Sexual violence: an internal investigation lists 17 cases of rape in AgroParistech

The management of this major engineering school seized the Paris prosecutor, Monday, June 20, and promises to strengthen his listening and awareness -raising device for sexual and sexist violence.

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This is one of the most feminized engineering schools – with 65 % of students -, but Agroparisech is no exception to situations of gender -based and sexual violence. The awareness and information unit on sexuality (blackcurrant), a student association, publishes Tuesday June 21 the results of an investigation carried out by email in December 2021 with 970 students, from the first year of the engineering cycle to the doctorate . With 58 % of respondents, the study makes it possible to brush a fairly precise table of the violence committed, especially during integration events and festive evenings.

The result is alarming: it lists 17 rapes (16 women and a non -binary person) during schooling, 526 discriminatory or sexual connotation behaviors, vast majority from students, but also, in a forty cases, teachers and staff of the establishment. A total of 141 students, or 24.7 % of respondents, said they had been victims of “contact” sexual assault, including 10 on the occasion of a “stealthing”, a withdrawal of condom by surprise and without consent.

Reading the results, Laurent Buisson, who has run the school since November 2021, seized the Paris prosecutor on Monday, June 20. “I was very surprised by the extent of a phenomenon that cannot be explained simply by the consumption of alcohol. It is together, with the students, that we must work on a solution”, exhort-t -il.

“Drink like a hole”

A 58.8 %, sexual violence “with contact” was committed by men, this rate stood at 36.3 % for acts and behaviors “without physical contact”, the majority of testimonies not knowing Not specify if the aggressor was man or woman, due to excessive consumption of alcohol and-or narcotics.

The Cassis cell questioned students about festive life in Agroparistech, theater of the vast majority of violence. It is necessary to “drink like a hole to be integrated/greeted/popular” and conversely, not consuming alcohol generates a form of “exclusion”, notes the study. Predominate the “trivialization of sex in festive life” and “the pressure felt to always kiss the most people”. The investigation of the students entering the rooms of the campus “by tasting the doors” or which film and take photos in the evening “at embarrassing moments and while the consent has not been requested”. And Cassis to conclude: “We deduce that our intimacy seems too little respected to AgroParistech, which highlights a fundamental problem of respect between students.”

At the start of the school year in September, in addition to awareness training in sexist and sexual violence, a new listening device will be set up in order to professionalize the mission and “withdraw too heavy responsibility” assumed since 2019 by the ‘association. “It was necessary to go through this stage of appropriation of the subject by the students, indicates Laurent Buisson, but we must now turn to an external partner or to the personnel appointed internally, who will have in particular for the task of carrying out this type of survey each year. “

/Media reports.