A De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) law academic has been presented with a lifetime achievement award for his work supporting male victims of rape and sex assault.
Professor Phil Rumney, Professor of Criminal Justice at De Montfort Law School was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Men and Boys Awards.
It is presented to people who have made a significant lifelong contribution to supporting men and boys.
Prof Rumney has spent 25 years writing and researching how male victims of rape and sexual assault have been treated and investigated. He has helped create a bystander intervention project for students, focusing on preventing sexual coercion and domestic abuse.
Men and Boys co-founder, Dr Ben Hine, said: “Phil’s work in understanding the experiences of male victims of sexual assaults laid the foundations for other researchers.
“We are much, much further in our understanding of male victims and their experiences of help-seeking and seeking justice, thanks to Phil’s work.”
The National Men and Boys Awards are the world’s first awards celebrating those who support the well-being of men and boys, winners are to be announced on International Men’s Day, which happened on Thursday.
The National Men and Boys Awards, founded this year by the Men and Boys Coalition charity, recognise individuals and organisations who have made an outstanding contribution to promoting care, compassion and social change for men and boys in the UK.
The winners include fatherhood champions; campaigners for men and boys’ health; academics researching male victims of domestic abuse; grassroots support for isolated older men following the coronavirus pandemic and leading practitioners supporting male victims of rape.
It is understood that these are the first such awards to have taken place not just in the UK, but anywhere in the world.
Dan Bell, CEO of the Men and Boys Coalition, said: “There is an incredible network of charities, practitioners and academics in the UK who are doing crucial, unsung work on the ground to support men and boys and raise awareness of the many issues they face -- often on a shoestring budget and with a lack of support from policy makers.
"The Men and Boys Coalition was founded to champion the men and boys sector in the UK -- and what better way to do that than to shout about this work with our inaugural National Men and Boys Awards.
"I am absolutely delighted to announce our award winners, whose work is quite literally re-shaping the understanding of, and provision for, issues of disadvantage that disproportionately affect men and boys in the UK.”
Posted on Friday 20 November 2020