Protecting the perpetrator: value judgements in US and English university sexual violence cases

This paper examines four interviews with student survivors about their experiences of reporting sexual harassment and violence to universities in the United States and England, and their experiences of how their universities protected the perpetrators. Interview participants revealed that their assailants were not held accountable because the university determined they were more valuable than the survivor, whether in terms of the role the assailant occupied or their potential to make an impact in their field. I analyse these instances by combining three theories to show both how power/value relations in the neoliberal university make certain people (in)dispensable, and how these power/value relations are enacted through power dynamics of speech and hearing to protect the more ‘valuable’ party in university sexual violence cases. The article concludes with possible recommendations for structural change.