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A University of Oxford college has pledged to overhaul its handling of sexual assault cases after paying damages to settle a legal action taken by a woman who said she was raped by a fellow student.
The woman, a student at Lady Margaret Hall, said she was raped after a man entered her room while she was asleep. Police investigated but he was not charged with any crime.
The college settled the case this week, after the woman accused it of negligence and discrimination for the way she was treated after coming forward. The college agreed to pay damages as well as the woman’s legal costs. It did not admit liability.
Georgina Calvert-Lee of McAllister-Olivarius, who acted for the woman, said: “Universities have known for years that their complaints-handling processes are defective, and the lawsuits keep coming. But while there are certainly some improvements, change is far too slow.”
Calvert-Lee accused the higher education regulator, the Office for Students, of issuing guidelines on sexual misconduct without imposing any mandatory requirements to enforce them.
“The college system in Oxford lends itself to further confusion, as students are pointed from college to the university and back again just trying to find out how to make a formal complaint,” Calvert-Lee said.
Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) said it could not comment on individual student cases – after the allegations were reported by the Times – but a spokesperson said it “recognised that there is scope for improvement in our non-academic disciplinary procedures, which includes how the college deals with allegations of sexual assault”.
The alleged assault occurred while Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor, was LMH’s principal between 2015 and 2021.
Rusbridger said: “Numerous staff and tutors went to great efforts to support and protect a student who alleged she had been attacked by her partner. Both the police and the college mounted thorough investigations into the alleged attack but were unable to determine what had happened to the required burdens of proof.”
The woman said the college told her not to speak about the attack or the college’s policies on social media. It included a clause in a “non-contact” agreement that asked both students to refrain from public comment and threatened expulsion if they “published material” in the media.
Calvert-Lee said students and junior academics “up and down the country” had complained of similar treatment, including being threatened with disciplinary action if they talked about their experiences to others.
Rusbridger said that there was no “blanket gagging order” or non-disclosure agreement imposed by the college.
He said that while the police investigation was still active, the woman had posted, under her own name and to a Facebook group of 2,500 people, the claim that she had been raped by a man who was identifiable.
“The student was advised of the obvious risks involved in this posting: she apologised and volunteered to delete all her social media accounts,” Rusbridger said.
“After this LMH asked both parties to refrain from public comment while the case was active as part of a no-contact agreement. Both parties signed without comment or protest.”
A spokesperson for LMH said the college had been working with the Oxford student union’s It Happens Here campaign against sexual violence, and agreed to ban the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases.
Oxford University said it did not use non-disclosure agreements to prevent students from reporting sexual misconduct or other illegal or inappropriate behaviour, other than settlements in exceptional circumstances.
A spokesperson said the launch of the university’s sexual harassment and violence support service had led to “increasing numbers of students coming forward and we would encourage anyone affected by this very serious issue to seek support”.
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