The first step in a review of how Hamilton police determine if sexual assault and child abuse cases are unfounded has been completed.
Police designate complaints as “unfounded” when investigators don’t believe a crime was committed.
In phase 1, police conducted an internal review of unfounded cases between 2010 and 2014.
Phase 2, which is set to start in November, is an external review of cases by a community committee.
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It will look at cases classified as unfounded between 2010 and 2016, selected at random.
LISTEN: Lenore Lukasik-Foss joins the Bill Kelly Show
Lenore Lukasik-Foss, director of the Sexual Assault Centre Hamilton & Area and a member of the community committee, said the external review may continue.
“The idea is not that this review be a one off but rather, the model is to have an external review every six months to a year and if there any changes needed that can happen quickly in our community,” she said.
Lukasik-Foss said committee will check files randomly “to see if there’s anything to be learned about situations that could have been handled differently with a different outcome.”
She said the goal is not to assign blame, but to better investigate sexual assault cases and to understand the type of evidence being offered by a victim’s account.
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