Sexual violence at Czech universities: no fraternities, but cases

The Czech Republic has no student fraternities like those in the US, but that does not mean there is no sexual violence at its universities. That is the view of a columnist writing in response to the Cornell University case, in which a group of students raped a female student for several hours. In a 2021 survey, 21.5% of respondents had experienced rape or attempted rape while studying.

The numbers that don’t make the news

The Czech cases are well known: harassment in student dormitories, and students being filmed in showers and toilets. The police usually found the culprits, and the university expelled the students involved. However, in 2021 the non-profit organization Konsent published a survey of people who had experienced sexual violence while studying, and it differs sharply from the cases known from the media, above all in the number and severity of incidents.

Of 1,436 respondents, 21.5% reported rape or attempted rape. More than a third of them said it happened on university premises or in connection with the university, and 78% said the perpetrator was on the same level as they were, meaning a fellow student. According to Cornell’s own 2023 data, 23% of first-year female students experienced sexual violence on campus. That is not far from the Czech 21.5%.

The crime itself is not the only frightening part

What is also alarming in the Cornell case is what came afterward: none of the several dozen men who knew about the rape spoke up. The university punished the perpetrators disproportionately: it expelled two of the seven, suspended two, and told the rest to write essays “as punishment.” The incident is now also being played down because the victim was heavily under the influence of ketamine.

The author sees a parallel with Czechia: there are no fraternities, but there is also no safe environment in which victims are not afraid to speak, nor any certainty that institutions and authorities will handle the information properly.

In 2022, an associate professor of political science at Masaryk University attacked a female student after a party. She reported the incident; he did not deny the contact but called it consensual. The dean terminated his employment contract, and other women later came forward. At the same university’s Faculty of Education, cases of sexual coercion and violence took place on off-campus study trips at least in 2022–2023: the media collected more than ten testimonies from female students. In one case, a former student described unwanted sex with a teacher even though she kept saying “no.” The teacher later claimed that she had not said “no” convincingly enough. The police closed the case. There is also the case of Dominik Feri, whose behavior many fellow students at the Prague law faculty knew about but did nothing.

A question for universities

The point, in the author’s view, is simple: until the university environment is safe “at a high level” and teachers who abuse their power receive appropriate punishment, victims among students cannot be expected to feel supported. That there are few reported cases does not mean there are none — we simply don’t know about them.

Czech universities should not breathe a sigh of relief when reading the story of the student Jane Doe, the author concludes. They should rather ask themselves whether they are doing enough, even if no fraternities are being built on their grounds.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz