Sydney university is the most recent school accused of failing her students following the rounds of news on social media about the increasing “rape culture,” women across the world have become more emboldened to tell their stories. Though most of these stories have always been met with widespread anger and promises to do better, we still have many women who have recent found the courage to come out with their sexual abuse stories.
The most recent of these new set of heroines is Katrine Tully; a victim of rape who took to the Kidspot’s “I Swear, I Never” to tell her side of the event that happened 30 years ago on the campus of Sydney University but she tells the story like it happened just yesterday.
Katrine tells her story
30 years ago, Katrine Tully was a student at the Sydney University where she was studying engineering that was where she was met with the most unfortunate event that totally altered the way of her life. Though she has been able to successfully pull out of the depression and stigma that comes with the event, largely due to the enormous support of her husband, recent events, however, remind her of when she was an “unlucky victim.”
Being among the few female students in her class, she was seen more as an aberration rather than the norm and she faced enormous unfair treatments from her colleagues before she was eventually sexually assaulted on campus. While she was lucky that her two assaulters stopped halfway through the horrific event due to her screams and loud sobs, but in a twist her assaulters accused her of making things up which made her begin to blame herself.
Katrine mentioned that her assaulters were both from elite private schools and had been under the influence of alcohol —an indication that class does not stop sexual assault perpetrators from their acts. She also highlighted that the school authorities were also in the know about the smear campaign and the avalanche of “threatening mails” that “disgust her in unthinkable ways.”
The failure of the school to intervene in the issue made her “world shrank” but she was lucky enough to meet her husband who “supported her while She recovered and managed to complete her course anyway.”
Sydney University’s Response
Sydney University when tapped for a response to the allegation raised by Katrine, the university said it was “very disturbed by the experience described by one of our former students,” and that the school takes “the privacy of our students extremely seriously and are concerned about any potential privacy breaches.”
The university went on to add that due to the limited information available, it does not know what course of action in terms of awareness or the action those in charge then could have taken. However, Sydney University expressed its readiness to reopen the case and investigate it. In their words “we would like to offer Ms Hill an opportunity now for the matter to be formally investigated and also considered for a claim under our publicly available guiding principles for Responding to Claims of Historical Sexual Abuse.”
The school concluded its response by adding that “support is available for anyone who needs it and we encourage anyone who needs advice and support to seek it at any time.”
