Rape survivor wins campaign to reveal offenders at Scottish universities
- Published
'This will help to keep future students safe'
A campaigner has welcomed a new policy at Scottish universities requiring students offered places to declare violent criminal charges.
Rape survivor Ellie Wilson, 26, called for change after being abused by her boyfriend while they were both students at Glasgow University.
He was suspended while awaiting trial but allowed to join another university.
Universities Scotland said the change was motivated by student safety and work to prevent gender-based violence.
Ms Wilson, a former politics student, campaigned for universities to implement the policy for more than 18 months.
She said: "This is obviously really close to my heart and I think it will make a big difference
"It will help to keep future students safe and I'm really hopeful this will set a precedent for other universities across the UK," she said.
Ms Wilson's rapist, Daniel McFarlane, was jailed for five years and placed on the sex offenders register for attacks between December 2017 and February 2018.
She had secretly captured him admitting to his crimes by setting her phone to record in her handbag.
Ms Wilson was a student at the University of Glasgow
Scotland's 19 universities currently have different rules around whether students have to declare criminal convictions or charges.
The new policy means students offered a place will be asked to reveal any unspent criminal convictions - those which show on basic disclosure checks - or if they face serious charges, including sexual violence offences.
However, a legal expert has raised concerns about how universities will handle these changes.
Thomas Ross KC, a former president of the Scottish Bar Association, said he did not see the collection of data from people who had been charged, but not convicted, as problematic.
"The problematic aspect is what does the university do when they are advised that an individual has been charged with a sexual offence which he is disputing. What do they do with that?," he said.
The University of Edinburgh is among 19 in Scotland that will ask students to declare charges
Mr Ross added that restrictions were usually put on people who were untried in court on the basis that there had been some assessment of risk and said that was usually established through prior offending.
"I suspect a lot of the cases the university will be dealing with will be where the person has never been charged with anything in the past and disputes the allegation that has been made," he said.
"It's hard to see how they could really make any proper risk assessment when in that situation."
Director of Universities Scotland, Alastair Sim, said the aim was to balance student safety with the role education could play in rehabilitation.
"Most institutions are already collecting some student data about relevant unspent criminal convictions," he said.
"This project is significant because all of Scotland's universities have taken the unprecedented step of moving, as one, into the collection and processing of data on relevant criminal charges on a consistent basis."
Universities Scotland said it did not want to put up barriers to education where individuals posed no risk to others.
It added that universities had sought to balance their commitment to student safety with "their belief in access" and "the powerful role that education can play in the journey of rehabilitation".