The Shocking Rise Of Rape On Campus

Recent reports have exposed a dark and distressing side of campus life for young women, with many universities turning a blind eye. Here, survivors of sexual assault speak out.

- Anneke Ray

One Tuesday morning in 2014, Kendra Murphy woke up to find her head was throbbing and her whole body was sore.Someone else’s clothes were on the floor of her small dorm room in The University of Sydney’s St Andrew’s College. Her wrists and ankles felt raw and she had a hickey on her neck that looked more like a nasty bruise. She had no idea how it got there.

The night before had started like any other raucous Monday evening at the sandstone university’s 150-year-old college. Their sports team had won an inter-college cup, everyone had celebrated over dinner, then Murphy, a first-year student, downed vodka shots in a friend’s room. “The next thing I remember was waking up in a pool of my own vomit,” she says.

Gradually, friends messaged her, their accounts filling in the blanks. One had seen her naked in the corridor outside a male student’s room, so they clothed her and put her in bed. Another friend had seen the male student, whose advances Murphy had rejected in the past, on the dance floor later in the night, bragging that they’d had sex. The following afternoon, in a regular college tradition, the night’s exploits were broadcast over the college’s PA system. There it was for everyone to hear: he and Murphy had slept together. However, a text from a third-year student, who had also seen her naked in the corridor, confirmed the worst. It may not have been consensual. “What he did to your neck and God knows what else is disgusting,” the message read. “You just kept saying you didn’t want him to touch you and you wanted to go to sleep. I hate to say this, but you couldn’t have said yes.”