(a) of the Act to be informed whether information is held, we confirm that the University does not hold any recorded information for the number of reports of students forming misogynistic groups each academic year from 2018-19 to 2024-25. The University do not label or record a group a misogynistic, nor do we collect data regarding misogynistic groups forming.
Question 3. What is your most relevant policy for dealing with sexual misconduct?
Our response:
How the University will deal with students who have been accused of sexual misconduct can be found within our disciplinary procedures, and our General Regulations for Students – please see regulation 10.1.18.1 specifically for sexual misconduct.