Survivor advocate pushes for sexual assault spaces at music festivals | Music News

TRIGGER WARNING: A sexual assault survivor-advocate is urging the New South Wales government to mandate safe spaces at music festivals.

Safe spaces are on-site, secure areas for people impacted by sexual assault or harassment that include trauma-informed counselling, reporting facilities and medical services.

Sarah Williams founded not-for-profit What Were You Wearing (WWYW) following her experience with drink spiking in 2021.

During her work on the issue, Ms Williams said she heard thousands of stories of abuse at festivals.

"It is a massive issue, and it needs to be spotlighted as just as big an issue as alcohol and drug prevention at festivals," she said.

In June, Ms Williams presented a petition with more than 20,000 signatures to state parliament, forcing a debate on a call for mandatory drink spiking and sexual assault training for security and bar staff in all licensed venues in NSW.

The debate secured support for an amendment to the state's Responsible Service of Alcohol guidelines.

Now she wants to turn to focus on improving safety at music festivals.

"They aren't trained properly to deal with reports, or the right resources aren't being offered," Ms Williams said.

"If a festival is going to get a harm minimisation service that looks after a whole range of things like drugs and alcohol and first aid, sexual violence is always swept under the rug and forgotten about."

WWYW has attended more than 30 festivals across Australia since creating its own Safe Space program, offering the service free-of-charge through state government support.

Ms Williams said her organisation had received "quite scary" anecdotes from festival-goers and believed the support services currently available were "too busy" to properly address sexual violence.

With the festival season ramping up, she urged the state government to add a section to the NSW Festivals Act of 2019 mandating sexual assault services.

Stats:

Currently, there is an absence of research on the nature and prevalence of sexual assault, harassment and broader issues of public safety at music festivals, making it very difficult to develop evidence-based policy. A recent UK-based study suggests that sexual harassment and assault are common experiences for young adults attending music festivals (YouGov, 2018). The study, conducted by YouGov (2018), reported that 30% of young women and 14% of young men had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault at a music festival, with unwelcome forceful dancing and verbal harassment being the most common experiences. Younger participants were more likely to have encountered this behaviour, with 44% of those aged 18-24 reporting having experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault, compared to 24% of those in the 25-49-year age bracket. However, this emerging data tells us little about how and why sexual violence occurs at music festivals, and of course does not provide insight into the Australian context

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Homebrewed is a radio program and podcast dedicated to supporting the Australian Music Industry. Cameron Smith and Eamonn Snow have been presenting Homebrewed since November 2017 and have received excellence awards and the admiration of local bands for their presentation of Homebrewed and their continued support of the Australian music scene. This podcast is designed so you can enjoy conversations with musicians, industry representatives and music media personalities.