City ranks third in Canada for reported sex assaults

Saskatoon has the dubious distinction of being the city with the third-highest rate of police-reported sexual assault in Canada for the period between 2009 and 2014, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

During the six-year period, the average annual rate of policereported sexual assault in Canada was 62.1 incidents for every 100,000 people. Saskatoon’s rate was 80.7, placing it behind just Winnipeg (93) and Brantford, Ont. (85.5). Regina had a rate of 66.9 incidents per 100,000 people.

The Statistics Canada report, released Tuesday, aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the people who commit sexual assault and those who are victims of it.

It notes that previous research has shown sexual assault to be the most under-reported violent crime in Canada, with perhaps as few as five per cent of incidents being reported to police.

That means Saskatoon having high rates of police-reported sexual assault may not mean the city is leading the country in sexual assaults, said Kelsie Fraser, a spokesperson for the Saskatoon Police Service.

“From a policing perspective, we would hope that the number being third represents maybe a greater willingness of sexual assault survivors coming forward and reporting that to police,” she said.

According to the Statistics Canada report, an average of 21,476 sexual assaults were reported in Canada each year between 2009 and 2014. In Saskatchewan, that number was 1,119 — roughly three incidents a day.

The report does not include numbers of unfounded sexual assaults — incidents reported to police, but that police determine did not occur. Unfounded sexual assaults have been a hot topic since the publication of a Globe and Mail story earlier this year that looked into how police services across the country handle unfounded sexual assaults.

That investigation, titled “Why police dismiss 1 in 5 sexual assault claims as baseless,” prompted the federal government to call on police forces to re-examine the sexual assault cases it had deemed unfounded.

The proportion of sexual assault claims the Saskatoon Police Service has deemed unfounded has fluctuated between 22 per cent in 2011 and seven per cent in 2016. The service is in the process of investigating why 284 sexual assault cases were classified as unfounded between those years.

The rates of police-reported sexual assaults were highest in the territories and outside major cities. Across provinces, Saskatchewan had the second-highest rate of police-reported sexual assault after Manitoba.

Those provinces had rates of 103.8 incidences per 100,000 people and 113.6 incidences per 100,000 people respectively.

Prince Edward Island had the lowest provincial rate at 48.3 police-reported sexual assaults per 100,000 people.