Claims University of Sydney failed to refer 'one in three sex assaults' to police

Sydney University did not report 11 of 17 sexual assault or harassment cases on campus to police, documents obtained under Freedom of Information requests reveal.

The data was obtained by the University of Sydney's student newspaper Honi Soit.

According to the paper, 17 cases were reported to the university between May 2011 and May 2016, but only six of the cases were passed on to New South Wales police.

The paper also quoted another report prepared by the university earlier in the year, which indicated the university believed just one in 100 sex crimes against students were ever reported to the institution.

According to Soni Hoit, those figures indicated that the rate of sex crimes against students came close to one per day, or 340 per year.

The university, however, disputed those figures in a statement to the paper.

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“The two datasets are entirely discrete and therefore no specific conclusions can be drawn from a comparison,” a spokesperson said.

“The University recognises that there is a general trend of underreporting. The University encourages students to report all incidents so the appropriate support and care can be provided to students, and disciplinary action taken.”

Sharna Bremner from the End Rape on Campus advocacy group said the university had failed to address problems on campus, despite a series of negative news stories in recent years.

“I think for Sydney University, that’s a university that does get a lot of media coverage. Things happen there on a regular basis that do make it into the media,” she told Honi Soit.

“Sydney Uni has had a lot of publicity and a lot of time to clean things up and just hasn’t done so.”

Earlier this year the university enlisted former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick to head a taskforce charged with cleaning up scandal-ridden university colleges.

Ms Broderick was brought on after Wesley and St Andrew’s colleges were linked to a site called ‘Rack Web’, which tried to document the sexual histories of students without their knowledge.

Honi Soit also obtained figures showing a worrying lack of action from several other universities at well.

Wollongong University referred all its reported incidents to New South Wales Police, however, documents showed no disciplinary action had been taken by the school.

Newcastle, UNSW and Western Sydney University all reported taking some action against perpetrators in some cases.