Days after a report revealed that more than a quarter of all sexual assault complaints in Waterloo Region are deemed unfounded, the region’s police chief says he’s already taking action on the issue.
The report in The Globe and Mail collected data on sexual assault complaints from police services across the country.
It found that 19 per cent of sexual assault complaints are dismissed as being baseless across the country. In Waterloo Region specifically, that number jumps to 27 per cent.
Chief Bryan Larkin calls the report “alarming,” saying that it “raises many questions” about how police respond to people alleging sexual assault – particularly, he says, because most people who are sexually assaulted never come forward to police in the first place.
“We should pause and think about the barriers – the fear, the anxiety, the trepidation about coming forward,” he said Wednesday.
Larkin said that in the wake of the newspaper’s investigation, police will be reviewing previous sexual assault cases deemed unfounded, as well as launching a task force to rethink how police approach sexual assault.
The task force will involve people from within Waterloo Regional Police as well as people outside the organization who deal with local sexual assault victims and might have insight into what police could be doing differently.
“This is a journey, and we need them to come along with us,” he said.
One group likely to be involved in the process is the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region.
Its executive director, Sara Casselman, said Wednesday that bringing in outside voices to help police better understand issues around sexual assault would be a good thing.
She says there are lessons learned in other parts of North America that could likely be brought to the fore locally.
“What we’ve known for a long time is that there are communities that have very low unfounded rates. They’re doing something right,” she said in an interview.
Casselman says that issues around reporting sexual assault extend far past police, and involve other facets of the criminal justice system – particularly conditions that she sees as creating a culture of “shame and blame” around victims.
“If they see that replicated in our criminal justice system, it makes people feel like they don’t want to come forward,” she said.
“I think the question we actually need to ask is ‘How can we create a community where people feel safe to report?’”
More specifically, Casselman says that everyone working with sexual assault victims needs to be aware of the different ways in which they may be responding to trauma, which could explain why a victim may give police a story that doesn’t quite add up.
“When people hear the word ‘unfounded,’ they think ‘Oh, someone must have lied’ – and that is not the case,” she said.
The Ontario Provincial Police also spoke to the issue Wednesday, announcing that they would review the approximately 4,000 sexual assault reports deemed unfounded by their officers between 2010 and 2014.
With reporting by Leena Latafat
