Growing up, Rachel* dreamed of a career on stage. So when she was accepted on to a performing arts degree at a London university, everything seemed to be going right - and for three years, she happily studied, socialised and performed in university productions. But with just a few months of university left, Rachel was sexually assaulted by a fellow student, setting in motion a series of events which left her frightened to step into a theatre, and in an entirely different career than the one she had worked towards for 21 years.
'It took me a while to realise that what had happened to me was assault,' explains Rachel, who has little recollection of the night in question after waking up twenty tube stops past home having blacked out following a night out. The man involved was her boyfriend, and she had been drinking. 'There wasn’t a good understanding of consent and ultimately a lot of blame was placed on me,' she recalls.
Confused about how to define the incident, Rachel sought guidance from her university, where she had developed close relationships with staff through her tight-knit course. The department supported Rachel to report it to the police, who interviewed her for several hours. But when officers said there was not enough evidence to pursue the case, the department told Rachel there was nothing they could do either.
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'The problems started when I took a few weeks off because I was in a very bad place emotionally,' recalls Rachel. Prior to her absence, Rachel says while attending the university campus, she was sometimes visibly distraught and her behaviour more combative, as she tried to process what had happened. While the university was initially supportive, reassuring her about her ability to return after a break, Rachel says they soon began discouraging her from doing so. 'When it came time to return, I was continually encouraged to defer for a year in order to give myself ‘a clean slate’ - the suggestion seemed to be that I had embarrassed myself in front of my peers,' she says.
When she did return, after providing a letter from a private psychiatrist at the university’s request, she was summoned to a meeting in which a staff member told her she could be expelled from her course if she was found to be discussing the assault or referencing her trauma in any way again. Her coursemates avoided her at the directive of staff who deemed her a distraction and breached her confidentiality, says Rachel (evidence shared with ELLE backs up this claim). On one occasion, she says, a faculty member she knew personally came across her crying in a corridor and walked past without stopping.
But if Rachel’s assault and the fallout from it were difficult to deal with, things became worse when she tried to make an official complaint to the university about how they had handled her situation. Having waited until after graduation, for fear that her grades might be affected by a complaint, Rachel then spent months chasing her university for a response. When they eventually did get back to her, they offered her £1000 compensation without any admission of wrongdoing, and a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing her from discussing the deal. Under pressure and exhausted by her ongoing trauma, Rachel accepted the money and signed - saving her university from being named and shamed publicly or challenged in the courts.
'That was worse than the assault,' says Rachel. 'Dealing with this abuse of power was far more traumatic. It was emotionally exhausting and humiliating.'
Buying silence
Disquietingly, Rachel is one of hundreds of students estimated to sign such a deal each year in the UK. While non-disclosure agreements were originally intended as a way to protect sensitive trade secrets, campaigners say they have increasingly been used by large institutions to cover up cases of harassment, assault and bullying. These deals usually involve the payment of money in exchange for silence, and can be signed by both perpetrators and victims, and, in the case of universities, by both students and staff.
While amounts paid out vary, some deals can be worth tens of thousands of pounds. But even in cases like Rachel’s, involving relatively small sums, victims can feel compelled to sign in the absence of any other conclusion, and under pressure from powerful institutions with large and well-resourced legal teams. Often these deals follow long and traumatic investigations or complaint procedures, leaving victims with little mental resolve to fight them. And for universities themselves, the cost of paying out to victims is weighed up against the potential reputational and financial damage of those victims speaking publicly about problems with the university’s culture or policies - or pursuing their own lengthy and expensive legal cases.
In 2020, a BBC investigation found that over 300 NDAs were used by universities in student complaints between 2016 and 2020, and that almost a third of all universities in England had used such deals in these circumstances. The probe discovered that universities had paid out £1.3 million on these deals, though the true scale is thought to be much larger. Now, the UK government has announced a new pledge, backed by campaign groups, the National Union of Students, and Universities UK, to end the use of NDAs to silence survivors of sexual assault at university.
'This pledge is vitally important because it's morally wrong that some universities are still using NDAs, especially for those who have been victims of harassment, bullying and abuse,' Michelle Donelan MP, Minister for Universities, tells ELLE. 'It puts the victim in an absolutely awful position where they’re silenced not just in the short-term but often for a long time. That just compounds and exacerbates the horrendous ordeal that they’ve already been through.'
In the context of recent high-profile instances of violence against women and girls, Donelan says, this action to tackle a practice which predominantly affects women victims is more timely than ever. 'We have to ensure women feel safe going to the shop, on their way home, in their university, in their job,' she says. 'It’s a fundamental basic thing you would expect would be the norm now, but we know that it isn’t. When I went to university there were stories of girls that had been victims of sexual harassment. I’ve known people that have been victims of very awful abuse in their lives. So it is so important that we tackle these issues.'
Completely isolated
Signatories to the government’s pledge will be listed on the website of Can’t Buy My Silence, an international campaign to end the misuse of NDAs, launched last year by academic Julie Macfarlane and Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein who broke an NDA to publicly come forward as one of his victims in 2017.
'Effectively, what NDAs are doing is taking away the natural instinct that we have, especially as women, to warn one another,' explains Macfarlane, whose experience of NDAs in academia came when a colleague accused of harassment by several students was able to change jobs with a letter of recommendation, because the details of his behaviour were sealed. Speaking up ultimately saw Macfarlane hit with a defamation lawsuit, during which her employer failed to defend her.
'We would all naturally say to each other, "don’t go in the back with that guy," or whatever it might be,' she continues. 'Sharing that kind of information is important for keeping ourselves and others safe, and NDAs have basically stamped on that. The Me Too movement has brought to the surface more complaints around sexual harassment but NDAs are repressing them at the same time.'
Among the testimonies shared with Can’t Buy My Silence, says Macfarlane, are survivors who are unable to speak about their experiences with family, partners and even therapists, because the terms of their agreements are so comprehensive. Many report being unable to move jobs because their NDAs forbid them from disclosing what made them leave a workplace, or why there might be a gap in their employment history.
'Almost certainly in many of these cases, these deals are not even enforceable because they’re so broad, so unreasonable, so vague,' explains Macfarlane. 'But of course people don’t have the means to test them in court, and after an experience like that they wouldn’t have the emotional energy. So they comply and that makes them feel like they are completely isolated.'
Shining a spotlight
For Rachel, the performing arts career she had always dreamed of didn’t feel possible after her assault and NDA. 'That [performance] world is so small, it just felt like this would follow me forever if I continued down that path,' she says. 'The whole experience made me really see exactly how nasty and vindictive people and institutions can be, and it’s so sad that I had to learn that at 21. I’m a lot more wary of big institutions and the power they can have over people now.'
When they heard news of the government pledge, Rachel says she and her parents - who had supported her both financially and emotionally through her assault and its aftermath - all burst into tears.
'I’m delighted this has happened,' she says. 'I hope it will shine a spotlight on universities that don’t sign the pledge. If I was a prospective student now doing my due diligence, I’d want to know if my uni would protect me if something happened.'
And while Can’t Buy My Silence continues to campaign for regulation and legislation, Julie Macfarlane says the UK government’s pledge is an important symbolic step.
'As well as shaming the universities that are doing this into stopping, I think it’s also going to encourage more students and staff to step forward and talk about instances where there have been NDAs,' she says. 'And on a very personal level, having been treated the way I was by my university and having basically had this NDA destroy my career, I feel like I’ve been a voice in the wilderness. To hear people talking about this means a great deal.'
*Some names have been changed
For advice and support if you or someone you know has been the victim of sexual assault click here
To find out more about Can't Buy My Silence click here
