About the Project

Project aims

This study explores the nature and prevalence of sexual misconduct and abuse perpetrated by UK professionals. It also seeks to evaluate the disciplinary mechanisms used to investigate and sanction their behaviour. It focuses on a specific group of high status/high trust professionals: doctors and psychiatrists; religious leaders; police; military; judges and barristers; and politicians. It looks at where these professionals harm:

adults who seek their expertise, authority, protection, or care;
colleagues or employees in the workplace;
intimate partners and family members;
individuals outside the workplace, whom the professional leverages their trusted status to access.

We refer to the work of regulators and internal disciplinary tribunals as ‘administrative justice’. This work could deliver important accountability and redress for people who are harmed by professionals, and can be particularly important where criminal justice routes are not available, not wanted, or fail. The research questions (RQs) are as follows:

RQ1: What is the nature and extent of sexual misconduct and abuse by [profession type] in the UK and internationally?

RQ2: What administrative justice mechanisms do [professional bodies] currently have in place to respond to sexual misconduct and abuse by their members?

RQ3: How do (a) perpetrator characteristics; (b) victim characteristics; and the (c) context of sexual misconduct and abuse, compare across [profession type]?

RQ4: How do social relations of power operate and intersect with context and opportunity at the (a) individual (b) organisational-professional and (c) socio-cultural level, to account for the perpetration of sexual misconduct and abuse?

RQ5: How effectively do current administrative justice mechanisms (a) sanction past sexual misconduct and abuse and (b) seek to deter future sexual misconduct and abuse?

More detail on our definitions and methods are available below. Please also see our Stage 1 Outputs (2024) and our Data Collection Tracker (2025-2026).

What do we mean by ‘sexual misconduct and abuse’?

We recognise that the term ‘sexual abuse’ is less often used in relation to adults, but we think it is helpful in recognising misuse of power, and mistreatment or harm to another person. We also recognise that ‘misconduct’ tends to refer to behaviour in relation to someone’s job role. We are using the collective term ‘sexual misconduct and abuse’ to try and capture all of this.

Specifically, we would include:

any sexualised behaviour which, at the time or looking back, made the person targeted feel uncomfortable or humiliated (for example, somebody showing a work colleague pornography on their mobile phone);
any physical sexual contact which, at the time or looking back, was uncomfortable, coerced or experienced as assault, including rape;
exposure or flashing, either in-person or using electronic devices;
attempts by a professional to extort sex from another individual (for example, in exchange for services or information);
behaviour that is coercive and which lays the foundation for engaging in sexual relations (for example, a professional misuses their status, position or seniority to begin what appears to be a consensual relationship with an individual).

We are focusing on where a professional targets this behaviour towards adults aged 18 and over, because adult victims are less often considered in the existing research. However, we would include sexual misconduct and abuse that started e.g. at aged 16 and 17, and continued into adulthood.

These adults may:

come to the professional for expertise, authority, protection, or care;
be work colleagues or employees;
be partners or family members;
be other individuals in the wider community.

So this research takes a ‘360 degree’ view of harmful behaviour by professionals, within work, social, family, or intimate relationships.

Which professionals have we selected, and why?

The project focuses on what we are calling ‘high status/high trust’ professionals who have a ‘guardianship’ or ‘confidante’ role. Specifically:

police
military
barristers and judges
politicians
doctors and psychiatrists
religious leaders

The group selected are established professions who have a single regulator, professional code of practice, or are regulated in law. They are professions which would be generally recognised as having authority in society and which require a level of public confidence, esteem or support, to operate effectively.

We recognise that there are many other professions which could fall into this category, but it is important that we draw a boundary to make the project manageable. A development of the ‘Powerful Perpetrators’ research agenda longer term is to see how our insights could be tested and applied to other professional or powerful groups in society.

Why are we using the term ‘Powerful Perpetrators’?

Existing scholarship on professionals who commit sexual violence or abuse has tended to fall outside criminology or the field of gender based violence. It focuses often on children, or those considered vulnerable, whereas the victimization of adults more commonly sits within organizational or professional studies. Here, it may be termed ‘sexual misconduct’, ‘crossing professional boundaries’, ‘sexual harassment’ or ‘abuse of power’. These phrases can have three effects:

They de-centre the individual who committed the harm;
They may not sufficiently convey the gravity of some instances of misconduct;
They do not distinguish those behaviours which, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, would be considered a crime.

In part, this is a function of ‘different language for different domains’. So, we talk about ‘misconduct’ in relation to behaviour that is referred to disciplinary processes, to determine whether and how that individual should continue to practice as a professional. We refer to alleged ‘crimes’ when an individual is arrested by police, and referred through the criminal justice system, to determine their guilt and possible state sanction.

In this project, we are focused on individuals who are high status and high trust professionals whose conduct is sexually harmful, abusive or violent towards those who come to them for expertise, authority, protection, or care; towards their colleagues; towards intimate partners and family; and/or towards other members of the public to whom they leverage access.

We understand them to be ‘powerful’ because of the standing and esteem they derive from their professional position. This may be compounded by other forms of social capital and privilege.

For this reason, we are not singling out one profession, but rather bringing together a group of high status and high trust professionals, who are subject to a professional code, as a collective focus for analysis. There will be differences and similarities between them.

We are interested in what happens when individuals from these professions are reported to their employer or regulator and/or when they are referred to disciplinary spaces. We term these spaces ‘administrative justice’ to distinguish them from ‘criminal justice’.

We employ the term ‘perpetrator’ to foreground both the individual actor and to recognise misconduct that is potentially criminal. We would make two observations about this term:

We do not use ‘perpetrator’ emotively or to imply a permanent identity; but rather as a way of naming the instigator of a harmful act.
We do not assume that all harmful acts should necessarily be processed through the criminal justice system – indeed, our focus on administrative justice is precisely because, in certain circumstances, alternative accountability spaces may better repair the harm done.

Finally, our interest is not in investigating whether or not reported instances are ‘true’, but rather how professional employers, bodies and regulators understand and respond to the perpetration of sexual misconduct and abuse, alleged or proven. We want to analyse the characteristics of individuals who are reported and the context of their behaviour. And we plan to map and understand the activity that occurs from the point of alleged harm through to any disciplinary outcome. This may also require understanding what happened next, including where individuals are reported again.

What is ‘administrative justice’?

We use the term ‘administrative justice’ to refer to regulatory and disciplinary processes which assess professional conduct and determine an individual’s fitness to practice. Administrative justice might extend back before the start of a disciplinary hearing and include when a report was first made, how it was responded to and actioned within an organisation. It will also include actions that were taken following the outcome of a process, including what procedural or systemic changes were enacted (or not) and the response when individuals receive repeat allegations.

Administrative justice may be an important site of accountability for people who have experienced sexual misconduct and abuse by a professional. This is particularly the case when someone does not want to report behaviour to the police (or it does not meet a criminal threshold) or the criminal justice system does not deliver a satisfactory outcome.

What methods are we using to collect data?

During 2024-2026, we mapped existing evidence (Stage 1) and commenced data collection (see the outcomes here). Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5 will to some extent overlap. You can view our data collection progress here.

Stage 1. Establishing a benchmark: A review of international evidence to understand existing knowledge and examples of good practice.

Stage 2. Regulatory and case data: This involves engaging with UK professional regulators to build retrospective datasets of fitness-to-practice cases and other data related to how sexual misconduct cases are identified and managed within professional organisations. We will also pull together data already in the public domain.

Stage 3. Interviews: We will interview: (1) staff working for regulators, tribunals and professional bodies or staff supporting anyone involved in a disciplinary process; (2) individuals who act as legal counsel in such cases; and (3) journalists who report on sexual misconduct, particularly for ‘trade’ journals or investigative outlets. For those who prefer to talk in a non-research interview format, we can arrange an ordinary meeting and take hand-written notes, which we can use to inform our thinking, but will not quote directly.

Stage 4. Survey: During 2025, we are surveying individuals who have been victims or witnesses to sexual misconduct, violence or abuse perpetrated by professionals. While the focus of this project is on perpetrators and institutional processes, the voices of those who have experienced and witnessed abuse are central to understanding whether and how justice processes work in practice. This anonymous online survey will be open until 31 December 2025.

Stage 5. Analysis and synthesis: Work to analyse and synthesise the insights from the different data sets will be ongoing. As a team, we are interested in using visual methods to analyse, represent and disseminate findings. Through this project, we hope to build and test those skills. We expect to develop our theoretical frameworks inductively, based on our knowledge of existing work and depending on the data that emerges.

Ethical review and approval for all work is provided by a University of Bristol ethics committee.

What will be the impact?

We will publish and disseminate outputs and insights throughout the lifecycle of the project (see Publications and Latest News pages). We plan to work with others to inform and shape policy and practice that:

(a) promotes organisational transparency, acknowledgement, and data-sharing;

(b) centres the experiences and knowledge of individuals impacted by sexual misconduct and abuse;

(d) prevents or reduces future harm.

Who is funding this work?

In November 2022, Dr Natasha Mulvihill at the University of Bristol was awarded European Research Council Starting Grant for this work.

It was funded by UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee, reference EP/Y004698/1, and runs from 1 November 2023 to 30 October 2028.