HALIFAX – The case of four British Navy sailors charged with the gang-rape of a woman at CFB Shearwater on April 10 is not as isolated an incident as it might appear, according to a local sexual assault centre.
The Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in Halifax said there were 88 cases of sexual assault reported in the city over a nine-month period last year. Of those cases, 15 per cent involved a victim being assaulted by a group.
“There are many types of sexual assaults occurring, including sexual assault by more than one perpetrator,” said Jackie Stevens, executive director of the centre.
In the past five years, Avalon has seen cases where victims have been sexually assaulted by groups consisting of between two and 10 people.
“We had the Dalhousie dentistry situation where you had a group of men talking about sexualized violence,” Stevens said. “Why are we shocked by a group of men who are actually committing it? It’s the same spectrum.”
The case of Rehtaeh Parsons brought the issue to the public’s attention in 2013. The 17-year-old died after being taken off life support following a suicide attempt. In the last two years of her life, she had been harassed following an alleged sexual assault by four teenage boys.
“You hear stories and you read news articles and stuff, but you don’t know it’s really prevalent until something really public happens,” said Glen Canning, Rehtaeh’s father.
Since her death, the girl’s parents have been working to raise awareness about consent and sexual assault. Canning said he is outraged by the number of gang rapes in the Halifax area.
“Rape is bad enough, but to know that someone else would be there, and instead of helping you, would actually just join in and do something like that — I can’t imagine what would be going through their mind to have something like that happen to them,” he said.
Stevens said more work needs to be done to address the issues of consent and victim blaming.
“The criminal code says you cannot consent if you’re drunk or unconscious, if you’re of a certain age, those kinds of things, and we tend to ignore that when alcohol and drugs are involved.”
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