For several years our organization has been working with material based on victims of child sexual abuse. What we're hearing from them, bar none, is that their safety considerations are immense and that the long-term impact on their lives, once child sexual abuse material has been created, is not well understood by any of the systems that are in place to support them.
For example, when they go to counselling, the counsellor often doesn't know how to deal with the imagery piece of the victimization. Of course, the imagery victimization is ongoing. There's the initial abuse, where the child is abused and the abuse is recorded. Then that recording continues to circulate online and continues to instill fear in the victim. Their counselling needs are very different from counselling needs that may exist for other victims for whom the crime is, in fact, over. For these victims, their past is their present. That is a big part of what we feel is lacking.
Certainly across the board we see that provincial systems are not equipped. The services that are being made available do not have the funding in place to provide the level of therapy and counselling that these survivors actually need.