The city has been plagued by reports of sexual crimes downtown and on university campuses in recent months. Unfortunately, with police and media using one blanket term to describe everything from groping to rape, these reports leave local residents more or less in the dark.
York University has an image problem. Accused by Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno last July of promoting a “culture of silence” after four days passed between a sexual assault and a mass bulletin to students, the school’s campus has long been singled out as a hotbed of sex crimes—a reputation fuelled in part by accusations by members of the student body of administrative secrecy. Though publicly maintaining its commitment to campus safety, the university has chosen to combat the issue with $9.5 million in infrastructural changes like increased security and lighting, as recommended by a 2010 third-party safety audit. At the same time, it reserves the right to disclose only those incidents they deem to represent an ongoing threat, delivering warnings in vaguely phrased statements. In other words, students are given just enough information to be afraid.
This year, an attack occurred just two days into the fall term, one of six reported within a one-month window. “We know there are more,” says Safiyah Husein, the York Federation of Students’ vice-president equity, whose role involves promoting awareness of social justice initiatives on campus. “It’s part of a disturbing trend. When you just hear, ‘Something happened on Saturday night,’ what does that mean to a student? Information should be widespread.” What York students simply want are the facts: not just the when and where, but the “What exactly happened?” and the “Is it safe for me to walk to my night class alone?”
The recent events at York are only part of a city-wide struggle to address the rash of sexual assaults that have shaken Toronto residents in the past few months. Last weekend, three more incidents were reported in the Bloor and Christie area. Amy Wood, a 26-year-old marketing writer who lives near Bloor and Crawford, has been in the neighbourhood long enough to notice real changes in morale since the assaults caught media attention late this summer. “The streets have been empty,” says Wood, adding that she’s often afraid to go out at night, and is sometimes walked halfway home by her mother, who lives just a few blocks away. “I want to feel safe and know what measures police are taking. That would go a long way with me.”
The events in Wood’s neighbourhood bring the current total to 13 reports in the area between Christie Pits and Kensington Market, at least three in Etobicoke, one in High Park, one near Don Mills and Finch, and four in the Church Wellesley Village—not to mention the estimated 90 per cent that will remain unreported.
Like at York U, sexual assault alerts released by Toronto Police Services tend to favour ambiguous phrasing: Generally, the time and location of the crime are established, followed by a hazy description of the offender’s features, and the catch-all term “sexual assault” is used to describe the nature of the incident. (For instance, an alert issued after the Sept. 30 assault near High Park read only that a man approached a woman, attempted to talk to her, and sexually assaulted her.) Readers are then left to fill in the remaining blanks with their imaginations: Was the victim fondled? Raped? Did the suspect have a weapon? With community rallies like Take Back the Block in Christie Pits park popping up to demand a dialogue on neighbourhood safety, it’s clear there is a desire for more transparency. Why is it so hard to get any?
According to TPS spokesperson Meaghan Gray, there’s a good reason for using one-size-fits-all terminology where sex crimes are concerned. Police reports describe an assailant’s method of approach and the context around how the assault transpired, rather than the specifics, she says, to avoid a public response that “attributes a level of significance or seriousness to certain assaults over others.” In simple terms, they don’t want to demean the victim by suggesting that someone has only been groped. Of course, it’s important to be sensitive to each victim’s unique experience of trauma, and not to release gratuitous details that might compromise identities or the progress of an investigation. The public’s right to know, however, is not about voyeurism or a malicious desire to pass judgment; it’s an instinctive need to make sense of the environment in which you live, and to evaluate dangers within it.
The media, for its part, has not fared much better at helping us to navigate this need. In a news environment that delivers blow-by-blow accounts of gruesome crimes of a non-sexual nature—like this summer’s so-called “body parts case,” wherein the remains of 41-year-old Scarborough mother Guang Hua Liu were found scattered across the Toronto area—it’s incredible that we view sexual assault as too sensitive to cover with more than a cursory nod. “It seems that the media is saying, ‘If we put out the minimum amount of information, that’s enough to cover our bases,’” said Jennifer Fraser, an assistant professor of criminology at Ryerson University. “But to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation about what’s going on in our community, it’s important to know what we are actually facing when we’re walking down the street.”
As it happens, the fact that we rarely talk candidly about sexual assault is partly rooted in good intentions. Prior to 1983, the only charges used to categorize sex crimes were “rape” and “assault.” That year, parliament passed Bill C-127, legislative reform that introduced three levels of “sexual assault” charges, representing different degrees
of injury and sentencing.
The bill was designed to underscore the violence inherent in any act of unwanted sexual contact, to criminalize spousal assault, and to make the crime gender-neutral to show that men, too, could be sexually assaulted. The changes also helped to address discriminatory judicial practices, like using a victim’s sexual history to diminish their credibility in court. But it seems broadening the crime’s legal meaning has also resulted in a pervasive inability to understand that a sexual assault is not exclusive to instances of rape. This all-or-nothing misconception doesn’t just muddy a survivor’s ability to deem an unwanted tap on the buttocks an instance worth reporting—it can also make members of a neighbourhood or community feel powerless against a threat they can’t define.
The benefits of establishing solid lines of communication are evident at Ryerson University, where a transparent administrative response to attacks on its campus is providing an interesting foil to York. When it was revealed in late September that six assaults had occurred on or near campus since classes began, two emergency meetings were called for students to voice their safety concerns. Members of the administration attended, committing to email sexual-assault alerts to all students, unless they chose to opt out. The alerts themselves use specific, plain language like “grabbing” and “grinding” when referring to incidents at campus pub the Ram in the Rye. Interviewed by CP24 on the day of the meeting, students insisted they still felt “safe,” a sentiment echoed by Ryerson’s own vice-president equity Marwa Hamad.
“People have become desensitized, or feel that we shouldn’t talk about this, or that it’s just a part of life,” says Hamad. “It’s important for all of us to have discussions frequently and openly. Then, if survivors do decide to speak up, they might feel comforted, like they’re not so alone.” When we’re dealing with an experience already so fraught with denial, the never-ending semantic tip-toeing among the organizations charged with keeping the public in the know is not helpful to anyone.
The attempt to foster real dialogue at York has been a slow-moving process, but Husein is hopeful that, with the ongoing work of on-campus advocacy groups like the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Support Line, an honest conversation with university administration is not far off.
“We want to make sure that, at some point, we are able to have these talks, so that we can move forward.” For victims, a dearth of information can blur the definition of a crime worth reporting. For the public, it can paint a skewed, sometimes terrorizing picture of what is actually happening close to home.
The three levels of sexual assault
Level 1:
Sexual assault
Any non-consensual sexual contact that goes beyond the sort of incidental touching we experience in everyday society (things like someone accidentally grazing your buttocks while passing you to get off the subway). Examples of criminal behaviour can include the groping or fondling of body parts including, but not limited to, breasts, buttocks, or genital areas.
Level 2: Sexual assault causing bodily harm
Injuries are more permanent in nature—things like internal damages sustained due to rape, and battery that goes beyond bruises, like if an attacker broke a victim’s wrist during a struggle.
Level 3: Aggravated sexual assault
Indicates the most serious physical injuries, like in cases where the victim is maimed, incurs a deep, permanent wound—like a stabbing—or their life is endangered by injuries like choking or head trauma.
