A Concordia University PhD student has filed two ethics complaints against five SPVM officers over the way they handled her sexual assault complaint last fall.
The student is currently living overseas and claims she left the city after police failed to protect her.
“My experience of reporting sexual violence really felt like filling out an insurance claim — it was that level of dehumanization,” said 30-year-old Anna. Global News has agreed to use a pseudonym for her since she fears for her safety.
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Anna first turned to police at Station 20 near Concordia’s downtown campus in November 2019 after a man who had been following her allegedly grabbed her.
“I was starting to feel very scared,” said Anna, who claims officers at the station told her to “come back later” as they processed another report for an “Amazon porch theft.”
Once her turn came up, Anna claims another officer told her, “I don’t speak English,” forcing her to wait longer.
What was most upsetting to Anna, an amateur triathlete, is what one officer allegedly said after asking her to repeat the suspect’s description.
“I described him again, at which point he ended up saying, ‘Sounds like an attractive man. Why don’t you go out on a date with him?” said Anna. “I was so stunned.”
She returned to police a second time when she feared her apartment had been broken into and a third time when she realized that the same man had already been charged with sexual assault and kidnapping of two other women.
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“At no point did they inform me that this man was dangerous, that he was in the system,” Anna told Global News in a Skype interview.
The man in question was arrested and charged with criminal harassment against Anna in November 2019.
She has since filed two complaints with the police ethics commissioner over the actions of five officers in total.
The SPVM refused to comment on the case since it’s before the ethics commissioner.
“This is a question of systemic barriers for women in accessing among other things police protection,” said Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).
“Victims of sexual violence, of especially sexual crimes, should not go through what she went through, especially in dealing with the police.”
While she completes her PhD in education from a distance, Anna has no plans to return to Montreal until she feels safe.
“I demand that the Montreal police change the way in which they respond to cases of sexual violence and that all cases of sexual violence are treated with human decency, basic human decency,” said Anna.