Uni suicide - tragedy but is this the only recourse for women that experience assault ?

[mids2019]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14060637/Oxford-University-student-20-killed-cancelled-female-friend-told-pals-felt-uncomfortable-sexual-encounter.hotlink

Superficially this is a tragedy and the sites is was the major factor for that led to it. However given the extremely low probability of criminal conviction of the university acting from a disciplinary point of view are women justified in using ostracism as the only till they have left for justice and as a warning to others that may consider assault a crime where there are in reality limited chance of consequence?

The woman concerned comes across as psychologically cruel and the coroner warns against 'cancel culture' but there seems more to this and perhaps the woman concerned was justified in talking to their friendship group at the very least as warning to other woemn?

Is this the social equivalent of a lunch mob with no proven guilt or the actions of a woman who knew there is typically no justice from authorities in such cases?

@Slol The alternative, that would fit with "uncomfortable" is that he made a racist comment. But while that might get him excluded from one social group at Oxford he'd easily find other racists.

Young people are brainwashed into being inclusive unless you do something utterly unacceptable. I guess saying trans women are not women might also have done it but again I'd expect a university to have a few sane people left.

edit for bad typing

This is my thought as well.

Like anyone, a woman who felt "uncomfortable" with a sexual experience (whatever this means, very ambiguous) is allowed to speak about it. But why is she held responsible for the actions of HIS friends?

I'm not even saying they did anything wrong; I'm sure in the moment they felt they were doing the right thing. And I'm sure they all feel absolutely awful.

I don't like that she's getting criticised for manipulation. I don't know what uncomfortable means in this context, but if I've ever heard a female complain about a sexual encounter then uncomfortable has turned out to be a euphemism.

I don't like this version of she's been a bad person and for speaking about what she's saying she's experienced and "should" have used the excellent, well known and well established processes for sexual assault (don't make me laugh).

Intense mob like criticism risks this scenario for any situation.

It's nearly always a tragedy when a person kills themselves. Especially a young person. For their loved ones and the chance of a better day. I wish more young people knew that. Texts, group chats and social media just amplify teenage risk on many levels.

I didn’t say anything about a police investigation. I’ve worked with survivors of sex offences, and many do not want to involve the police, as is their right.

Equally she may not have felt that the police were appropriate, it has not be indicated that was an avenue she had considered. She expressed discomfort at whatever happened rather than accuse him of criminal behaviour.

In that case the unis own channels would have appropriate - Oxford has its own Sexual Violence and Support Service.

I strongly agree. It's a case of a woman being held responsible for the actions of men - again.

This is specifically in relation to their own services. The High Court refused to ruled that they have a wider duty of care.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/The-University-of-Bristol-v-Dr-Robert-Abrahart.pdf

Your first sentence nails it, @OrangeSlices998 . We don’t know what happened. You’ve presented one valid scenario but only one.

And the model for justice in the UK is ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Oxford University has pretty good procedures in place to support victims of sexual crimes and lesser sexual harassment. Sadly the burden is always on the victim to make their accusations through proper channels at an extremely stressful time. But the alternative is, at best, exceedingly rough justice. As in this case, when the ex boyfriend does seem to have initiated a physical altercation based on the young woman’s word.

1n 2022-23 Oxford U received 170 referrals for Sexual Harassment counselling, for everything from historical abuse to current experience of rape. 130 counselling relationships were initiated within the university, with an average wait time of under 2 weeks and the longer wait times often at student request. I found the relevant report with a quick search, but cannot link on my phone. I did not see last year’s report.

Over 5400 students (from a total student population of about 30,000) completed the voluntary online training Consent Matters. I daresay beating up one of the parties over a disputed matter was not a recommendation.

Anecdotally there is a tendency among groups of young people to ostracise others at the moment. My son worked at Camp America two years ago (nearly all the counsellors were British). It was an absolute dog eat dog world socially. One girl, an Oxbridge student, was disliked by the other girls in her cabin because she was opinionated and full of herself so they sent her to Coventry. They told any of the boys who had been friendly towards her that they couldn’t believe they would talk to someone so annoying, and spread untrue malicious stories about her. Eventually everyone joined in, scared they would be targeted next, and she was completely isolated. She chose to leave the camp with no other job to go after one month. Aged 19. She was removed from all WhatsApp groups and one boy who followed her on Instagram was mercilessly mocked for refusing to unfollow her for the rest of the summer.

The lad needed to be able to turn to someone, a mentor or pastoral support or personal tutor. I can absolutely understand why his shame prevented him from seeking that help

Maybe he feared that whoever he asked for help might join in the criticism.

No it doesn't, and you absolutely shouldn't remain friends with someone like that. But that is the decision of the individual thinking for themselves. Not hive mind pack mentality.

This. One may consider the police as a signposting option to help, without reporting. But at Oxford Uni there is a better option.

And this is where resilience needs instilling in kids. Everyone faces criticism in their life and in something such as sexual misadventure he would need the criticism to be counselled to him mindfully, which doesn't seem like his peers did. It feels as if his peers pointed the finger, got physical with him, ostracised him and left him hanging

I was responding to the post that suggested no one was suggesting she shouldn’t have spoken to friends with a quote from a post implying just that.

The girl did nothing wrong. She had an uncomfortable sexual experience and discussed it afterwards - haven’t we all done similar with friends? I know I have.

The fact he chose to take his own life is terrible and such a sad waste. But he chose to do that, he can’t have been in a good place mentally.

Blaming this young girl is disgusting- can you imagine how she must be feeling?

Stop blaming women for men’s reactions.

I think this is an important point. The expectation these days seems to be for universities to be expected to act as though they have. But they have no more of a duty of care than an employer would have to young employees.

Anything that is a criminal offensive so rape/ sexual assault etc need to be referred to the police. Universities should be dealing with it.

i imagine his own shame around whatever happened played a big part. I don’t think it can be attributed entirely to others behaviour. He did something apparently wrong or inappropriate, which he couldn’t ignore because others knew about it.

it’s interesting - we want to reduce violence against women, sexism, etc. For young people there seem to be two camps, the Andrew Tate side and then the other that encourages young men to call out poor behaviour of their male friends. But there will be an impact on Individuals when called out.

having experienced numerous “uncomfortable” sexual encounters at uni, unwanted by male friends, I can imagine the sort of thing that might have happened. And it wouldn’t be wrong to confide in my friends.

Social groups have always self-policed. The unusual thing is that this seems to be young men not willing to tolerate a friend’s self-described ‘unforgivable’ sexual behaviour towards a woman.

I agree with you that accusing her of manipulation is unacceptable (and frankly standard misogyny); I also agree she should be free to express her feelings about the experience freely.

The point is though that I think formal channels are preferable to the whole group getting involved and turning it into a heightened tribal drama which doesn’t help the girl, or signpost the guy to services to address his behaviour.

But they’re being told they should be standing up to this behaviour?

I agree innocent till proven guilty, never implied otherwise. But her experience and feelings are valid and I can’t help but feel we’re just holding her responsible for his actions when we don’t know what happened, but the worst case is he did assault her and somehow his feelings of guilt are also her fault.

But again the assumption is SHE whipped up a frenzy and told friends to ruin his life and make him kill himself.

Most counsellors (esp if trauma informed) wouldn’t see someone within 4 weeks of a recent traumatic event like a sexual assault so is she not allowed to seek social support?

It’s very welcome that they are! Gives me a little bit of hope in young men. But lots of people on this thread seem to think they should have sided with him, despite presumably having a lot more detail of the allegations than have understandably been made public.

I obviously have no idea of the actual situation and if his treatment was warranted, but I also think the intense atmosphere that can result from the Oxford college system doesn't help. If he was at another Uni he could have gone home for a few weekends to get some support, and possibly asked to change halls so he was with a different group without having to divulge the reason. That's not really possible a Oxford. While the college system can help you forge friendships and networks, if things go wrong it's not so easy to fix.

We don’t know what she said. I’ve tried to be accurate in these circs. I have also sat in my office with a young UG sobbing over the mess she’d made of two lives by exaggerating.

We all have our biases, and the DF is trying to gin up support amongst a certain set of readers. That has no bearing on the unknown truth of what really happened

How do we know it was a pack mentality. Maybe each person who withdrew from him had made their own minds up about that.

If whatever you've said or done is bad enough that you lose one friend, it's probable that other friends will feel the same way about it.

Given the small community involved, not excluding him from the friendship group could well have amounted to excluding her.