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A culture of predatory behaviour, harassment and cover-ups exists within North Queensland's James Cook University, students have told a damning review into sexual assault at the university.
The report into the Townsville and Cairns campuses, conducted by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, included evidence from 145 people and responses from 833 JCU students who participated in a national survey into sexual assault at universities.
One victim said she was asked by a university coordinator to speak with the perpetrator to "confirm it was rape", while others said they had been intimidated into silence.
"Our dean's response … to us when we brought this stuff up was very much, keep it quiet," she said.
"They just basically pressure [survivors] to shut up," a female undergraduate student said.
Another claimed female students were filmed without their knowledge during a college ritual known as "quad cricket".
"The girls had two choices: they could walk around as bikini girls and serve sandwiches and beers to the boys, or they could perform something called a slut dance where they danced in their underwear," a female college student said.
Vice Chancellor Professor Sandra Harding said the university would implement all of Ms Broderick's recommendations for change.
They included an institution-wide approach to prevent and respond to sexual assault, improve support services and mandatory training for staff and students.
"This is a very thorough and insightful report, and some of the stories shared by interviewees are very frank and the allegations they raise very disturbing," Professor Harding said.
In January, it was revealed JCU promoted research officer Douglas David Steele to an academic adviser in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Centre after he was charged with the 2015 rape of a Townsville woman.
Steele pleaded guilty in September last year, but stayed on for three months at JCU. He was later was jailed for two years, suspended after four months.
The university's acting vice-chancellor acknowledged a "failure of our internal processes", saying those who knew about the guilty plea did not report it to the appropriate staff.
'Dominant masculine culture': Broderick
The Broderick review found despite women holding senior positions at the university, a "dominant masculine culture" existed where there was a "normalisation of everyday sexism".
In some cases, staff used their position to take advantage of students, interviewees claimed.
"We had a tutor … who insisted that the girls had to take their tops off to mark in the muscle groups on their own bodies. But we had already checked with the lecturer, who said that girls could do it on the dummy. But the tutor was very insistent," a female student said.
The problems were also identified among higher research degree students.
"PhD students are very disadvantaged if a supervisor has less than pure intent … exploitation is easy if someone wants to do it," a male staff member said.
The national Respect. Now. Always survey, conducted over the 2015/16 period, found 27 per cent of JCU students who participated said they were sexually harassed on campus or while travelling to and from university. This was only 1 per cent higher than the national average.
Topics: sexual-offences, law-crime-and-justice, crime, university-and-further-education, townsville-4810, qld
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