Safeguarding

What is Sexual Harassment?

Harassment (Equality Act 2010: Section 26) includes unwanted behaviour or conduct which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

Harassment is a criminal and civil offence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This means that someone can be prosecuted in the criminal courts if they harass you. It also means you can take action against the person in the civil courts.

It is important to understand what behaviours constitute sexual misconduct. All of the examples listed below are against the Bedford College Group Sexual Harassment Policy and are against the UK law.

Examples of Sexual Misconduct

• Unwanted Touching or Groping: Any non-consensual physical contact, such as touching, grabbing, or groping, especially in intimate areas.

• Sexual Harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favours, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. For example, making inappropriate comments about someone’s appearance or sending sexually explicit messages.
• Sexual Exploitation: Taking non-consensual or abusive sexual advantage of another person. This can include actions like recording or distributing intimate images or videos without consent, or voyeurism (watching someone without their knowledge or consent).
• Online Sexual Misconduct: Any unwanted or inappropriate behaviour of a sexual nature that occurs through digital platforms like social media, email, or messaging apps. This can include actions that are intended to sexually harass, exploit, or harm another person e.g., repeatedly sending unwanted messages, emails, or social media interactions that are sexual in nature, causing the recipient to feel harassed or threatened and/or sharing or threatening to share intimate images or videos of someone without their consent, often to embarrass or harm the individual.

Students can report sexual harassment or sexual misconduct at any time by emailing:

• Bedfordshire: safe@bedford.ac.uk
• Central Bedfordshire: safeguarding@centralbeds.ac.uk
• Northamptonshire: safe@tresham.ac.uk

Staff can report through through the low-level concerns process in addition to their managers or through the safeguarding channels if they are subjected to or witness sexual harassment, sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships which will also be reported through low level concerns process.

All students will receive training on sexual harassment and sexual as part of their induction programme. There is also further information on safety, wellbeing and training available to all students via The Base.

Through our internal training platform (LMS), all staff will receive yearly training on sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. We have also updated our Staff Code of Conduct to ensure that it is compliant with OfS sexual harassment and sexual violence regulations.

The Group strives to ensure all staff and students have positive working relationships. However, personal relationships between staff and students are not permitted as per our Staff Code of Conduct.

If any student has any concerns about theirs or others relationship with a staff member, they are encouraged to report it and seek support using the reporting lines outlined above.

Since September 2024, the Office for Students has prohibited universities from using NDAs in relation to student allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct. In line with this, The Bedford College Group does not use non-disclosure agreements for this purpose.