Thread by @1752Group

This story of an academic assaulting a series of young male students at two institutions over many years highlights some of the problems that we have seen more widely across the sector.

Kevin O'Gorman: Former university professor sentenced for sex attacks bbc.com/news/uk-scotla…

He was given an NDA when he left Strathclyde uni in 2011, a large payoff, and a reference that allowed him to get another job at Heriott Watt, as The Times' excellent reporting from @mikewadejourno stated. (Paywall) thetimes.co.uk/article/serial…

This raises very serious concerns as to how references can be used to cover up abusive behaviour. The higher education sector needs to consider how referencing protocols could be standardised in UK higher education, as they are in other parts of the public sector.

We also need to consider whether it is time to implement a fitness-to-practice register for higher education teaching staff to avoid the problem of 'pass-the-perpetrator'. Medicine, teaching, social work and other professions manage it - why can't HE?

Universities also urgently need to update HR processes to enable third party complaints of sexual misconduct to be investigated. Students can be put at risk if they make a formal complaint, so unis need to be able to trigger a (neutral) investigation from 3rd party reports.

We are pleased to see that Strathclyde University are holding an independent inquiry, and we hope that they will make the findings public so that the sector as a whole can learn from this case.

We are thinking of the students who have had to live with what has happened to them for years and years, and who may be disappointed to find that O'Gorman is not effectively prevented from working in HE again.

He will be on the sex offenders register for only five years and has a noncustodial sentence. It may be possible for him to continue to work abroad in HE - and possibly even in the UK, as many institutions do not do criminal records (DBS) checks on new staff. (End of thread).