Creasy reveals rape threat and sexual harassment experienced at university

Stella Creasy has revealed that she was subject to rape threats and sexual harassment at university and that she was “admonished” by college authorities when she reported the abuse instead of the perpetrators being punished.

The Labour MP said her first experience of sexual harassment took place during her first year at Cambridge University’s Magdalene College and that it included a campaign of abusive posters when she ran for the position of president of the college’s student council.

Creasy told GB News: “I’ll never forget the night that I was in a room with them all and they threatened to gang rape me, let alone the posters that they put up around the college when I had the temerity to stand for a position in the student union, telling people not to vote for me because of who I’d slept with.”

The MP for Walthamstow said: “I was held up and I was admonished by the college authorities at the time because they chose to believe the idea that I was probably ‘a wronged woman’.”

“And, as I say, it took public humiliation, and posters, and finally other people coming forward, and me collating the evidence – of all the notes, the spitting in my room, the rubbish that was thrown at me, the sexual abuse and harassment if I tried to walk into the bar, that came from this group of young men.”

Creasy said: “I’m in my mid-40s now and it’s the first time I’ve really felt even willing to talk about it. It was terrifying at the time. I’m terrified I’ll ever run into those young men again.

“And I say that because, several years after I left university, I did exactly that – I walked into a bar and they were all sat there, and I collapsed inside and left as soon as I could.” She said the men have gone on to become doctors, civil servants and “high-fliers”.

Creasy said sexual harassment remains an issue in universities, adding: “I tell you that because I think that culture isn’t unique to parliament, where there’s privilege and entitlement, and, frankly, it’s always the men that people think are least likely to do it who are involved in it.”

She added: “One of the things I want to say to women who have experienced those things in life and to the women in parliament now, is that you will find allies, you will find those of us prepared to stand with you because we know what it’s like, we know how hard it is and we know the impact it can have on you.”