Thank you.
I'd like to begin by thanking the members of this committee for the invitation to present the most recent data on the issue of violence against young women and girls in this country. I'm accompanied today by Rebecca Kong, chief of the policing services program, who is from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, as I am. Ms. Kong will help me with some of the questions you may have. I also have another analyst here with me, Samuel Perreault, who will be here in case there are more specific questions regarding the general social survey on victimization, Samuel being the main analyst on this particular survey.
I'll be presenting an overview of certain key indicators relating to violence against young women and girls. In this presentation we'll be drawing from both police-reported data supplied by police services, as well as self-reported data on victimizations. As we know, many forms of violence never come to the attention of the police.
Before I start by talking about the results you're going to see on the graphs and the charts today, I'd like to draw your attention to our most recent statistics from the general social survey on victimization: violent victimization has declined between 2004 and 2014 by 28%. During this time period declines in both robbery and physical assaults were specifically noted, however rates of sexual assaults have remained stable over that same period. For the first time, in 2014 women in Canada had higher self-reported violent victimization rates than men. This trend is attributable to the fact that rates of sexual assault have not declined and that the majority of victims of this type of crime are women.
If you look at the first chart we have here, you're going to see results from a survey we did on victimization pertaining to more than 30,000 Canadians who reported on their experiences of child maltreatment at the hands of an adult prior to the age of 15. Approximately 30% of them reported being physically or sexually abused by an adult prior to age 15. Overall 27% of Canadian women stated they had been victimized as a child, with 22% stating they had been physically abused and 12% reporting sexual abuse, and a further 7% stating they had experienced both forms of violence as a child. It's important to note that more than 90% of the respondents said that the abuse they experienced as a child was never reported either to child protective services or to the police.
Another important factor that I would like to draw your attention to is, who is victimizing children? Sixty-one per cent of Canadians who reported experiencing physical violence as a child reported that the perpetrator was someone from outside the family, such as a stranger, an acquaintance, a classmate, or teachers. Females, however, were significantly more likely to have experienced abuse at the hands of a family member, that is 44% of females versus 16% of males.
Now to the next slide, turning specifically to sexual abuse experienced by girls under the age of 15, we also noted that they have experienced more severe forms of sexual abuse than boys have. For example, women were more likely to have reported being forced into unwanted sexual activities by an adult before they turned 15 than young boys were and 11% of women reported to have been touched in a sexual way by an adult. Again, this was significantly less for boys.
Now I'd like to turn to the next slide and share some information with you that is based on what is reported to the police, as this helps understand the types of violent crime involving girls and young women that come to the attention of the police. As we said before, many incidents of violence involving the youngest victims do not come to the attention of the police. When children and youth are victimized, particularly when it comes to very young and dependent children, reporting often depends on an adult bringing the offence to the attention of the police.
In 2014 alone there were about 53,000 children and youth who were victims of a violent crime, including common assault, sexual assault, and uttering threats, for example. Police report that victimization rates among girls and female youths were more than 20% higher than those of young boys and male youths.
The type of violence most often experienced by girls and young teens includes sexual offences, specifically sexual assault at level one, which is the least serious form of sexual assault, followed by physical assaults.
The next slide, again looking at police records, shows that more than 80% of sexual offences against children and youth were directed at females, especially those between the ages of 12 and 17. The distribution of age is clearly depicted on the graph here if you look at the dark blue bars. There were no specific patterns for boys. It's important to mention here that about nine out of 10 persons accused of sexually victimizing children and youth are known to the victims, and most often they are an acquaintance or family member. Accused persons were also more likely to be youths themselves.
If we look at the next slide, we look at another form of violence experienced by young women, which is dating violence. This graph shows the prevalence rates of different types of dating violence for both men and women. According to the 2014 general social survey on victimization, 10% of women who had dated during the past five years told us that they had experienced some form of dating violence. The abuse most often reported was being threatened or called names, at 8%, followed by physical violence at 4.5%, and sexual violence at 2%.
The next slide looks at criminal harassment, also commonly known as stalking. The chart illustrates the various forms of stalking and shows how men and women differ in their experiences in that regard. In the last victimization survey, 8% of Canadian women stated that they had experienced stalking that caused them to fear for their safety in the preceding five years. These types of stalking included receiving repeated obscene phone calls, having the stalker attempt to intimidate them or someone known to them, and receiving unwanted emails or texts. Women were more likely to experience stalking by a current or former intimate partner. For example, 25% of female victims of stalking reported that they were stalked by a former intimate partner.
Of note, between 2004 and 2014 we've noted a decline in the rates of self-reported stalking by 30%. But this was not the case for stalking involving the use of emails and texts, which has instead increased.
The next slide looks at cyberbullying. About 6% of Canadians 15 years of age and over who use the Internet were victims of cyberbullying in the past five years. Men and women were equally likely to report being victims of cyberbullying, however, women were more likely to report threatening or aggressive emails or texts sent to them only, while men were more likely to report that someone had used their identity to send or post embarrassing or threatening information. Not surprisingly, cyberbullying was more prevalent among younger people.
Finally, the most common cyber offence against female children and youth was child luring, followed by invitation to sexual touching.
The next slide looks at discrimination per se. Let's first say that compared to a decade ago in 2004 the proportion of both men and women perceiving discrimination on the basis of their sex has decreased by 24%.
However, gender differences still persist. In 2014 women were more likely than men to report experiencing discrimination or unfair treatment because of their sex. This was highest among women between the age of 19 and 24 years, 10% of whom reported discrimination.
Let's now turn to victimization experienced by aboriginal women, as the last section. The most recent results of the victimization survey revealed that violent victimization rates were especially high among aboriginals and also aboriginal females. For example, they recorded a sexual assault rate that was more than three times that of non-aboriginal women.
This slide talks about other risk factors associated with victimization. Victimization is linked to many social factors, as you probably know. Some of the most important we have observed were childhood maltreatment, having a mental health condition, and having experienced homelessness.
We noted that aboriginal men and women were in fact more likely to have been victims of childhood maltreatment, twice as likely to report mental health conditions, and more than twice as likely to have a history of homelessness as non-aboriginal people.
When we control for all that, and for age, gender, drinking habits, and drug use, the fact of being an aboriginal did not stand out as a characteristic linked to victimization. This means that for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people victimization is explained by all these other factors and not by the fact of being an aboriginal. However, when it comes to women, aboriginal identity remains a contributing factor of victimization.
Lastly, I'd like to conclude on the most serious form of violence against women, homicide. Overall, the majority of homicide victims are males, but when we focused on homicide involving women we found that 16% of victims between 1980 and 2014 were aboriginal. The rate of homicides for aboriginal females is six times that of non-aboriginal females.
About nine in ten female victims of homicide were killed by someone they knew. If we look more in detail, the proportion of aboriginal female victims killed by a spouse during the period was slightly lower than for non-aboriginal female victims, but in contrast, the proportion of aboriginal female victims killed by an acquaintance was slightly higher.
Thank you very much.
