Sexual Violence In Canada

Despite having hundreds of sexual assault cases each year, most colleges take little action to resolve these cases. In fact, only 20% of female sexual assault survivors report cases, the rest believing that it was too personal to share, or that if they did, the police wouldn’t listen to them. If they did report, often times it was to the local police rather than the campus police in fear that they would be shamed or turned away by the universities.

The alarming increase in sexual assault among male and female students is a source of concern. Despite improvements in the general statistics on rape cases, the college setting remains to be the hot bed of sexual assault, especially among the female counterparts (Allen, 2007). A victim, regardless being a male or a female, never feel safe in their life as something precious was taken from them once. Statistics show that 17.6% of women are likely to be victims of rape in their entire lifetime while only 0.3% of males are estimated to be the victims of sexual assault. According to the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), the most critical ages men and females are likely to be engaged in sexual abuse is when they are children or adolescents (Gonzales, Schofield & Schmitt, 2006).

Sexual assault is one of the most challenging issues that must be dealt with within the Canadian legal system. Sexual assault is defined as sexual activity inflicted upon someone without their given consent. In order for a sexual assault to be eligible for that title, a person committing sexual acts must continue to engage without the consent of the other person. Sexual assault is also heavily related to the rape myths that exist within society and these are the decisive factors when resolving a sexual assault case. These rape myths generally target the victim of sexual assault blaming them for the actions that occurred. The first case involving consent and rape myths to ever reach the Supreme Court of Canada to be resolved is the case of

‘Sexual Violence is more than just a crime against individuals. It threatens our families; it threatens our communities. Ultimately, it threatens the entire country’ (qtd. in Burleigh pg. 2). In the article, “Confronting Campus Rape” written by Nina Burleigh; a writer, journalist, and professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, describes what students are doing to force universities to take a stronger stand against campus sexual assault. Moreover Burleigh describes what the government is doing to make a difference on the issue. This includes laws that have created consequences for the assaulter and laws that protect the victim. According to Burleigh, a young woman called Laura Dunn was sexually assaulted on campus. Dunn was a student of UW. On April 4th, 2014, Dunn lost her virginity to two UW athletes. That night, Dunn was attending a party at the university. Dunn was enjoying the party and lost count of her alcohol intake. Dunn remembers being led out by two older teammates, who she knew. Dunn was very intoxicated, enough to stumble on her way back to what she thought would be another campus party, as one of the athletes helped her walk. The athletes led Dunn to one of their apartments where she found herself on a bed with both of them on top of her. Dunn was so intoxicated that she couldn’t help but to drift in and out of conscious leaving her unable to stop the two men. Dunn began to feel sick and was led to the bathroom by one of the athletes, where he penetrated her from behind while she was throwing up. That was a date Dunn would never forget. Dunn like many other women at the UW have been sexually abused by other students. Although Dun’s incident is shocking, it is not uncommon for women to be sexually assaulted on campus. A woman at the  university of Wisconsin is more prone to being sexually assaulted than any other woman in the country because of alcohol intoxication; this is a problem that must be resolved.

“Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behaviour that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.” (Unknown, 2016)

Anything from unwanted touching in a sexual manner to non-consensual sexual intercourse is classified as sexual assault in Canada. Male survivors of sexual assault frequently face unsympathetic attitudes after choosing to report the criminal offence. Unfortunately, despite the similar chances of sexual assault amongst both males and females during their teenage years, with 20% for males and 25% for females, there are fewer researches conducted on male sexual assault in Canada (Statistics Canada 2015). A large proportion (16%) of male victims are sexually assaulted in an institutional setting, which is over two and a half times greater than the percentage of females in the same location (Brennan 2008). The UCR2 (Uniform Crime Reporting Survey)

Assault laws have changed over the many years and will continue to do so later on. Laws treating and preventing sexual assault, domestic abuse and child abuse will increase and become more powerful than they are today. It has become easier and much faster to report someone of psychical assault than ever before, but how come not the same for sexual assault? Most sexual assault cases do not made it to trial, either they’ve been dropped or not seen as big enough to meet proper proceedings. Even though sexual assaults are much more frequent that simple assault, someone is being sexually assaulted in Canada right now as you are reading this. However, due to the work of many people today, protesting and informing others to stand up for their rights

The article introduces sexual assault to readers as a problem that is in line with other forms of violence such as domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. It gives a figure of 19% undergraduate women who have reported a complete or attempted sexual assault while in campus and worth noting is that in most of the incidences, the victims knew the perpetrators, who also feature in other related crimes.

“Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault” (RAINN). Rape is a threat virtually anywhere people go, but no place has a higher risk for sexual assault than college campuses. However, many of these occurrences go without penalties against the attacker, and even more are not reported at all. The lack of consequences for the accused indirectly suggests that rape and other forms of sexual assault are allowable and create further problems for the victims of the horrendous actions. Harsher punishments need to be given out for sexual assault on campus, as the current rulings are biased and immoral.

Before discussing the sexual assault crisis on college campuses, it is important to disprove some misconceptions. When someone reports a sexual assault, society tends to immediately deny the assault happened, claiming false accusation, but, according to Stanford’s “Men Against Abuse Now” report, only two percent of allegations are false, a

Sexual assault and rape are serious social and public health issues in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. In particular sexual assault on college campus are prevalent at an alarming rate and leaves serious effects on the victims. This essay will focus on statistics and the prevalence and effects amongst college students, through examining a number of reasons why women fail to report sexual assault and rape. This essay will also cover sexual assault prevention and things that can be done to mitigate the risk of becoming a victim to such matter.

My commentary piece talks about the systemic prevalence of sexualized violence plaguing post-secondary campuses within British Columbia. Specifically, I offer a critique of Bill 23: Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act and its intended impact on sexual violence on campus. Sexual assaults on campus is an issue gaining more and more attention throughout Canada, especially after the pervasive mistreatment of sexual harassment and assault cases by universities. The normalization around the rape

The topic of sexual assault has always been a tough subject to discuss because it is a heinous crime that can and has happened to men, women, young and old. It is a topic that is disturbing and heart wrenching, especially when involving children. In the past few years, our media outlets have captured the images and stories on sexual assault, focusing mainly on College Institutions and how sexual assault cases have been handled within those institutions. Sexual assault is a very important topic to discuss, since this can happen to anyone you know, man or woman, adult or child, or yourself. This paper will touch on the different types of sexual assault, stigma of sexual assault, treatment of sexual assault, and understanding the perpetrator. There will be a brief discussion of the current social issue of college campus sexual assault. Sexual assault is such a wide topic with many areas to discuss, but this paper will outline the basic understanding of sexual assault and what can be done to overcome this stigma of sexual assault and how we can help the victims/survivors.

This literature review provides a brief overview of six scholarly articles and other facts about sexual assault .This review will first define sexual assault as it is defined in these articles. It will analyze the strengths and limitations of the definition used and will discuss the occurrence of sexual assault in the general population.This review will also illustrate the protective factors, barriers to recovery , impact of development and the specific sexual assault population that are absent in these articles. Sexual assault is a societal issue that impacts men and women at every age in their life, it’s much more highly reported among college aged women. The majority of women who are victims of rape are

College-age adults are known to be high risk for sexual violence and most studies show that one in three women have experiences some type of sexual assault whether it was through physical force or harassment. These statics are known by most women on college campuses to ensure that women know and understand that this could happen to them. The issue is more than ensuring that women are aware of how protect themselves and know how to avoid these situations because it shouldn’t even be happening. When women are taught that they should know how to defend themselves we are saying that this type of behavior is normal and inevitable. We should shift from this dynamic and start teaching both men and women that this behavior is completely unacceptable and that sexually assaulting or harassing someone is NOT normal. This paper will mostly focus on incidents of rape and sexual assault on college campuses and what the outcome and reactions of these incidents were.