‘I’ve been on campus with students for more than a year – here’s what the national emergency of rape means for them’

Rape prevention campaigner Katie White says that the Home Office needs to be bolder in trying to combat violence against women and girls

“We are a house of five girls and three of us have been raped,” the student told me. It was the way she said it that took my breath away, with no shock, just acceptance.

This is part of just one of the many testimonies from students that I have gathered in the more than 12 months in Bristol that I have spent researching sexual assault among them – to launch a social deterrent to rape.

“I wish it had been in a conventional way,” one survivor said. “Violent, a stranger, completely unprovoked. Then I would have openly been a mess and have reason to be.”

The students described a grim reality – where sexual violence is a common, yet largely unaddressed part of their first experience of adulthood. Eighty-five per cent of the time, the perpetrator is known to them. One told me: “It was my boyfriend’s best friend. He offered to walk me home. I should have been safe.”

The taboo and outward invisibility of the issue create shame: “As a survivor, you feel like you’ve slipped through the cracks, unnoticed,” she said, a sentiment echoed by another of the students I met. “At uni, everyone is just trying to have a positive experience,” she explained. “You don’t want anything big and bad to override that, so you just bury it.”

Katie White, who has co-founded the rape prevention non-profit Enough (Katie White)

Last weekend, home secretary Shabana Mahmood called violence against women and girls in Britain a “national emergency” and on Thursday the government unveiled its strategy to halve such offences in a decade.

It is a national emergency, but one that even its devastating figures do not bear out – because so many rape survivors do not report what has happened to them.

Each year in the UK an estimated 450,000 people are raped, predominantly women. Sixty per cent are under the age of 24, and, shockingly, more of school age than university age. But less than 15 per cent of all survivors report to the police.

And only five per cent submit themselves to the rigours of a full forensic medical examination at a sexual assault referral centre (SARC), so critical DNA for any prosecution is missing. Most withdraw from any potential prosecution after the first interaction with police, when they realise how much the process will take from them, and how slim their chances of justice are.

Each year, about 70,000 rapes are reported to the police in England and Wales. Of those, about 2,200 get to trial, less than 0.5 per cent; and only 0.25 per cent end in a conviction. 99.75 per cent of rapists are let off by our current system.

The former victims’ commissioner Dame Vera Baird repeatedly said that rape had been “effectively decriminalised”.

Reform of criminal justice is one part of the solution, including Mahmood’s announcement for specialist teams in police forces for rape and sexual offences by 2029, but as the National Policing Statement for violence against women and girls (VAWG) says: “law enforcement alone cannot reduce the scale and impact of VAWG”.

If Mahmood wants to halve VAWG in a decade, she needs to be bolder and adopt innovations outside the criminal justice system.

Enough, the non-profit I have set up with my co-founder, Tom Allchurch, and which I have launched in Bristol, provides DNA kits that survivors can use to test themselves. The kit fills two gaping holes in the current system – it’s a reporting option for the vast majority of survivors, understandably not wanting to go to the police or a SARC; and it’s a threat for perpetrators who feel a sense of impunity. If survivors decide to report officially to police later, the kit gives them a time-stamped testimony and frozen DNA, held at a UKAS-accredited laboratory.

The kit is known on campus and online as “the kit that makes rapists think twice” and the “breathalyser of rape”. Trialled at the University of Bristol last year, after six months, 70 per cent of students polled by their societies said that the campaign and presence of the kits was preventing rape, and 86 per cent of students polled said they would report to Enough. And far from being the only solution, Enough raised awareness of SARCs by 50 per cent among students.

Repeat assault is more likely to happen in environments where there’s a sense of impunity. I spoke to people about incidents in their sports team where the captain had an “invisible sphere of influence” and went on to do it again and again. Younger students didn’t speak out because they were scared they’d be ostracised. They felt that the accountability that we create may have made the difference.

In Bristol, I’ve found that just as many young men collect kits as young women – they want to be part of the solution, and to inspire others to do the same. The university rugby club captain dedicated one of their matches to survivors and proudly said: “It’s not men v women, it’s all of us against sexual violence.” Another said: “If you’re not an ally, what are you?”

My co-founder, Tom, and I have witnessed how men of all ages want to make a difference. We work with dads and educate them on the scale of the problem and potential solutions. The taboo means so many are unaware that the biggest health risk to their daughters is rape. One said of our meetings with dads: “an absolutely essential session which will undoubtedly inspire life-changing actions”.

There are eight and a half years left to halve VAWG, as per Labour's pledge. The country needs to start trying some radical ideas if we have any chance of getting there.

Go to Myenough.com and @enoughtoendrape