Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Executive Summary

Background & Aims

Despite increasing anecdotal evidence that sexual violence occurs at music festivals, to date no research has addressed this issue. This pilot project aimed to establish a research base in this area by investigating patron experiences and perceptions of sexual assault, harassment and safety at music festivals in Australia.

Methods

This project involved three phases:
1. Observation at the 2017-18 Falls Festival
2. An online survey conducted with 500 patrons of the 2017-18 Falls Festival
3. One-on-one interviews with 16 individuals who had experienced, or had been involved in responding to, sexual violence at music festivals across Australia.
It should be noted that while participants for the survey were recruited from patrons who attended the Falls Festival, the survey asked participants about their perceptions of sexual violence and safety at music festivals in general, i.e., these findings are not specific to the Falls Festival.

Key Findings – Surveys

The online survey addressed a range of issues relating to participant demographics, perceptions of safety and sexual violence at Australian music festivals, and alcohol and drug consumption at festival events.
Key findings include:
• The vast majority of participants reported that they either ‘usually’ (61.5%) or ‘always’ (29%) feel safe at music festivals.
• A strong majority of participants indicated that they believe physical violence (92.8%, n=347), sexual harassment (95.1%, n=351) and sexual assault (88.6%, n=295) occur at music festivals.
• Participants were less certain as to whether homophobic or transphobic violence occur, with 61.2% (n=148) and 61.6% (n=141) of participants respectively responding that they thought these forms of violence happened at music festivals.
• Most participants believed that sexual harassment occurs ‘often’ (31.2%) or ‘very often’ (30.2%) at music festivals.
• Participants indicated they would be ‘extremely’ likely to report sexual assault (75.2%, n=215) and sexual harassment (62%, n=176) to the police. However, this does not reflect the actions of participants who had directly experienced these forms of violence.
• Almost all participants (99%) consumed alcohol at music festivals, while just under half (47.8%) consumed drugs. Previous research illustrates that music festival attendees use illicit drugs at a higher rate than the general population (Lim et al. 2010). However, rates of use for our sample are considerably lower than those identified in previous research. For example, 65.3% of participants in another Australian study reported using illicit drugs at festivals (Hughes & Moxham-Hall, 2017).

Key Findings – Interviews

Interviews were conducted with individuals who had experienced, or were involved in responding to, sexual violence that occurred at any Australian music festival. Participants were asked to reflect on the nature of their festival experience(s), the impacts of their experience(s) of sexual violence, what role the festival setting played in facilitating the violence, their experience(s) with reporting and disclosure, and reflections on steps festivals could take to both prevent and better respond to sexual violence. Key findings included:
• Participants reported diverse experiences of sexual violence, ranging from sexual harassment (e.g., verbal comments) through to actions that may constitute sexual assault.
• Groping and other forms of sexual touching in crowded moshpit and performance areas was a common experience.
• Perpetrators were overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, men.
• Bystanders (other patrons) rarely intervened when sexual violence was occurring.
• Experiencing sexual violence of all kinds resulted in negative and often ongoing impacts, including hyper-vigilance, altered behavior at festivals, anxiety, and shock.
• Most participants did not report to police, security or festival staff. Those who did report typically recalled negative responses from authority figures, such as victim-blaming, not taking the report seriously, and/or a failure to take appropriate action.
• Participants viewed the male-dominated nature of the music industry as a contributing factor to sexual violence in festival spaces.
• Zero-tolerance policing of drugs and anti-social behavior deterred participants from reporting to police.
• Participants expressed the need for music festivals to introduce a range of policy and practice-based changes in order to better respond to and prevent sexual violence. We drew on these suggestions in developing our recommendations.

Key Recommendations

Festival policy and management:
1. Introduce clear protocols and consistent messaging about sexual violence, including consequences for perpetrators.
2. Increase the number of female police and security staff working on-site.
3. Develop multiple avenues for reporting sexual violence at festivals and ensuring all staff are adequately trained to receive and respond to these reports.
4. Implement processes for the systematic documentation of incidents of sexual violence.
5. Follow through on reports with feedback to victim-survivors.
6. Implement the provision of on-site access to appropriate support services.

Environment:
1. Provision of quiet ‘chill out’ spaces.
2. Ensure security and police are distributed throughout festival spaces, including regular patrols or emergency contact points in camping grounds.
3. Introduce section markers or signposting in camping grounds to improve way finding.
4. Enhance lighting, particularly in isolated areas such as camping grounds.
5. Ensure signage establishing behavioural standards is clearly visible throughout all spaces at festival.
6. Introduce clear and consistently identifiable markers to note the location of security staff in and around performance spaces.

Cultural change:
1. Continued efforts to make festival line-ups more gender equitable and diverse.
2. Encouragement of pro-social behavior, such as bystander intervention.
3. Encouragement of an ethic of care among festival patrons.

Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, there remains a lack of understanding about how victims/survivors of such violence themselves make sense of and frame their experiences in conversation with global and local discourses and with the categorisa-tions that underpin support programmes. Such sense-making is important not only because the ways in which violence is categorised shape a victim/survivor's ability to access particular forms of recognition and support, but also because it is central in how shattered selves and worlds are remade in the aftermath of violence. Drawing on individual and group interviews conducted with refugees living in Kampala, Uganda, this article charts how framings of 'torture' and 'sexual violence' become meaningful in partici-pants' accounts in the (re)formation of themselves as subjects after violent victimisation. We trace how participants navigate the heteronormative societal and legal norms that shape their subjectivity and the effects of the violence they experienced through the deeply gendered and political work that these terms do in their narratives. Our analysis thus highlights and reminds us to pay attention to the political stakes involved in fluid processes of categorising injury.

El Sistema Nacional de Prevención, Atención, Sanción y Erradicación de la Violencia contra las Mujeres (el Diagnóstico) fue instalado el 3 de abril de 2007 y desde entonces se ha mantenido en operaciones, con distintos niveles de avance y orientaciones. Así, a once años de su instalación y en el marco del cierre de la actual administración federal, la CONAVIM ha determinado la necesidad de realizar el Diagnóstico Estructural de dicho Sistema Nacional con el fin identificar las fortalezas y áreas de oportunidad de este órgano colegiado, y generar evidencia que permita sustentar recomendaciones y propuestas de mejora; así como orientar el diseño de un plan de trabajo idóneo para coadyuvar a la coordinación efectiva de sus integrantes en los tres niveles de gobierno y con ello mejorar el logro de sus objetivos.
El Diagnóstico ha sido desarrollado con un alcance estratégico. Es decir, toma en cuenta las funciones sustantivas y principales objetivos de las instancias que integran el Sistema Nacional, por lo que se enfoca en el análisis de las estrategias o procesos de toma de decisiones conjuntas y la forma en que, en su caso, se articulan las acciones de las diversas instancias.  Adicionalmente, el análisis se realizó con un enfoque integral considerando las distintas dimensiones que componen el Sistema Nacional y un análisis causal como medio para explicar los resultados obtenidos hasta la fecha y emitir recomendaciones para que éstos mejoren en el futuro. Finalmente, para asegurar la orientación determinística del estudio, se planteó una metodología de investigación mixta, lo que permitió evaluar las dimensiones de manera objetiva y sistemática.

Across Canada, there is a need to enhance upstream efforts to end all forms of gender-based violence. This work needs to include engaging men and boys to develop healthy, equitable, non-violent relationships. Such work includes providing access to services which can mitigate situations where the possibility of violence is developing and help prevent escalation of abuse. It recognizes that part of ending violence against women and girls is working with men to stop abuse and become allies in advancing gender equality.

In Nova Scotia, upstream work aligns with provincial policy supporting and understanding that the well-being and safety of families and communities are dependent upon the availability of resources and supports for all Nova Scotians, including men. Men-specific supports have been an identified as a gap in Nova Scotia which has been highlighted by and during the COVID-19 pandemic. As one response to this gap in services, the Nova Scotia Status of Women and the Department of Community Services with community partners, 211NS and Family Service of Eastern Nova Scotia, initiated a 7-month1 Men’s Intervention and Support Response Pilot Program, later renamed the Men’s Helpline (MHL). The current report summarizes main findings from research conducted during the first seven months of MHL implementation. It integrates and summarizes results of a number of research efforts written up into two interim reports into an over-arching report to: a) summarize findings across the various methods of data collection; b) reflect on successes and challenges; c) highlight considerations relevant to setting up this work in other provinces and territories.

This work is based on the inequality that women suffer in public spaces, with fear being a constant in their lives. Women must learn to live to accept a limited and constrained existence. Based on this approach, this research establishes a European description and comparison of the insecurities, fears, or concerns expressed by women facing the risk of aggression/harassment, and the prevalence of sexual harassment in public spaces. For this, we used the Survey on Violence Against Women in the European Union (EU; 2012). In the fieldwork, we performed a factorial analysis, as well as a logistic regression analysis between the sociodemographic variables (age, educational level, income, and habitat) and prevalence of physical or virtual sexual harassment. In general, while European women report that they have suffered harassment to a considerable extent, there are even greater concerns or fear of abuse or aggression in public spaces. A fundamental fact is that there is a significant correlation between the prevalence of harassment and per capita income, such that those countries with the highest economic development show a higher incidence of harassment towards women. Similarly, European countries with higher standards of equality