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One in five British festival goers have experienced sexual assault or harassment, according to a new survey.

The poll found that 22 percent of Brits have encountered some kind of unwanted behaviour, rising to 43 percent of women under 40.

However only two percent of festival goers who were assaulted or harassed reported the incident to police.

Over 1,100 people were questioned in the survey by YouGov which also found that the most common form of unwanted sexual behaviour was forceful dancing and sexualised verbal harassment.

Two percent of men and four percent of women said they had been sexually assaulted while unconscious or asleep.

Seventy percent of those who experienced sexual assault or harassment at a festival reported the incident to police.

Campaigners say that the figures should be a wake-up call for the industry to start treating sexual violence as seriously as other crimes at festivals.

Tracey Wise, founder of campaign group Safe Gigs For Women, said: "We have struggled to find anyone with any definite statistics on this before now.

"It gives us something to show to festival organisers so we can say 'you need to take this on board'."

Paul Reed, chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals, said festivals "have a duty to make their events as safe and secure and enjoyable" as possible, and encourages festival goers to report incidents if they witness them.

"People shouldn't feel that they need to tolerate the type of behaviour [at festivals] that they wouldn't tolerate in the street," he said, adding that raising awareness around the importance of consent and bystander intervention was paramount.

"If people don't intervene, then this behaviour becomes normalised," he said.

February's Crime Survey statistics found one in five women had experienced some form of sexual assault since they turned 16.

Additional reporting by PA.