Good morning. I'm speaking from the beautiful Coast Salish territory. I'm in Vancouver. I'm speaking on behalf of the Ending Violence Association of B.C., which is a provincial body that has 240 programs across the province that respond to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse. I'm also speaking on behalf of the Ending Violence Association of Canada, which is the new national organization that is in place to respond to gender-based violence in practical ways, like the development of policy, training, and intervention strategies.
I want to thank the committee for having me here today and I would like to express our support of this bill, which addresses something that is at a crisis point in our country. We've never seen such a low in terms of public confidence in the justice system. When it comes to sexual assault, I think the low is at an all-time low. I think that many survivors of sexual assault don't come forward to report because of the news reports they've been hearing, but that has been the case for many years. Stats Canada suggests that only 5% of sexual assault survivors report to the police. However, we believe it's far lower.
There are some researchers out of SFU here in Vancouver who say that the number of women who report sexual assault to the police is so low it's considered statistically insignificant, yet sexual assault is far from insignificant. The results of sexual assault can have a debilitating, psychological impact that lasts an entire lifetime for survivors. I think it is incumbent upon the justice system to get it right.
We also know, from those who work with sex offenders, that for many sex offenders this is not just usually a one-time occurrence. In fact, most sex offenders, by researcher standards, have somewhere between 400 and 1,000 victims in their lifetime. So when we have one survivor in a hundred or one in a thousand who comes forward seeking a remedy from the justice system, it is incumbent upon us to get it right. Unfortunately, we are failing survivors so badly and have been for so many years.
We thank the committee and we thank the House of Commons. We thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this issue forward in the way that you are today. We think, specifically in terms of training for judges, that it's important that judges have training to understand the neurobiology of trauma and of fear that so many women have during a sexual assault. I think this is one of the most misunderstood aspects. Sexual assault is unlike any other crime. It's considered one of the most violent crimes a person can experience, and it's considered on par with what a soldier in a war-torn country might experience with PTSD, who has seen horrible things or whose life has been in danger.
I think we need to have police and the judicial folks understand how the trauma of sexual assault manifests in a human being, what happens in the moment of trauma, and what happens that manifests different kinds of actions on the part of survivors. We have seen too many cases where police or the judicial system has really just been misunderstood. In many respects, we are asking people who have very important jobs in our country to do those jobs blindly, without any training. With sexual assault being as complicated as it is, we also need to understand how the dynamics of sexual assault and the fear that is produced in a sexual assault can be replicated in and of itself in a courtroom. Most sexual assaults are perpetrated by males upon females. The issue is about power and control, and unless a judge, in their courtroom, is completely conscious of that, those same power dynamics can be replicated in a courtroom. They can be replicated in an interview room if somebody reports to police.
In addition to the necessary training of the judiciary, we also think the bill would be strengthened by including training for the RCMP. We understand that the aspects of the bill are written in such a way as to try to expedite its ascent, but we are only as strong as our weakest link. If we think about a house and we want to insulate the house but we have one or two windows wide open all winter long, that's the way I see our justice system. We have many police jurisdictions that are availing themselves of trauma training.
To some extent, here and there, the crown is involved. Anti-violence services and sexual assault services have definitely been availing themselves of the best training possible, but if we don't have training at the top of the food chain, if you will, at the judges' or even at the police level, we're doing an extreme disservice.
The other thing that's important to understand is—