Public Safety Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Christina Johnson]

One of the significant things is the barriers. I'm not sure that the crime itself.... Sexual assault is sexual assault, right? It's those barriers to being able to report it and to be believed that are reducing the reporting of sexual violence.

People could correct me and challenge me on this, but the fact is that sexual violence is sexual violence. This is about the barriers that people have to overcome in order to report or to receive service surrounding that, plus there's that cultural piece that keeps people from moving forward, such as the increased victim blaming and the close connection within tight-knit communities. In growing up rurally, sometimes I was in trouble before I got home because people saw and reported things. I see some nodding of heads there.

Those are the things that make it different. It's the local context.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

You said something that concerns me, though. I don't have the numbers for the rural environment, and the old numbers are not up to date, but to my knowledge, a female beating victim will report, will do something, after an average of 37 times. I'm not surprised to hear that in the rural environment they don't report on the first hit. There's shame or blame or whatever that goes against the victim herself.

You mentioned community norms that would accept or tolerate sexual violence. Are there norms in some places that don't see it as that bad?

[Christina Johnson]

Do you mean that don't see sexual violence as bad?

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Yes.

[Christina Johnson]

Yes. It's all about the pressure for family preservation. That's really what happens. There's also a misunderstanding of the definitions of sexual violence—you know, what is and what is not; boys will be boys; or he's a good kid and I don't want to wreck his future. It's those sorts of cultural norms that are highly reinforced and that really stop people from reporting.

Specifically, the highest-risk age for sexual violence is 14 to 24. You still have to go to school with these kids, right? The person who offended against you is in the same classroom as you.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Have you any idea, or have you studied or looked at, why kids who are going to school, for example, may act violently, considering the environment, the culture, or the specific environment of what seems to be a rural-type crime?

[Christina Johnson]

I would say that the pertaining risk factors are similar in rural versus urban; however, it would be the intensity and the level of social acceptance. Some of the risk factors can include the level of alcohol use. We know that is absolutely more prevalent in rural areas. Some of the research does show that. It's linked to violence, both domestic and sexual. Multiple risk factors come into play.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

You mentioned that a community might fear that police would not be willing to engage or react or respond. This is beside the fact that it takes some time, more than one hour, to get there. Why do communities believe...or don't they trust police forces? What is the relationship between police forces and the communities? Communities are tight. They know everyone. In many cases, police are partnering with local forces.

[Christina Johnson]

Sometimes your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness. Yes, everybody knows everybody, but here's the deal: When it comes to dealing with people who have been victimized, it takes one bad experience, one wrong comment, and then it goes through the whole community that now it is not safe to report.

The reality is that a lot of times in rural areas, we're not getting highly trained investigators coming into communities, we're getting new recruits. We might have one person who's highly trained and then a bunch of new recruits who are coming in. Really what we're doing is learning off of the back of victims.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

You mentioned the training of officers. I'm wondering if it's gone through your mind that associations like yours may be the best trainers for police officers to know about those traumas and how to handle those things. You know how it's done on the street, and you can see that they might not have the proper training. Would you be a good organization to do that? Can you offer that to the RCMP and other police forces?

[Christina Johnson]

We do specific training in sexual violence response. For example, through the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services, we have a first responders to sexual assault and sexual abuse program. That is a good first response, and it's a program that's specific to sexual trauma. It gets to the underbelly. It deconstructs all the myths that keep sexual violence going. However—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Sorry, Ms. Johnson, we'll have to leave it there. Mr. Picard has run through his time, as he is prone to do.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Eglinski, you have seven minutes.

[Jim Eglinski]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Johnson, I listened intently to your presentation. Thank you for that, and thank you for the passion that you showed.

It's quite easy to point a finger at a police officer and say that this is done wrong or that's not done right. However, a lot of the actions by a police officer, whether it's RCMP or city police officer or whatever, are actions that she or he follows in an investigation that are required for them to prove a case in court.

Now, I know she said that maybe they could take a 48-hour break or something like that if a person is upset. Try to explain that to a judge or a lawyer, or a defence lawyer. I would really argue a case against that. The police officer needs to get that evidence put together.

Your ideas are excellent, but the problem I see is whether the courts accept that in the terms of evidence. This is where the problem goes. The defence lawyer will try to chew up a statement. The police officer is trying to take a statement which is the best recollection at the time of that incident.

You may not know my background. I was a police officer for 35 years—all rural, aboriginal policing. Now, many times in 48 hours, a story will change. We are trying to find out about the actual circumstances so that we can do the investigation. Sometimes it is impassioned—I totally agree with you—and it's difficult.

I totally agree with you that many rural communities across Canada have recruits, non-experienced police officers. When a person gets experience, he is probably going to want to go to a larger centre. That's where the expertise is. I think what you're saying is that initial contact is not sometimes an expert investigator in sexual crime; he or she may be a fairly new police officer.

Do you think we also need to share some of the responsibilities with the court services, along with the police officers, so that we can get a kind of united front on how we can best handle these very intricate, very emotional investigations?

[Christina Johnson]

Respectfully, there is some research that is coming out on the neurobiology of trauma and how the brain encodes trauma. What they are finding is that—you're right—the story does evolve. That is because within that first 48 hours, it has not been compressed into true memory. That's why the current recommendation is to wait 48 hours after the initial contact or after the assault itself, because you're getting a truer story after the 48 hours.

Absolutely, we have to share with the judicial system. As a matter of fact, all the police I know are wonderful people, and I am so happy to work with them. They work their tails off, and they document, and the moment it hits the justice system where it becomes this black-and-white piece where it's evidence—not people but evidence—that's where things really go sideways.

[Jim Eglinski]

Thank you.

[Christina Johnson]

Thank you.

[Jim Eglinski]

Trevor, welcome, and thank you for your presentation.

Can you talk a little more about the Alberta rural crime watch association and different programs like Citizens on Patrol, community and rural crime watch? Do you work quite closely with different groups like that across Alberta through your program?

[Trevor Tychkowsky]

Yes, you bet. There are several different groups.

As the Alberta Provincial Rural Crime Watch Association, or any rural crime association, we are the passive group. We tell people we don't want boots on the ground. We don't want people doing active patrol. We want that person knowing about their neighbours. We want that person travelling out for coffee to the community to just watch out for their neighbours.

With Citizens on Patrol, its mandate is being the boots on the ground. They actually do backup patrols in their communities and are patrolled on that aspect.

Do we work with them? Yes, absolutely. We have two different kinds of mandates. We are both crime prevention, but we're two different mandates. One is the boots on the ground, and they teach them for boots on the ground, and with the other one, we teach our rural people about just getting back to those roots, getting back to the way it was long ago when all neighbours knew one another. When somebody is away, it's knowing who that person is.

It seems like these last probably 20 years, that's been going away. We don't know our neighbours. In a lot of the small communities, I've talked to a lot of people, and they don't even know who their neighbour is half a mile away. That's really disheartening.

[Jim Eglinski]

You live in a rural area of Alberta. There has been a lot of concern about response times and the time police officers take to respond to maybe a serious break-in or something like that. Do you have any opinions on how they can improve the service over and above what they have now dealing with the police ratio per population?

[Trevor Tychkowsky]

I think the biggest one for us is that, yes, some days they are thin. There is no question that they get a lot more calls than they can ever respond to. Our participation with the RCMP is phenomenal. We have an amazing relationship with them. Do I think that they can improve that in any way? No. Besides the potential of having more police officers, I don't believe that....

We promote to our people that we can't keep asking the RCMP to do it. We the public, we the communities, need to take the crime into our own hands by protecting our own belongings. We need to educate people to make sure they're locking up their stuff. The days of the farmers leaving their keys in their trucks and leaving their homes unlocked are done.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Eglinski.

Madam Moore will have the floor for seven minutes. She will likely ask her questions en français.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I have questions for Ms. Johnson.

You spoke a great deal about the issues surrounding assaults. I want to discuss the long-term implications and the differences between urban and rural crime. When a person is a victim of sexual assault in a rural area, the person's abuser may continue to live in the community for a number of years, whether or not the assault has been reported. This means that many victims of sexual assault will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or will have similar symptoms. In the years following the assault, the victim is quite likely to meet the abuser in completely unexpected circumstances, such as in line at the grocery story or at the bank. These traumas can occur at any time and can cause the victim's symptoms to reappear.

Do victims of assault, regardless of whether the assault was reported, continue to receive support even if the assault occurred 10, 15 or 20 years ago and the trauma resurfaces later for some reason?

[Christina Johnson]

Absolutely. It's quite common, and it may not be that they don't see each other for a long period of time. They may see each other daily, or weekly, or when they go to...whatever their faith is on the weekend. There will be a community expectation that there is forgiveness in moving forward. You're very right that people are absolutely carrying symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.