The Dominion - violence against women

A Call to Fight Feminicide, in Juarez and Beyond

Tim McSorley — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:27:27 +0000

Laval author puts a structural lens on the killings of women and girls

MONTREAL—Ciudad Juarez. The name conjures up images of violence, maquiladoras, drug traffickers, kidnappings, military interventions, and dead women—too many dead women—in the city's streets.

In her book, Féminicides et impunité: Le cas de Ciudad Juarez (Feminicide and Impunity: The case of Ciudad Juarez, Les Éditions Écosociété: 2012), Marie France Labrecque explores in detail how (and why) women have been special targets, going beyond the usual explanations (organized crime, battles for turf among narco-traffickers, the documented inhumane conditions of maquiladora work, etc.) to relate these deaths to what she calls “feminicides” (féminicides).

Feminicide refers to a system of violence that results from state policies that create social, cultural, economic, and political inequalities and inequities for women and girls. It encompasses more than does the word femicide, the killing, rape, and violence against women and girls because they are women. Making this distinction lets Marie France Labrecque clarify how the ongoing murders of women are embedded in multiple structures of patriarchy found in the family, in society, and in state policies.

Labrecque, a professor emeritus at the University of Laval specializing in Mexico and political economy, argues convincingly that without a deep understanding of feminicide, the political changes needed to end the killings in Ciudad Juarez—and elsewhere—won't be possible. She supports her arguments with quantitative and qualitative data, all horrific and sometimes too much to digest in a single reading.

These details give insights into what needs to be changed to end the murders, punish those who are responsible, and begin to build a more just and equitable society. But they also suggest that making change will not be easy. In fact, women’s rights activists who traveled to Mexico in January 2012 actually found a continuing overall increase in deaths of women and girls since 2006, especially in the border state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juarez is located, with this happening despite special agencies and programs set up by the Mexican government allegedly to address violence against women.

During the spring presidential election campaign in Mexico, students and others demonstrated against the complicity of the government and its contributions to crime and corruption. Their protests continue, and it is to be hoped that Enrique Peña Nieto, the newly-elected president who begins his term this winter, will listen to their calls and establish the conditions in which full human rights are guaranteed for women and all citizens.

However, it already seems more likely that Peña Nieto's administration will only perpetuate the practices of past governments and do little to end the violence and murders of women. Fears are that he will continue past policies and privilege the militarization of the fight against drug cartels, fail to stop and punish the corruption within the army and police, and do nothing substantive to end the killings of women and girls.

If that is the case, women will remain oppressed and all that Labrecque relates in her powerful book will continue—including the complicity of the USA and Canadian governments in these practices. Therefore, it's important for feminists and others to keep pressing for change and an end to impunity, not only in Ciudad Juarez, but also here in Quebec and Canada where there is need for more and strengthened solidarity with Indigenous women whose lives and rights have not been protected by past and current governments.

The conditions underlying femicide and feminicide are not just over “there”: they are impediments to full justice for all women and girls here, too.

Abby Lippman is a community activist/feminist/researcher-writer in Montreal. An abridged version of this review, translated to French, has been published in aBabord magazine (October/November issue).

Feminicide and Impunity cover

Sisters in Spirit Smothered

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:17:42 +0000

Conservative smoke-and-mirrors funding has Indigenous groups up in arms

VANCOUVER—Ten million dollars set aside by the Harper government to address the crisis of missing or murdered Aboriginal women will be redirected to the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.

And that has some groups, like Vancouver's Walk 4 Justice, fuming.

“We have the answers and tools already because we’ve been working on this issue for a long time,” said Gladys Radek, a co-founder of the Indigenous-led campaign.

Radek was jolted into action when her niece, Tamara Chipman, disappeared in 2005 along Highway 16 in northern British Columbia. She has since organized three walks—the first a 4,000-kilometre march from Vancouver to Ottawa in the summer of 2008—to press the federal government to initiate a public inquiry and deal with the root causes of violence against Indigenous women.

“This funding will do nothing to address the issue," she said. “This is about power and control again.”

Eight months after the 2010 budget release of promised funding, Minister for Status of Women Rona Ambrose announced the money will be spent on seven different initiatives, the bulk on a national police support center for missing persons.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) quickly expressed their alarm.

“While NWAC is supportive in principle to see the Government of Canada taking steps to address the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, we must undoubtedly express our disappointment with the exclusion of Sisters In Spirit in the ongoing development of public policy in the matter,” they stated in a release.

The Conservatives kept Sisters in Spirit—NWAC’s research, education and policy initiative that deals with missing and murdered Aboriginal women—in limbo for eight months, and then gave NWAC only a day’s notice before the announcement was finally made.

Status of Women officials made clear to NWAC that any new funding proposals would not permit the use of the Sisters in Spirit name or the continuation of their groundbreaking and growing database.

Since 2005, Sisters in Spirit has been gathering complex statistical information on violence against Aboriginal women. It has shown that more than 582 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since roughly 1980. Twenty of the cases have occurred in the past year, and 226 in the past 10 years. Such information was previously scattered and highly deficient.

Liberal MP and Official Opposition Critic for Status of Women, Anita Neville believes the Conservative government’s move was deceptive.

“It was a duplicitous announcement,” Neville said. “Ambrose framed it as ten million going towards Aboriginal women but a good deal is going to their own justice systems, not Aboriginal women. Sisters in Spirit was told to shut down, told not to collect stats or advocate, but still they were used as a poster program. It’s all smoke and mirrors and it’s disrespectful. Ambrose should be ashamed at playing with women’s lives this way.”

Despite Harper’s stated commitment to “take concrete steps to address the issue of missing or murdered Aboriginal women,” the details in the announcement are not specific to Aboriginal women.

Instead, the largest portion of the funding will be spent on a generic RCMP missing-persons database and amendments to the criminal code to allow more police freedom around warrants and wire-taps. A much smaller fraction of the funds will go toward what many see as the most critical work: victim, family and healing support, and dealing with the root causes of violence.

“Working with the community and police was a part of Sisters in Spirit’s comprehensive plan, but the idea that this is the sole focus of this new strategy completely misses the point,” said Niki Ashton, an NDP MP. “I doubt it will make a difference for Aboriginal women living on the ground. It’s a short-sighted approach and reflects a lack of consultation.”

NDP Aboriginal Affairs critic Jean Crowder agrees with Ashton.

“They [the Government of Canada] needed to work with Aboriginal women to see what else would be helpful and what was missing, but the money is going towards the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.”

“What it needed to do was build on Sisters in Spirit, [who are] the experts. Money needed to go into helping the families of the murdered and missing women, to help them understand the legal system, and access trauma counseling. But that's not what is happening.”

Opposition critics have also accused the Conservatives of pushing through pieces of their tough-on-crime agenda under the cover of this national strategy.

According to the Department of Justice website, the seven initiatives include amendments that would “streamline” the process for securing authorization for wire-taps, potentially avoiding court orders or judge-issued warrants.

While the government claims the change is linked to potential investigations involving Aboriginal women, the initiative is actually a recycled portion of Bill C-31, allowing warrant-less wiretapping. The bill died last year when Harper prorogued Parliament.

Canada’s lack of consultation, transparency and relationship-building in this instance illustrates a glaring pattern concerning the Conservatives' policies toward Indigenous Peoples.

Upon taking power in 2006, the Stephen Harper government canceled the Kelowna Accord—a $5.1 billion strategy to improve Aboriginal health and water services, housing, and education. This, despite the reality that over a third of First Nations children live in overcrowded homes, and one in three First Nations people consider their main source of water unsafe to drink.

This move was the first in a series of cuts Harper would make to Aboriginal communities despite the optics of attempted reconciliation with First Peoples.

In 2007, Canada was one of only four countries to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In spite of a recent endorsement, some Aboriginal leaders believe Canada’s signature does not reflect a desire to honor Aboriginal people or their rights, but rather a need for good public relations.

And just two years after Harper’s apology to Aboriginal people for the residential school project and its legacy, the Conservatives cut funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The decision meant the end of significant funding to a Canada-wide network of 134 community-based healing initiatives addressing intergenerational trauma resulting from the schools.

The recent announcement by Minister Ambrose indicates that $4.65 million will go towards community and school-based programs to deal with cycles of violence and improve the safety of Aboriginal women in Aboriginal communities.

“While this focus on violence within Aboriginal communities is important, I think given the statistics we have seen, we also need to look beyond Aboriginal communities, at, for example, non-Aboriginal perpetrators who commit murder and acts of violence against Aboriginal women, like Robert Pickton,” Crowder said.

According to Amnesty International, Aboriginal women are almost three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be killed by a stranger. In addition, 60 per cent of women and girls were killed in urban areas, 28 per cent in rural areas, and 13 per cent on-reserve.

There is also recognition within the Aboriginal community and among advocates that those in positions of power in Canadian society, in particular police and justice system officials, have themselves been accused and charged as perpetrators of violence against Aboriginal women.

Some view this as key to understanding Aboriginal women’s lack of trust in the justice system and their confidence in police protecting them from violence.

Last month former Attorney General Wally Oppal was hired to look into police investigations of the disappearances and murders of women, many of them Aboriginal, from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and why serial killer Robert Pickton was not charged after an incident in 1997.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and Ernie Crey, whose sister’s DNA was found on the Pickton farm, issued a statement in October 2010, expressing their views about the Canadian justice system.

“Why were the lives of these and so many other Indigenous women in Canada not adequately supported, and how could our systems treat them, and others, as something to be thrown away, then put to the bottom of the heap in pursuing their murderers and abusers?”

With such mistrust in Canada’s justice system amongst First Nations leaders, advocates and Aboriginal women's groups, why is the Department of Justice now spearheading a campaign to end violence against Aboriginal women?

“Many of the family members are now thinking of reporting crimes less because they feel it won’t do anything anyways,” said Gladys Radek.

“I feel so sad for the families, the money needed to go towards their needs. They need their Healing Center. But they have been silenced again.”

Regardless of the funding allocation, NWAC has made a commitment to the families to continue to hold annual family meetings, work with families to share stories, convene community workshops and develop tools and resources.

According to an NWAC press released addressed to the families of missing and murdered women, “The movement and group of family members and community will remain under the Sisters in Spirit name.”

Meanwhile, Radek’s group Walk 4 Justice continues their work—spreading awareness, working with family members and communities to advocate for missing and murdered women, and urging the public to take action—with no government funding.

Angela Sterritt is a writer, artist and broadcast journalist based out of Vancouver, BC. She is from the Gitxsan Nation.

Erasing Sisters in Spirit

Don't Rape, Part 2

Kaley — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:17:25 +0000

Why women don't report sexual assault

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

“How does it feel to be a Monday?” he yelled across the street to a group of black people.

When Laura didn’t laugh, he turned to her and clarified: “You know, Monday—the worst day of the week.”

That was when Laura knew something was off about him.

“That’s not OK,” she said. “It’s not funny to be racist.”

He hastily apologized. She called him an asshole. Laura's roommate walked on ahead, furious.

He said he was nervous because he really liked her.

“Don’t say that shit. It’s not funny,” she said.

Laura met him in grade seven, through a close friend, at a party. They chatted over MSN on and off. In her second year at Dalhousie, he messaged her on Facebook. He was at Dal too! Did she want to meet for coffee? They met, once. She ran into him that night at the Alehouse. The place was packed with people she didn’t know. She was there with her female roommate. He bought drink after drink for Laura. He wanted to take her on a date sometime. She said, “We’ll see.” When the girls were drunk and it was time to go home, he offered to walk them. They gratefully said yes.

It was mild for mid-October. They walked up Sackville Street, took a right, and walked past the graveyard where Alexander Keith is buried. Laura’s roommate kept her distance. A few minutes later they came to her front door.

“Can I come inside for a minute?” he asked. “I just want to talk to you. I feel like shit about what happened.”

“Fine,” she said. “Fine.”

She let him in. Her roommate was already inside with her bedroom door locked. They walked to Laura’s room on the main floor and she went into the ensuite bathroom, brushed her teeth, took out her contacts and changed into sweatpants. When she opened the door, her room was dark.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m right here,” he said from the bed.

She sat on the bed. He was under the blankets.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just being really comfortable.”

“This isn’t a sleepover party. You said you wanted to talk."

“Whatever. It’s cool. You know me.”

She had the spins so she lay down under the covers. He was naked.

“This isn’t cool,” she said. “I don’t really like this.”

He ripped off her sweatpants.

“This isn’t OK. I’m really pissed off at you. I don’t want to sleep with you. Stop. Don’t do that.”

She started to cry. He was taller and stronger than her. What was she supposed to do?

Laura woke up the next morning to a note on her desk. Her attacker had written: “Get Plan B. We didn’t use a condom."

According to a 2004 Juristat report, in 64 per cent of sexual assault cases the survivor knew his or her attacker.

Laura didn’t report her rape.

A few days later, when she couldn’t handle her feelings by herself anymore, she called her mom.

“I got sexually abused,” she said, sobbing, and told the whole story.

“Well you’re fucking stupid,” her mom said. “What do you expect, letting a boy into your house. What, do you think you’re a slut?”

“We often tend to look for, ‘What did you do?’ or, ‘What was it about you that caused [your rape]?’” says Jackie Stevens, co-ordinator of community education for the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre. “We still do that as a society. We tend to do that more than, ‘What causes this person to commit a sexual offence?’ or, ‘What’s wrong with that person?’ We still put the blame on the victim as to what caused the sexual assault."

Rather than report what happened, rather than deal with blame or disbelief from authorities, Laura wrote a poem called “Tattoo.”

...This violence you’re playing
Is far too intense
So in my defence I’m saying
Stop.
Because men like you have had me tattooed,
Stripped me nude on the first date;
You’d wait for my last sip of the grape to drain
Then rape.
Soon you’d be out on to my sisters;
Blaming our bushes for begging,
Claiming our cunts couldn’t come,
So you’d just keep on banging
‘Til we bled, soaked the bed,
And you’d leave us to rot...

“Ideally”—Stevens lets out a soft, skeptical "Heh"—“because we have a crime-and-punishment kind of culture, because we have a legal system, [rape is] supposed to go through the legal process, but in reality, sexual assault is one of the lowest reported crimes.”

A 2005 statistical profile of Nova Scotia by Juristat found that only eight per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police.

Over the last decade, acquittal rates for sexual assaults have risen in this province while remaining stable for other violent offences, according to a 2009 report by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Over the same period, the proportion of prison sentences handed to adults convicted of sexual assault has significantly declined, again remaining stable for other violent offences.

“The high incidence of sexual assault in Nova Scotia, combined with a declining police and court response to sexual offences, leaves women in this province in a position of vulnerability,” according to the report.

“Even when someone has been convicted of a sexual crime, they might serve their time, whatever that is,” Stevens says. “But the impact on the victim is never going to change, is never going to go away. Regardless of what happens to the perpetrator, the trauma and the stigma attached to the person who has experienced victimization is never going to change—because of our perceptions.”

When a woman comes to her for help, Jane Doe* of the Dalhousie Women's Centre tells her not to report the rape.

“I say to women: ‘Don’t bother.’”

The local activist says the legal system is a bandage solution that doesn’t prevent sexual assault.

“I don’t have to get them to report. All I have to do is empower them, to let them know that they’re loved, to let them know that they did nothing wrong, that every anger, every hate, every feeling that they have is completely justifiable. If there’s any way that you want me to help you express those feelings, I’m here for you," she says.

She says creative expression, such as writing a letter to the newspaper, helps a woman grow past her negative experience; the court system does just the opposite.

“If a woman chooses to use the justice system to redress the crime that has befallen her, she had better be prepared to absolutely have no human dignity at all when it’s over. You better be prepared that everything you screwed, licked, ate, puked, shat, for the last 25 years, is now fair game.”

Many sexual assault cases rely on a man’s DNA evidence. If the victim cannot prove there wasn’t consent, or if the defence can establish reasonable doubt about lack of consent, that DNA evidence often won’t matter. All it proves is that they had sex.

Doe says the defence will often try to undermine a woman’s credibility to show she is making up the rape because then it is one person’s word against another’s.

“That’s a big barter: 'I will give you my human dignity in exchange for justice for this crime.' We don’t do that to other so-called victims. That’s why women don’t report it, because, ‘I can handle the rape; I can’t handle the loss of human dignity.’”

Women tell her all the time: “The worst thing that happened to me is not that I got raped.”

Laura’s poem didn’t help her get over her experience, but it did help empower her.

...But this time I’m on top
Tattooing you.
How does it feel
Being used just for the skin you’re stuck in?
Like my needle slowly stretching your outsides thin?  
When you’re red I’ll spread you out
So I can slowly
Fuck you instead.
But me, I won’t leave you chewing
Your swollen cheek, doing nothing,
Soul stolen and weak.
I would wait until morning and tell you
Why.

El Jones doesn’t censor herself. She speaks the raw truth regardless of criticism or praise, both of which she’s garnered as a black spoken word poet and professor at King’s College.

In her poem “If I Had a Penis,” Jones points to inequalities between the sexes, such as men earning 30 per cent more than women in the same jobs with the same skills. She says these inequalities are at the root of rape.

“If I had a penis, I’d be on the right side of rape statistics, and my reproductive system would never be used for politics."

“I’d go out at night wearing short skirts without getting blamed for being raped, and I wouldn’t even need to wear short skirts because, hey, I’d have a penis, and when you have a penis you don’t need to put yourself on display.”

We see sexual assault as accidental, she says, or as acted out by men who are sociopaths. However, a 1993 StatsCan survey showed half of Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence.

“We still tend to phrase rape as abnormal—‘What is it that made this man rape?’—as if it’s an oddity, not part of society."

Jones says sexual assault is systematically deployed against women worldwide.

“I think we have to consider it an act of terror that’s upon women in our society. It’s so endemic to our society and so many women suffer from it.”

Sexual assault by men is the same rape for all women, she says, but it takes on different forms depending on race, class and cultural background.

“When it comes to women of colour, it’s who’s considered ‘rapeable,’ and that’s where the difference is." Like sex workers and women living in poverty, Jones says women of colour are more vulnerable because they are not considered ‘real’ women. “So raping that woman isn’t the same as raping a white woman, a white middle-class woman, in many cases.”

When black women were considered property, slave owners would often rape them, sometimes to produce more slaves. Jones says labouring women were not considered real women because of their muscular bodies, and they weren’t considered vulnerable because the assumption was they could protect themselves: “She could have fought him off, so she must have wanted it.”

Even today, Jones says black women aren’t considered human in a lot of ways. In fashion ads, black women are presented as backdrops to white women. Dark black women are considered threatening and non-human, she says.

“Black women aren’t in the position where people see them as fully human, as receptive of any kind of generosity. So that makes you rapeable.”

White women don’t often report rape because they fear blame or disbelief from authorities due to sexism, but the Avalon Centre and Jones agree women of colour are at increased risk because of racism.

Jones says police are less likely to believe women of colour when they report sexual assault. On the other hand, black women are less likely to trust white authorities because of Nova Scotia’s history and reputation of unfair law enforcement.

“It’s not your people who are coming to take the report,” Jones says. “It’s going to be a bunch of white male cops—or white females—not necessarily people who understand you.”

As a result, the sexual assaults of black women go unreported.

Because the African Nova Scotian community is so close-knit, and because the majority of sexual assaults are by acquaintances, a black woman may not report rape by a neighbour or relative. The same is true within immigrant populations, according to Jones and Avalon: due to the small populations of immigrant communities, women risk social isolation if they report sexual assault to police.

There are fewer reports of sexual assault in Aboriginal communities as well, according to Avalon, and Aboriginal women are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-Aboriginal women.

An Amnesty International report from 2004 showed that racist and sexist attitudes toward Canadian Aboriginal women made them more vulnerable to sexual assaults. Several studies over the last decade showed Aboriginal women had less access to justice in Canada because of racist and sexist stereotypes.

“The portrayal of the squaw is one of the most degraded, most despised and most dehumanized anywhere in the world,” wrote Metis professor of Native Studies Emma LaRoque in 1994. “The ‘squaw’ is the female counterpart to the Indian male ‘savage’ and as such she has no human face, she is lustful, immoral, unfeeling and dirty.”

According to a Canadian research paper from 1998, “Aboriginal Women: Invisible Victims of Violence,” up to 75 per cent of sexual assault survivors in Aboriginal communities are young women under 18. Half of those are under 14. One-quarter are younger than seven.

“Such a grotesque dehumanization has rendered all Native women and girls vulnerable to gross physical, psychological and sexual violence,” LaRoque wrote. “I believe that there is a direct relationship between these horrible racist/sexist stereotypes and violence against women and girls.”

As a result of these lingering stereotypes, and distrust between communities, Jones says silence surrounds the sexual assault of coloured women.

“You don’t hear black women speaking out,” she says. “If you go to something like Take Back The Night, there’s three or four black women total."

On a wall just inside the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, flash photos from last year’s Take Back The Night protest show white women marching Halifax’s dark streets together.

“It’s not old news that mainstream feminism has tended to focus on issues relevant to middle-class white women and ignored women of colour, poor women. I think there’s a lot of distrust. Affirmative action has tended to benefit white women. White women have been co-oppressors in a lot of cases. So on the one hand white women suffered patriarchy, but at the same time when white women allied themselves with white men*, they helped put down women of colour as well. It’s not like women of colour aren’t aware of that.”

* White women also allied with white men against black men. Historically, white men carried out a lynching when a white woman claimed to be sexually assaulted by a black man. When lynching was common, consensual interracial sex was also common, but white women often feared social isolation for having sex with black men.

*Name has been changed.

This story is Part 2 of a three-part series originally by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

Don't Rape, Part I

Kaley — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:28:54 +0000

Society teaches 'Don’t get raped' rather than 'Don’t rape'

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

HALIFAX—Jenna never wants to see her purple semi-formal dress again. She loves it, but she is reminded of that night in early April when someone slipped what she suspects was Ketamine into her drink.

When she finished class at 4 pm that day, Jenna rushed to her friend’s place to get ready. She wore her mom’s sparkly earrings and bracelet, black kitten heels and the silky, knee-length dress. It was the end-of-the-year celebration she’d been waiting for—a chance to blow off some steam with her friends and classmates at Dalhousie.

She remembers everything about that night—feeling happy, dancing to bad music with her friends at The Palace—up to a point. It’s as if the rest of the evening didn’t happen. She woke up in her bed feeling nauseous and hung over. She stepped into the shower and felt bruises on her chest. It took her the rest of the day to piece together what happened. When she did, she felt embarrassed. She recalled blurry flashbacks of a man in her room, on the third floor of her house. He was white, but she doesn’t remember anything else about him, only that he sat there in her computer chair, looking at her from across the room. Jenna asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t.

At the hospital, nurses confirmed her suspicions with a rape kit. They gave her a list of side effects associated with Ketamine, a “date rape” drug. Her symptoms fit perfectly. The police took her pretty purple dress for DNA evidence.

We tell women to cover their drinks, to dress conservatively, and to walk home in groups—never alone at night. While Jenna still thinks those are great ideas, she says they didn’t work for her. She covered her drink as often as she could that night, and she stuck with her friends. Jenna worries no-one is looking at the big picture. It’s not her fault she was raped; she doesn’t take responsibility. Instead, she blames the man who raped her. Too often the media, the police, our parents and even our friends are quicker to point out flaws in sexual assault survivors’ actions.

"Don’t get raped"

Section 271(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada defines “simple sexual assault” as: Any attack of a sexual nature in which force is used. No physical injury is necessary to prove that an offence has occurred. When prosecuted as an indictable offence, this form of sexual assault carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Nova Scotia has the highest rate of sexual assaults in the country—double the national average, according to a 2009 report by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. A 2006 Halifax Regional Police report shows that on average one sexual offence is reported per day in Halifax. However, a 2005 Juristat report showed only eight per cent of sexual assaults are reported in Nova Scotia.

This year in Halifax the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre declared May Sexual Assault Awareness Month. On May 20, at Province House, politicians and community members spoke out publicly against sexual assault.

Avalon’s mission is to shift responsibility from the survivor to the attacker by educating the public.

The centre defines sexual assault as: “Any form of sexual activity that has been forced by one person upon another. Without consent, it is sexual assault. Sexual assault can happen between people of the same or opposite sex. It includes any unwanted act of a sexual nature such as kissing, fondling, oral sex, intercourse or other forms of penetration, either vaginal or anal.”

Before we begin our interview, Jackie Stevens, the Avalon Co-ordinator of Community Education, closes her door, as she usually does when someone comes into her office. When a woman, or sometimes a man, sits in the comfy chair beside her desk, Stevens—wearing electric-blue cat-eye glasses—doesn’t judge or offer advice. Instead she gives the person plenty of information so he or she can make an educated decision.

Too often the people who sit in that chair blame themselves.

“If I hadn’t trusted that person, if I hadn’t gone out drinking with my friends, this wouldn’t have happened to me,” the sexual assault survivors tell Stevens.

Rather than automatically thinking that way, she says society needs to see that an attacker has chosen to take advantage of someone who is vulnerable.

When Stevens reads articles about drunk driving, the police are quoted telling people to stop drinking and driving. But when she reads articles about sexual assault, there is no warning telling would-be attackers not to rape. Instead, the authorities tell potential victims to take precautions.

She doesn’t claim to see every article, but yellowing copies of the Chronicle Herald are piled alongside today’s issue in a bin behind her.

In a Metro News article from March 19, 2010, Dalhousie University spokesperson Billy Comeau told students to “be aware of their surroundings and to take all precautions when they are out travelling” in response to a man grabbing a 19-year-old female student from behind in Halifax’s South End. In a Chronicle Herald article from May 14, 2010, a prosecutor told parents to “watch what their children are doing, both online and within the proximity of their house and outside the house,” in response to a Halifax woman allegedly luring a girl over the Internet and sexually assaulting her.

“Rather than always putting out the messages of ‘don’t walk alone’ or ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t talk to strangers’—all of those things—we need to say ‘don’t sexually assault,’” Stevens declares.

As a result of these misplaced messages, we say, "She shouldn’t have been walking home alone late at night," or, "She shouldn’t have worn a short skirt," rather than, "He shouldn’t have raped her."

The way a woman dresses or acts does not cause or prevent sexual assault; an attacker rapes someone because they want to exert power and control over him or her. The attacker is solely responsible for the crime. However, this responsibility is lost in translation through the police, the courts and the media.

Eighty-four per cent of people over the age of 15 who are sexually assaulted are women, according to the 2009 Status of Women Canada report. More than 90 per cent of those accused are men.

Sexual assault is a social problem, Stevens says, with lingering patriarchal structures* at the root of offenses by men toward women.

“There’s a lot of perception of sexual assault as an isolated incident that happens to certain people and it’s perceived as a very individual issue. The Avalon Centre takes the approach that sexual assault is a social issue and that the root causes are based in patriarchy, violence, oppression and inequality. Sexual violence is just one form of how that inequality and power imbalance is played out.”

Stevens says sexual assault and violence against women is interconnected with sexism and other forms of oppression such as racism, homophobia, and discrimination based on disability, gender identity, cultural background and lifestyle choices.

“Often times people who do experience sexual violence may be targeted for very specific reasons because of their vulnerability,” she says.

Jane Doe*, a local activist who also works at the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, wouldn’t be considered pushy if she were a man. Her voice is louder than the average woman’s. Her tone is aggressive.

“If I’m too confident, I’m a bitch,” she says.

Doe agrees that the root causes of male to female sexual assault are male privilege and the imbalance of power.

“Women weren’t legally human beings until 1920. If you’re property up until 1920, what role did sexual assault play in the world? Zero. There’s no such thing as rape—only for women. The pressure was on women to not allow men to ‘ruin’ them because women’s value and worth was placed in their virginity, their purity, so they could sell their sexuality to a man as property.”

As a result of historical imbalances, she says young men often feel entitled to “get drunk and get laid,” especially in a university atmosphere.

One in five male university students surveyed in a 2006 StatsCan study said forced intercourse was alright “if he spends money on her,” “if he’s stoned or drunk,” or “if they have been dating for a long time.”

One in five Canadian women surveyed in a Juristat report said they had unwanted sex with a man because they were overwhelmed by the man’s continued arguments and pressure.

“If we can change the response and how we think about sexual assault then we will change the rates of sexual assaults because it becomes less natural, less normalized; there’s more public scrutiny and judgment around it,” Doe says. “The problem is, it’s very much a part of male culture.”

*According to Avalon, “patriarchy” refers to “the current societal framework, the structure of which has historically kept men in positions of power and authority in society, and has encouraged the domination of other nations, races and cultures of people for economic and political gain.” In the not-so-distant past, women were placed in inferior roles and their sexual, financial and personal autonomy were suppressed. That framework still lingers today; women are still not equal to men.

*Name has been changed.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op. This story was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Calderón's Ambassador to Canada has Blood on his Hands

dawn — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:57:50 +0000

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Francisco Barrio Terrazas, Mexico's new ambassador to Canada, assumed the cushy diplomatic posting on February 26th, 2009. He had previously served as mayor of Ciudad Juarez, known as the Murder Capital of North America, and later as governor of Chihuahua state.

That's right ladies and gents.

Representing the regime of Felipe Calderón in Canada is a man who governed a city where more four hundred women have been killed since 1993. Many of the women killed were sexually assaulted first. Barrio Terrazas refused to call for an investigation until 1998.

"We can't accept that Canada, a model country that's culture is based on the respect of human rights and rule of law, could shelter a person who tolerated the murder and rapes of women and girls," reads a statement concerning Barrio Terrazas' appointment from May our Daughters Come Home, a women's group based in Juarez.

As if that weren't bad enough (because it certainly is), Barrio Terrazas has an equally distinguished past as governor of Chihuahua:

"During the Fox administration, the drug cartels penetrated the federal police and the security apparatus in Mexico in unprecedented levels, when (Barrio Terrazas) was the man in charge of making sure the federal bureaucracy operated without fraud, waste and abuse," Tony Payan from the University of Texas at El Paso told the Canadian Press.