A NEW campaign to tackle sex pests around Bradford’s university and college is calling for victims to speak out against sexual harassment.

The Free Our Streets campaign will target the “ignorant young men” who harass women, and organisers hope it will help improve the city’s reputation, as well as make people feel safer in the city centre.

It will start by targeting the Great Horton Road area, near the campuses of the University of Bradford and Bradford College, and follows years of complaints that sexual harassment is making life a misery for many female students. People are being urged to report unwanted touching, heckling and cat calling, being followed, by people on foot or in vehicles, and other unwanted attention.

As well as making women feel safer, the campaign hopes to “re-educate” those responsible about what is acceptable behaviour, and one council boss hopes it will help “stamp it out.”

The campaign comes at a time when people across the world are speaking up about sexual harassment. Campaigns like #MeToo have given a voice to people who previously felt they had to keep quiet about sexual harassment, and Free Our Streets intends to have a similar impact in Bradford.

It will see Bradford Council, Restorative Solutions, West Yorkshire Police, Bradford College, the University of Bradford and the Bradford Hate Crime Alliance working together on a range of initiatives to tackle the problem. The work has also come from research done by local arts group WUR Bradford.

Carole Worthington-Hollowbread, from Restorative Solutions, one of the people running the campaign, said: “There has been a lot in the media about harassment in different workplaces. We have been working to bring this project together since February. The problem we had when we started out was that we didn’t have a lot of substantial information about what was going on. A lot of people don’t report the sexual harassment they experience because they don’t feel they can.

“This project is about encouraging people to report the harassment they experience. We need to know what is happening, where it is happening and who is involved. There is an education element of this too, we want to deal with what is happening, but to stop it from happening in the first place. It is about changing attitudes.

“We know it happens elsewhere in Bradford, but we had been told it was a specific issue in this area.”

Councillor Abdul Jabar, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Neighbourhoods and Community Safety, said: “Sexual harassment is totally unacceptable and a crime.

“The actions of a few ignorant young men not only hurts the victims but also reflects badly on the community as a whole and the reputation of the city, the university and Bradford College.

“The huge majority of people living in the area treat our students with the respect and welcome they deserve and we want to work with them to stamp out this intolerable behaviour.”

Andy Welsh, CEO of Bradford College, said: “The safety of our students and staff is our highest priority. We encourage students and staff to report any issues of harassment and advise them on how to do that.”

Nikki Pierce, Academic Registrar (Director of Student and Academic Services) at the University, said: “The safety and security of our students is of paramount importance and we are very pleased that so many organisations have come together to organise this campaign. We will be working extremely hard with our partners to ensure its success and to give confidence to our students to come forward and report any incidents.”

Insp Kevin Taylor, Partnerships’ Inspector at Bradford District Police, said: “People in Bradford should be free to go about their business without being subjected to sexual harassment. We are happy to support the Free Our Streets project and hope this multi-agency approach will make victims feel more confident to report these matters and make perpetrators think twice about engaging in such unacceptable behaviour.”

The campaign asks people to call 07582102494 if they experience or witness sexual harassment.