Yukon advocates trained to review 'unfounded' sexual assault cases

A new way of reviewing unresolved sexual assault investigations is being implemented in Yukon this week.

Aja Mason, co-director of the Yukon Status of Women Council, says the goal is to help women feel confident about going to police to report an assault.

"The rates of both domestic and sexualized violence in the Yukon are extremely, extremely high," she said.

"And when women go to the RCMP and aren't necessarily responded to appropriately, or an aren't believed, that creates an even stronger barrier for them to actually achieve and access safety."

Starting this week, advocacy groups such as the Status of Women Council, along with front-line workers, will audit how sexual assault cases are handled by police. It's based on the Philadephia Model, that city's initiative developed in the year 2000 to help restore public faith in police investigations of sexual assault complaints.

The collaborative review process allows outside experts to review sexual assault cases through a different lens, ensuring they've been properly investigated and classified.

Sunny Marriner, former executive director of the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre, has been training people across the country to do such reviews. She's in Whitehorse this week to work with local advocates and RCMP. 

"We're going to be talking about, what do advocates need in order to be able to do this work independently, and also what does RCMP need in order to be able to feel comfortable with the process," Marriner said.

"So it's a real partnering this week, of trying to kind of take two things that have existed in parallel and put them together and see how they're going to work."

She says front-line workers often have a fuller view of sexual violence in a community, because they see many cases that are never dealt with through the criminal justice system. 

Increased scrutiny of police

Police forces across Canada face increased scrutiny after a Globe and Mail investigation in 2017 revealed investigators deemed a surprisingly high number of sexual assault complaints to be unfounded, implying there was no assault.

In the aftermath of the revelations, Yukon RCMP and other police forces said officers were classifying cases as unfounded when they should have been classified as unsubstantiated, which could indicate they couldn't find enough evidence to lay charges.

According to Marriner, there are many potential barriers to obtaining evidence — including geography.

"We know things like lack of access to services mean that, for example, survivors might not get medical care. That might mean that there's not going to be medical evidence that's available," she said.

"The review team's job is to look at all of those factors and say, OK, what is it that we actually need to change, to ensure that those cases that have reasonable and probable grounds to move forward can do so?"

Marriner says it's about looking at the experience of individuals who report assaults, but also looking at the larger system.

"Sometimes we might make a policy recommendation. Sometimes we might actually look right into a case and go, 'Whoops, somebody's missed something here, so we just need to go back and look at that again.'"

"The very first thing that we want to see is, we want to see a level of consistency, thoroughness, efficiency and quality in sexual assault investigations, writ large."

Mason calls the criminal justice system a "system of last resort" for victims, and it's important that women feel confident in that system. 

"At the end of the day, we're hoping that women in the Yukon will be able to say, 'I feel safe to go to the police and report this,' so that if they choose to try to seek justice through that avenue, it's more possible for them," she said.