"He looked annoyed that I was making him do some extra work," Ms Pearson recalls of the evening at Yah Yah's, a late-night venue in Collingwood. Ms Pearson had often been harassed there, but on this  occasion, when a man groped her, things escalated.

Ms Pearson reported the incident to the security guard, who brought the two face to face. "When the man shouted, 'She's f--king crazy, she's just a f--king dyke,' the security guard looked at me as if to question my truthfulness."

After an exchange in which Ms Pearson removed the  man's glasses, the security guard turfed both of them out.

While almost humdrum in its inevitability – a night out marred by unwanted attention – this incident may spark a rewriting of the rule book for Melbourne venues.

LISTEN is a national lobby group committed to  gender equality in the music scene. Issues range from the underrepresentation of females on festival bills to urging musicians not to  tolerate band members who are known abusers.

It was to LISTEN that Ms Pearson turned for support, frustrated that she had not only had to explain the concept of sexual harassment to a security guard, she had also been ejected with the drunk aggressor.

Ms Pearson contacted James Young, co-owner of Yah Yah's, and a meeting was arranged with fellow owner Pete Lewis, members of the security company and the female bar manager. As Mr Young tells Fairfax Media, he was keen to implement change.

"It's a process of education," he admits, "and it's people like me who need to be a part of changing things. We now insist on having a female security member on duty and we're educating our security that if somebody talks about sexual assault, we must believe them in full. The matter will then go to one of our bar managers – not to the security team."

Mr Young was appalled to discover there was no security training module dealing specifically with sexual assault and harassment. "That's something I'd like to have a hand in introducing." Naomi Oakley, who owns U-Nome Security, says of the security industry: "They're about 20 years behind the police, in that they're just starting to realise how important it is to have a female on the team."

She should know – she spent 13years in the force before starting her predominantly female company.

Ms Pearson is pleased with the Yah Yah's outcome. "James gets that this is a real issue," she says. "They will now have more female artists playing there and more females wanting to go in there and drink."

There was also a positive result for Monica Ludekens, who was harassed at another Melbourne venue in April. Ms Ludekens, who was alone, spent the evening fending off the advances of the co-owner, who was offering drinks and compliments in equal measure before turning nasty.

It came in the wake of the Luke Lazarus case in Kings Cross, in which a club owner's son used his power to isolate and rape a woman.

On the advice of LISTEN, Ms Ludekens arranged a call with the venue manager and suggested that this was an opportunity to make his  business a place where women could feel safe. In that respect, she told him, they would be ahead of the game. The initial response was an assurance that the co-owner had been told to "stop hitting on people".  "[But] that wasn't hitting on me," Ms Ludekens points out. "If a person is shaking and tearful, they're having a negative physical response."

When Ms Ludekens described the prevalence of harassment at venues among her peer group, the point hit home. The manager arranged a staff meeting at the venue to discuss appropriate action, and the co-owner volunteered to go to counselling.

LISTEN is now drawing up  safety guidelines that will be distributed to venues. Such an approach  has been a success story for British campaigners Good Night Out, who worked with London club Fabric to put an anti-harassment policy in place.

Duty of care would include adhering to responsible service of alcohol guidelines and being vigilant when people are trying to get other punters drunk. And  security companies hired by venues should receive extra training from the venue.

The alternative music scene is quick to respond to situations with benefit gigs, and is overtly feminist, lesbian and gay-friendly, yet scratch the surface and there  are problems.

Bianca Fileborn  completed a  doctorate at the University of Melbourne on sexual harassment at venues. From her research with 250 young Melburnians, she heard some graphic accounts, yet "many were really protective of the venues that they identified with".

There was also downplaying of abuse. "Someone might say, 'Yeah, I got groped, but it didn't bother me."'

I can understand that. When I was 18, I was raped at my favourite music festival by a garden-variety opportunist. By this, I mean his Identikit picture would have been of a man with collar-length hair and a band T-shirt. He was more likely to have a history of being a bit of a creep than murdering sex workers.

I couldn't say "rape" for years, so I trivialised it to a friend: "I've managed to get myself attacked."

That was 22 years ago. In the past few years in Victoria there have been serious sexual assaults at St Kilda Festival, Rainbow Serpent and Pyramid –  yet the majority of incidents would go unreported.

In the United States, as summer approaches, there has been a spate of articles with headlines such as "What to do when you're sexually assaulted at a music festival".  And here in Australia: "Sexual assault at festivals: why aren't we talking about it more?"

Accepting a culture of harassment has a knock-on effect on violent sexual assault. It enables perpetrators to get incrementally worse and establishes a norm that makes it harder for victims of crime to come forward.

The Melbourne venues that are instigating change will drive home the message with action, not words.