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Our front door
April 1, April 2, 2016. Less than one block away from our front door, a brutal sexual assault was reported to have taken place on Friday night/early Saturday morning. While most of us were comfortably ensconced in our homes, the victim was fighting, for her life, in our community. The female victim, seriously injured, was transported from the parking lot behind a local plaza to the hospital. She managed to maintain an awareness of her surroundings and was able to give a good description of both male aggressors and their vehicle to the officers who responded to the scene. Am I going to write about this woman’s experience? I can’t. I wasn’t there. I’m not her. But I do have a point to make.
My point is, every one of us believes this kind of assault only happens to other people or “those people” or “people who ask for it.” Every one of us thinks this couldn’t possibly happen in our community. It does—and it did—on the weekend. The truth is, sexual assault can happen to anyone. We’ve been trained to use all kinds of different terms to describe something as heinous as a sexual assault. We have a blanket word, or combination of words, to describe what we have trouble believing and comprehending. “Sexual violence” is a term that describes a continuous sequence of aggressions, abuses and violence committed against women, children and men. It could be rape, harassment, incest, molestation, stalking, indecent exposure, creating or displaying degrading images, exhibitionism, trafficking, exploitation or voyeurism. The very worst part of sexual violence is that the perpetrators, most often, are known to the victims. Often, the assailants are people who were trusted. Chances are, the woman who was sexually assaulted this past weekend knew the men or, at the very least, was acquainted with them in some way. Scary. Scary true.
The Criminal Code of Canada has a definition of sexual assault and criminal harassment, while the Ontario Human Rights Code has a definition of sexual harassment. According to SACHA, an organization that supports survivors of sexual assault, the provincial and federal Codes speak to only a “very small proportion of the sexual violence perpetuated and neither system has proven very effective in responding to the needs of the survivors.” Sexual violence is about power and dominance. There is nothing passionate or caring about it. No one deserves it. No one asks for it. No one dresses for it. No one has it coming to them.
Late April 1 into early April 2. Two males— one Caucasian, brown hair, moustache, unshaven, rotting teeth and the other with a shaved head, non-white, an unshaven face, gold tooth and possibly a thin moustache driving a blue Ford, four door with “J, 5 and 8” on the licence plates—sexually assaulted a female. Someone knows these men. This isn’t the time to mind your own business. This is our business. Keep your eyes and ears open and call the OPP at 1.888.310.1122.
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