Hi. My name is Janine Benedet. I am a law professor with the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia, where I teach, among other things, criminal law and the law of sexual assault.
I've been researching the legal treatment of different forms of male violence against women for about 15 years. My current research focuses in particular on sexual violence, including prostitution. I use my research and the public platform that my position gives me, in alliance with a number of women's equality-seeking and anti-violence organizations, both locally and nationally. So I am very pleased to take part in these hearings on the very important issue of violence against aboriginal women and girls.
I'm sure you have many experts appearing before the committee who are speaking to the scope of the problem, to its enormous cost for aboriginal women and their communities, and to some of the root causes of male violence against women. So while the brief remarks I have necessarily touch on some of those things, I want to confine my remarks to the committee in the main to the legal aspects, which is where my own expertise lies, both the law on the books and its application in the criminal justice system.
The first question that I think is worth addressing is whether we need new laws or tougher penalties. I heard with interest Bev Jacobs' suggestion about a violence against women act, in the sense that the statute exists in the United States.
In terms of the criminal law, it is always tempting, when faced with a crisis, to think that more severe criminal laws or criminal penalties are the answer. In fact, we have a fairly comprehensive set of assault and sexual assault laws on the books. The potential penalties for those offences are quite severe. Obviously the primary concern in this area is violence prevention, and we know that the criminal law is not a particularly efficient or effective means of preventing violence.
The reality is that the vast majority of acts of both physical violence and certainly sexual violence are never reported to any authority and never enter the criminal justice system.
The other preliminary point I want to emphasize is that I think the government, and the federal government in particular, has a real role to play in this area. That role goes well beyond the idea that more punitive measures are necessary to address this problem to being one of ensuring that women are able to realize their very fundamental rights to security of the person and to sex equality. And that's not done simply through the criminal law and through punishment of offenders.
I'd like to talk for a moment specifically about how sexual violence against aboriginal women is treated by the criminal justice system and where it seems to me that in the application of the laws there are some real causes for concern. The most important of those, I would say, is that we continue to see aboriginal women as offenders rather than as survivors or victims. We continue to see, in many jurisdictions, double charging in domestic violence cases, where the woman is charged along with the man who is assaulting her, or we see women who are charged for fighting back against men who have done them violence, including women in prostitution who are charged for assaults against johns and pimps.
We continue to see women routinely pleading out to lesser offences, offences they may not be guilty of at all, simply to avoid the threat of federal sentences or life sentences, depending on the offence with which they are charged. That, to me, is an area that deserves some urgent attention.
I am also concerned that the very important attention that we are now paying towards stranger violence, when we look at the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, may result in a neglect of the issue of violence within aboriginal communities and its roots in a long history of regrettable government policies.
To return just briefly to the issue of sexual violence, we also continue to see a number of what I think are really disappointing trends in the way these cases are prosecuted when they get to court, if they ever do get there. We continue to see many cases in which aboriginal women are treated as consenting even when they are highly intoxicated or nearly unconscious. And we see a stubborn reluctance on the part of judges to invoke the bias sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code, so subparagraph 718.2(a)(i), which indicates that where the offence is motivated by factors including sex and race the penalty can be enhanced if those are aggravating factors--it is really difficult, if not impossible, to find any cases in which violence or sexual violence against aboriginal women and girls is treated as a crime of hate or bias. But that's exactly what it is.
The final point I would make is in relation to the question of prostitution as it relates to the issue of violence against aboriginal women. I think we continue to see, both in the media and, regrettably, in some public facets and government facets, violence against aboriginal women being dismissed as being about women's high-risk lifestyles: prostitution, hitchhiking, drug use, running away.
That really replicates a pattern that we've seen in the criminal justice system historically of blaming women for their own victimization, or at least locating the source of the violence in her rather than in the men who are inflicting it, and in the greater societal system of sex inequality. I think that's also something that is important and needs to be considered, as is the current trend to encourage the legalization of men's prostitution of women as a solution to aboriginal women's poverty and violence.
I'll end there and just say that I hope the focus of this committee, given that it's the status of women committee, stays on sex equality.
Thanks.