Thank you, Madam Chair.
Here are some of the short- and long-term repercussions of sexual misconduct that are mentioned in the Operation Honour manual:
a) Fear Feeling afraid to leave home or go to work or fearing people in general. The process of restoring self-confidence is particularly difficult if the victim was targeted by someone they trusted, respected, or loved. In this case, their faith and trust in others, in the world and in their own judgment may also be threatened. b)Guilt. Feelings of guilt and self-blame may affect the decision to seek help. Some people may feel that the victim is to blame for being targeted, and that they provoked the incident(s) through their appearance or behaviour. Victims may also feel responsible for “not knowing any better” or not paying attention to “gut instincts” they may have had. They may not even identify what was happening as sexual misconduct. c)Shame.The destruction of self-respect, the deliberate efforts by the attacker to humiliate them, or make them do things against their will, may make the victim feel dirty, disgusted by the assault, and ashamed. That they “allowed” the incident(s) to happen at all may also make them feel ashamed. Feelings of shame may make them reluctant to report the crime to the police or to reach out for help. Because of their own actions [...], they may believe others will blame them. They may also believe their previous sexual experiences will be scrutinized.
So we have to be very careful and protect the anonymity of victims, because such repercussions can be extremely damaging in terms of their mental health. I've presented three of them to you, but there are a lot of them. We absolutely have to make them a priority in our process. They need to be our top priority.