You make all the choices. There is no pressure to formally report anything or take any action.
What is Report and Support? (50 seconds)
What happens if I report anonymously?
If you decide to report anonymously we will not contact you and you cannot name a perpetrator in your report. However, this is still very valuable information for us.
- You are making an important statement that something happened which is not acceptable and you want to tell the university about it.
- You are also helping us to monitor where and when misconduct is taking place for staff and students. This might show patterns and all helps to raise the profile of this as an issue that needs to be addressed.
What happens if I report with personal details?
If you decide to make a named report of any incident of sexual abuse, harassment or hate crime, you will be able to choose the outcome(s) you would like from this report:
- To discuss options / be referred to support services - we will offer a phone appointment with specially trained staff to talk through your options and support needs. We will contact you by phone, usually within one working day to offer the appointment if we can't get through or you haven't given us phone details, we email to offer some appointments. You can chose a female or male practitioner - if this is something that is important to you please mention it to the practitioner when you book an appointment over the phone or check for the pronoun next to their name when you book the appointment online. You don't have to register with the Student Wellbeing Service to access a Report and Support appointment. We offer Report and Support appointments every working day so hopefully you will be able to access an appointment quickly.
- To request the University takes action - We will contact you by phone and will offer to put you in touch with the right people for you to make a formal complaint. You might choose to have someone from the Report and Support team involved in this, or see us in a separate appointment, or just pursue the formal complaint without any further input from Report and Support staff.
- For information only - You can provide your details but choose not to be contacted by us. The report will be recorded in the same way an anonymous report would be. You can change your mind at a later date and contact us directly if you wish to do so.
What will happen in an appointment?
The appointment is a one-to-one meeting with one of our specially trained practitioners. Currently due to COVID restrictions we are mainly offering phone calls. We can discuss other options with you if you need another form of communication.
In the call we can talk about your report, your needs and your wishes. Any information you share will be treated confidentially - see more about exactly that this means here. We don't need to know all the details of the incident if you prefer not to discuss them. If this is the first time you disclose an incident of sexual abuse or harassment, we will take careful notes of what you are saying, as this may be used in the Criminal Justice process if you choose to report the offence to the Police at any later date.
We will offer you advice, support and advocacy depending on what your needs and wishes are.
If you need an immediate assistance we would suggest that you contact the Police on 999.
If an incident of sexual violence took place within the last seven days you may want to consider attending the Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) at Hackenthorpe Lodge as soon as possible. They are a team of specialist medical professionals, and can take forensic samples as well as provide advice and support. There is no need to decide about reporting to the police, they are completely independent. They take self-referrals and are open office hours, but also open out of hours via police. It is situated close to the tram stop on the 'Halfway' route. If you would rather talk about this contact us.