23-year-old Maths student Hannah Price wants to start an awareness revolution. With the help of Snapchat filters and emojis masking their identity, a number of young women have been able to share with the world their experiences with sexual assault.
Hannah, who is in her final year at the University of Bristol, came up with the idea after attending a talk by the journalist David Levesley. He showed the group how in India – which has extremely strict laws surrounding rape allegations – Snapchat filters allowed victims of sexual assault to share their experiences with others whilst keeping their identities anonymous.
“This inspired me into thinking about how, as the generation that has propelled Snapchat into success, we could use a similar innovative approach to highlight and humanise sexual assault on campus,” Hannah explained to SHS.
She believes that forms of sexual assault – from non-consensual touching to rape – have become “increasingly normalised”, and that the #RevoltAgainstSexualAssault campaign gives victims a public platform to convey just how serious and emotionally affecting these incidents can be.
In the video created by Hannah’s campaign group, students at the University of Bristol discuss experiences they have had since being at university. One young woman describes how she was molested in public; another has been raped three times since moving to the city.
The first thing we can do is make sure that the conversation doesn’t stop
“I think this was such an important thing to do in a university context because it can become an environment where you feel very vulnerable,” Hannah continues. “It’s a small world, everyone knows everyone. It magnifies the problem and the reluctance to speak out.”
Alongside what victims might feel is humiliation about their friends and peers knowing what they have been through, one of the most shocking statistics concerning sexual assault is that of it being perpetrated by someone the victim knows: approximately 90% of those who have been raped know their assaulter prior to the offence.
Nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year. Across US college campuses, 11.2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force or violence - that’s excluding verbal harassment and catcalling.
So what can we do to help the victims of these crimes and try to ensure that they can speak out about it in a safe environment?
“The first thing we can do is make sure that the conversation doesn’t stop,” Hannah says. “The more openly it is discussed, the more awareness there will be of the issue. Those who took part in the video said that even just saying it aloud helped to empower them and realise that it wasn’t their fault and they weren’t alone.”
“It needs to be easier for victims to report these incidences in a secure and comfortable way, and then to make sure that it is well publicised so everyone knows there is a way to do something about it.”
