Let’s Make Festivals Great Again
Despite the emergence of cases related to sexual violence, there is minimal action being taken to keep attendees safe at mass gatherings.
The issue of sexual violence at music festivals is a serious problem but has only been gaining media traction within the past few years. Reports from Ottawa, Canada, show that 25 % of reported sexual assaults took place at mass gatherings such as music festivals.
A recent study conducted by White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) found that:
- 25% of women interviewed felt unsafe at a festival.
- Over 50% felt festival organizers could do more to improve their safety.
- 90% of festival-goers were unaware of what steps organizers had taken to protect women from assault.
Slowly, though, the conversation around sexual assault is getting louder, and tolerance for this behaviour is lessening. Collectives such as It’s Not U It’s Me, Sexual Assault Action Coalition, Project SoundCheck, Good Night Out, Ground Control, and others, are taking matters into their own hands to solve this challenge.
One thing we know for certain is that sexual violence is not an extraordinary crime — it’s a depressingly common one, and not nearly enough is being done about it.
At MateBand, we are on a mission to create safer spaces for mass gatherings and mass participation events.
Here are some of the main challenges we notice that need to be addressed in order to solve the risks associated with sexual violence at festivals.
1. Rape Culture as a Societal Norm
Rape culture is a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm. Both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life; inevitable and blamed on the victims’ misconduct.
Recently, Sweden gained a lot of media attention when over 50 cases of sexual assaults were reported over one weekend at two of their biggest musical festivals; Bravalla and Putte I Parken.
A 15-year old girl, speaking to the Expressen newspaper mentioned:
“I stood and danced when a guy came up from behind and held me down. He started humping against my body, it was horrible. A guy ran his hand between the legs of one of my friends, and when she went to a bouncer, she was asked if she was drunk. I don’t know what the bouncers are doing there if they can’t help when people do this”.
The victim said when she reported her own abuse to security, he shrugged off the incident saying it was just a thing “that happens in the audience” at festivals.
As we battle with the reality of a society in which victim-blaming attitudes are omnipresent and rape is frequently seen as something to joke about, it is particularly crushing to see statistics revealing that the police too are letting victims down.
2. Taboo in Reporting Sexual Violence
Whether it is considered taboo, a non-issue or a private matter — a wall of silence often envelopes the issue of sexual violence, making it one of the most entrenched and difficult human rights violations to dislodge and eradicate. Activists, campaigners, and nonprofits often have to get creative in highlighting the severity of sexual violence as a confrontational approach may backfire, cause a backlash, or simply not work.
For many survivors, particularly within a culture that belittles rape and blames victims, the process of building up the courage to report a sexual offence can be painstaking and terrifying. Unfortunately, it can be nearly impossible to cite accurate statistics on sex crimes as victims often opt out of reporting the incident. Without a large-scale, government-backed study, it’s almost impossible to quantify how many lives have been affected by sexual violence, as the vast majority of victims are known not to come forward. Only 15% of rape victims report the crime to authorities.
To be met with disbelief is devastating as it doesn’t just deny a victim the prospect of justice and potential catharsis, but it also denies access to support they badly need.
Thus, there is a need for a system that will empower more victims to report sexual assault, a system that will encourage reporting of sexual harassment — one that will be data driven and evident-based for justice to be served.
3. Inadequate Security Infrastructure
As many as 26 young women may have been sexually abused at a festival in Germany, where the assailants employed pack-tactics to surround and isolate girls before launching their assaults. Sexual predators understand how to employ well-thought-out attacks that separates women from their friends, leaving them vulnerable to be taken advantage of.
The lack of a data-driven approach to crowd management leads to cases that proceed no further as personal encounters from a victim are often dismissed by the criminal justice system. This is evident in a new report revealing that a shocking 26% of all sexual offences (including rape) reported to police are not even recorded as crimes.
Mass gatherings impose burdens to event organizers, especially in terms of the health and safety of attendees. From dehydration to crowd-induced disasters, many event organizers lack the infrastructure to monitor and manage large groups of people. Unfortunately, most security personnel lack the technology to track crowd density, flow, and respond to panic calls in real-time. These risks can be effectively mitigated with the right technology. Thus, there is definitely a need to improve access to real-time surveillance data, and share such intelligence with staff and stakeholders.
4. Reluctance to Tarnish the Festival Brand Image
Whilst most festivals have security teams patrolling the area, there appears to be reluctance on the part of the organizers to speak up about these issues out of fear that their festival will be marred. Festival planners need to look beyond profitability and realize their social and moral duty to tackle these issues head on.
Dave Boardman, the Safe Music co-ordinator at the White Ribbon Music Project stated,
“Often they [festival organizers] think ‘bad publicity’ before they think ‘let’s deal with it’ whenever there’s an incident of sexual assault. We’re saying it’s actually good publicity for them to say ‘we’re doing what we can to keep women safe and get men to keep women safe’.”
Recently, a popular band expressed their outrage and reluctancy to work with the organizers of Sweden’s Bravalla Festival after police received multiple reports of alleged sexual assault and rape. Not only does this tarnish the brand image of the festival organizers, but the festival as a whole.
5. Insufficient Bystander Intervention
The bystander effect is the phenomenon where individuals do not offer help to a victim in a crowd. This is often referred to as the distillation of responsibility. Because of this human nature, a great number of crimes go unreported, especially sexual assault and rape.
Organizations such as Project SoundCheck are involved in educating and training volunteers on how to carry out safe and effective bystander intervention at music festivals. This serves as a preventative measure in preventing these crimes before they happen.
Given the scale of music festivals today, there is an immediate need for a crowdsourced response to bystander intervention — one that can be augmented with the use of technology.
6. Lack of Policy & Regulation from Municipalities
Municipalities play an extremely important role in the prevention and mitigation of health and safety risks to their community. These authorities determine what rules and requirements event organizers must meet to obtain a permit in order to hold large-scale events. They are in the best position to fund and promote prevention, detection, and rehabilitation initiatives for sexual violence victims, which event organizers could then access and implement.
Awareness has spread to such a degree that the Ontario government recently pledged $1.7 million to help train people in the service industry to better understand and respond to sexual assault. Unfortunately, the city of Montreal is yet to set forth such policies and regulations for music festivals. The community, however, has taken initiative to address such incidents by supporting petitions for change such as this.
Safety is a ubiquitous risk for individuals all around the world. However, it is an elevated threat at music festivals, where it can take many shapes, often perpetrated with a disturbing nonchalance due to the generally care-free atmosphere.
At MateBand we believe that these threats can be sufficiently alleviated with effective awareness efforts, adequate policies, and a human-centered approach using design and technology.
