Five sexual assaults reported to Sackville detachment in the past month

The area patrolled by the Sackville detachment of the RCMP. Image: www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca

October 20, 2020: This article has been edited to better protect identity of people who have reported sexual assault, to provide context to the issue of reporting sexual assault crimes to police, and to provide resources for survivors of sexual violence.

A look at the daily occurrence reports for the Sackville detachment of the RCMP show that since September 23, 2020, there have been five incidents of sexual assault reported to the Sackville detachment, which covers a large area including Memramcook, Sackville and Port Elgin.

Constable Hans Ouelette, the media relations officer for the New Brunswick RCMP, says that all five incidents are unrelated, and that all are under investigation.

Ouellette would not provide any more details, including general locations for the five separate sexual assault incidents, because he says the RCMP wants to protect the privacy of those reporting.

All five reports of sexual assault are still under investigation.

Over the same time period, the daily occurrence reports listed one theft and one assault. There were three occurrences of impaired driving.

There were nine occurrences of an “individual in mental distress”, and in eight of those cases, a person was transported to hospital. There were also two reports of disturbances, which also resulted in someone transported to hospital.

Hans Ouellette was unable to say whether five reported sexual assaults in a four week period was unusually high for the area covered by the Sackville detachment.

He did say that province-wide, the RCMP investigated 504 sexual assault allegations in 2019. In 2018, they investigated 519 allegations.

Those statistics apply to a full year across all 41 RCMP detachments in New Brunswick.

Statistics for the Sackville detachment are not readily available.

Ouellette said he would like all survivors of sexual assault to feel comfortable reporting incidents to police.

“What’s important in all this is for people to understand that sexual assault is a devastating crime that has traumatic and long lasting effects on victims,” he said in a phone interview. “And of course, we just want all survivors of sexual assault or harassment to feel comfortable in bringing their allegations to the police, knowing that they can trust investigators will thoroughly and professionally investigate each case.”

However, sexual assault remains a highly under-reported crime. Various studies have shown that the large majority of assaults are not reported to the police. The 2014 General Social Survey counted only 5% of sexual assaults reported to police.

There are many reasons cited for under-reporting, including how reports of sexual assault are handled by police.

A 2017 Globe and Mail investigation looked into how police investigate the small percentage of sexual assaults that are reported.

The Globe showed that across the country, one fifth of reported sexual assaults were being dismissed by police officers as “unfounded”, even though studies have shown false reporting rates for sexual assault are well below that, in the range of 2% to 8%.

New Brunswick had the highest “unfounded” rate, with one third of reported sexual assault being dismissed. Many of those cases were reclassified after reviews by the province’s 10 police forces, though reports were not necessarily investigated further.

LOCAL SEXUAL VIOLENCE RESOURCES

The South East Sexual Assault Crisis Centre has a 24/7 crisis phone line available at 1-844-853-0811.

Mount Allison staff and students can contact the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Education Service (SHARE) at 506-540-7427 or share@mta.ca.

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