The organiser of a Southern electronic music festival says sexual assault is much less likely to occur at small-scale events.
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Fractangular Gathering is run by Alison McCrindle and her husband Sean Le Rossignol, and takes place in Buckland.
The festival has a 1000-person capacity.
Ms McCrindle said the recent sexual assaults at Falls Festival in Marion Bay were “disgusting”.
“Festivals have a lot larger attendance numbers [now], therefore you’re going to have a wider variety of people attending,” she said.
“And with that comes these issues, like substance use and then the assaults.”
She said that smaller, boutique festivals like Fractangular offered a safer space for patrons than they might find at an event as large as Falls.
With its low crowd capacity, Fractangular supposedly enjoys increased “visibility”, so would-be perpetrators of sexual assault are less likely to harass fellow festivalgoers.
“I do believe that it definitely cuts down the chance of that sort of thing happening,” Ms McCrindle said.
Fractangular is a child-friendly event, and Ms McCrindle said this also promoted a safer space for everyone at the festival.
Festivals have a lot larger attendance numbers [now], therefore you’re going to have a wider variety of people attending. And with that comes these issues, like substance use and then the assaults
- Alison McCrindle
“Putting that family view into it really helps,” she said.
“Especially with the crowd that are there to party, it makes them go, ‘Yeah, OK, kids. Keep it cool, let’s not overdo things’.
“I think it just changes the vibe and people’s respect for the space.”
Ms McCrindle advocated for moderate drug and alcohol use at Fractangular, saying while it wasn’t the root cause for sexual assault, it could provide the impetus for such offences.
“[It] needs to be a very heavily monitored thing,” she said.
“And that comes down to cars being fully searched, and minimising stupid amounts of substances that can cause these situations.”
If anything positive can possibly come from the sexual assaults that happened at Falls over the new year, Ms McCrindle said, it would be the fact that more women felt prepared to speak up.
Perhaps sexual assaults were occurring at festivals ten-years-ago, but “we just didn’t hear about it”, Ms McCrindle said.
Fractangular Gathering 2017 runs from February 10-12, and is sold out.
The Examiner’s Hands Off campaign aims to raise awareness around sexual assault, and encourage public dialogue.
If you have experienced sexual assault, you can contact the crisis line at Laurel House on 0409 800 394.
