education

I learned firsthand how British universities are silencing abuse survivors | Danielle Bradford

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More than half of students say they have experienced sexual harassment or assault, but only 8% have reported it, a study shows. Many of those who do submit a formal report spend weeks, maybe months, retelling the story of what might be one of the most difficult events of their lives. Imagine, then, what it might feel like in the midst of all this to be presented with a legally binding document that swears you to complete secrecy – meaning you cannot speak of your experience to anyone, not friends, family, staff or colleagues. That’s what it’s like to be a student presented with a non-disclosure agreement.

Last week, an investigation by the BBC revealed that nearly a third of universities have used NDAs in student grievance disputes since 2016, including cases concerning sexual assault, bullying and lack of disability support. Involving £1.3m in payouts, these NDAs have been criticised as “legally questionable” by expert lawyers, and an “abuse of power” by the former universities minister Chris Skidmore.

We now know that at least 300 students have been subjected to NDAs to resolve complaints, but this wasn’t their original purpose. Traditionally, they have been used to protect business information, for example to prevent an employee who leaves for a competing company sharing sensitive or confidential details. The expansion and misuse of NDAs within businesses to include cases of abuse and employee grievances has been exposed in a number of high-profile cases, such as those of the film producer Harvey Weinstein and Topshop owner Philip Green. But now this culture is infiltrating public institutions: as the line between the private and the public sectors blurs, universities follow suit in these unethical practices, silencing survivors of sexual harassment and assault, and calling it business as usual.

Using legally binding documents to silence survivors in educational settings is a considerable safeguarding concern. One student who reported a sexual assault told the BBC that the process of being silenced was “hell on earth. How they treated me was worse than the assault itself. I felt so alone.” Loneliness is a serious repercussion of NDAs – unable to discuss their experiences, students can’t access proper support from their friends, families or lecturers.

It is unlikely that such a document will be signed by students of their own free will: the power held by an institution that can either grant or withhold one’s degree, versus that of an individual student, means that even the suggestion of having to sign an NDA could be seen as coercive. Students have reported being threatened with expulsion or legal action if they break their silence around the abuse they have suffered. But a fair and accessible complaints process should not involve being coerced into signing legally binding documents, especially when students often lack access to any independent legal guidance.

To make matters worse, while students are harmed, more often than not perpetrators are able to move freely to other institutions without facing any consequences for their actions, or even a fair investigation.

While the statistics on the use of NDAs by universities are shocking, it’s important to acknowledge that this is just a small part of a broader manipulative institutional culture. A third of universities have been reported to use NDAs, but at the remaining two thirds it’s possible that students are being silenced in other insidious ways. Many universities engage in similarly dubious legal practices, such as “confidentiality clauses”, and exert undue pressure on complainants to refrain from disclosing details of their cases. The University of Cambridge, for example, can truthfully report that it does not use NDAs – but when I made a complaint of harassment as an undergraduate student, I was bound by a confidentiality rule that meant I was not able to disclose details of my complaint to anyone in my life, even after it was upheld. There was no signed legal document; but I was threatened with a possible charge of harassment if I spoke out. Knowing that I was interested in going into academia, staff members also politely reminded me that breaking that silence would likely have a negative impact on my career.

It seems notable that NDAs find their roots in business, and we cannot overlook the fact that any form of gagging clause is part of, and a foreseen consequence of, the wider issue of increased marketisation of UK higher education in recent years. In a marketised sector, students are the fee-paying consumers, and when grievances are raised, universities are faced with what is ultimately a safeguarding issue, but they treat it as a business concern. As they see it, their consumers are being harmed, often by other consumers, or by employees of the institution itself – and that poses the risk of reputational damage. Their solution? To silence and sacrifice individual consumers in an attempt to avoid public scrutiny, and by extension a potential loss of more consumers (and, of course, their tuition fees). This logic is backwards, but nothing will change as long as universities run themselves primarily as businesses, which fundamentally conflicts with their duties as educational institutions and the duty of care they have over students.

The institutional silencing of survivors, through the use of NDAs or otherwise, must end. For myself and so many others, the experience isn’t just damaging – it can be actively retraumatising. Meanwhile, the BBC’s report, and all those practices that still largely go unreported, should be alarming not only to survivors, but to the wider academic community as well. Victims of harassment, abuse and bullying are often already convinced that their voices, their consent and their free will do not matter. We cannot allow this message to be reinforced by the very institutions that are meant to protect them.

Danielle Bradford is a former student of Cambridge University. She is suing the university for discrimination over the manner in which they dealt with her complaint



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