RCMP: Sexually violent crimes still heavily under-reported

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“Modernizing our approach is essentially boiling down to that trauma-informed approach and a victim-centered approach, and letting the victim guide us about how they want to participate in these investigations. It’s being open to reports coming in through different means. Maybe a friend calls on behalf of somebody, and even if we receive a report like that, we’re still going back to the victim and have a conversation with the victim and then allowing them to make the choice as to what they want to do and how they want to participate in the investigation.” 

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St. Germaine said there is a myth or a stereotype that victims of sexual assault often make the stories up.

“That’s just not true. It takes a lot of courage for people to come forward and report that they’ve been a victim. There’s a history that a person should feel ashamed about what happened to them and that, for some reason, it’s their fault, and that’s a huge hurdle in people coming forward. It is unfortunate that myth is out there, but it’s just not accurate.” 

As a result, sexually violent crimes are still heavily under-reported to police. That’s why the RCMP are giving victims more options during the investigative process.

“I think what we’re really taking strides to do for victims here is the trauma-informed approach. So we’re going to let the victim guide how they want to be treated, so that could be something as simple as ‘where do they want to be interviewed?’…maybe somebody doesn’t want to come to the police station. That’s okay. We’ll come to you.” 

The other big key to prevention is education around consent. St. Germaine said efforts to teach kids about consent early have helped, and there are a ton of great resources for parents to help inform their children.

“There are some really good resources out online, some metaphorical videos about consent, relating it back to sexual consent, and one of them is ‘the tea video’.”

The tea video came out in 2015 and has had almost 12 million videos on YouTube. It’s a simple 3-minute video that uses drinking tea as a metaphor for sexual consent.

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