ISLANDER: How #MeToo is making a difference
The #MeToo movement continues to gather strength as people speak publicly about their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse.
Survivors often feel as though they are on trial
Olivia Herron looked at the kitten on the cover of her childhood diary, held up by a lawyer in a Nanaimo courtroom. As she heard him read details about the man who sexually abused her, between pages of doodles and crushes, the Grade 9 student felt unlike herself. On the advice of her lawyer, she wore no makeup and had dyed her hair from fireengine red to a natural colour. The skirt on her ill-fitting suit reached her knee.
No, she couldn’t remember what colour his shirt was, or which leg he put his hand on first.
What she could remember clearly was how it made her feel, when her parents’ friend called her pretty, then rubbed up against her, then pulled her to his lap. She remembers feeling frozen, when he asked if she would have sex with him and promised no one would have to know. It wasn’t enough. “I remember crying a lot and feeling extreme humiliation and confusion and regret. I couldn’t understand why I was there. And then at the end, we had a long period of waiting. My lawyer came out crying and told me that I lost.”
As thousands share stories of unwanted sexual advances, harassment and violence through social media using the #MeToo tag, the few who have gone through the courtroom experience know that justice doesn’t always come through the justice system. And that while sharing stories publicly can be empowering, it can also make the trauma worse.
“It’s hard to explain, it’s so cold,” Herron said. “It’s like I wasn’t even there, I didn’t even know. It’s whatever the opposite of empowerment is. I couldn’t be myself, I had to change everything about myself, from my appearance to the way that I spoke, the way that I talked about my experience.
“I’m a very emotional person, I live emotionally, I experience life through emotions and intuition. And I was not allowed to use any of that in my testimony.”
Herron, now 29, chose to share her story in the hope that it might shed light on the gaps in support she experienced, so they might be filled for others.
It might explain part of the reason why only about one in 20 incidents of sexual assault were brought to police attention in 2014, according to Statistics Canada. Or why only 12 per cent of those substantiated by police result in criminal convictions — half the rate of physical-assault cases.
“When I look back on the experience, what stands out most prominently is how ill-equipped we are as a society to support victims and survivors. Focus needs to not only include survivors, but entire communities, in order to create real change.”
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Herron was 11 or 12 when she was molested. She and her brother had been invited to the man’s family cabin near Horne Lake, to see if she was mature enough to start babysitting his kids. She remembers being excited — they’d grown up in a poor family of six children and it was a luxury.
She went in with the same warnings many kids get: “Behave yourself, do what they say.”
She remembers feeling flattered, when he told her she must have lots of boyfriends. She remembers thinking that maybe he shouldn’t say that, but trusting him because he was an adult.
The interactions that followed sent tremors through every part of her life, destroying some family relationships and changing the way she understood herself.
For years afterward, Herron would see the man’s company truck driving around Victoria. In one moment of irony, she says, one of his employees cat-called her while driving one.
Herron now sees power in her experience, which has allowed her to connect with the teens she works with as a front-line youth worker.
Through her professional lens, she can see that on top of a lack of support from those around her, there were systemic elements lacking: No one informed her school what was going on; she was never offered access to a counsellor.
“It’s an exchange that really shaped the rest of my life, because it taught me about the people around me. Looking back — I didn’t know this at the time, but I was basically on my own,” she said.
When she thinks of her court experience, Herron often thinks of a letter the judge wrote her saying that the not-guilty ruling didn’t mean he didn’t believe her, only that there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction.
She wonders if a restorative-justice model, in which she spoke directly to the man, might have been better.
“I don’t feel I ever had that opportunity. I never spoke to him, he was just sitting in front of me, as an observer of this interrogation process,” Herron says.
“I think that would have been difficult, but I think it would also give me a better sense of closure.”
• • •
Advocates for survivors say the decision to pursue charges is an entirely personal one.
Some things have changed in the 15 years since Herron’s trial, but many things have not: Survivors often still feel as though they’re the ones on trial when their cases land in court.
Jane Sterk, executive director of the Cowichan Women Against Violence Society, says when a survivor comes forward, the society’s first step is to listen to what they’re grappling with and hear what they hope to achieve.
“We don’t really advise people in terms of specifically saying, yes, you should report, or no, you should not report. What we do is we try to support them through their thinking process and then, whatever decision they make, we will support them through that process,” Sterk said.
The society helps survivors understand that after a police report is filed, it’s up to the Crown to determine if a conviction is likely and to lay charges. If it goes to court, the society helps the survivor prepare for questioning and offers other support where possible.
“In our sector, the experience of women in the justice system is not always one where they feel justice is done,” Sterk said.
“For some women, they don’t need a guarantee [of justice]. They just want their story heard and they want it heard publicly. For some women, that experience can be re-traumatizing. So we want them to understand that’s a possibility and know what resources there are,” she said.
“Some women simply don’t want to go through a court proceeding because they’ve seen or heard enough from the media, friends and family, to make them feel quite cautious.”
There’s still plenty of space for improving the justice system, Sterk said — from reducing wait times for hearings so that victims can move on more quickly to eliminating stereotypes and myths, such as the victim-blaming assumptions that a woman is “asking for it” if she wears a short skirt.
Special Victims Unit Sgt. Kristi Ross said the Victoria police are seeing more reports come in through victims’ services organizations, a development she sees as positive.
“It allows the survivor to get that initial support with somebody who understands the justice system and the strengths and pitfalls of pursuing criminal charges,” Ross said.
Even when a victim goes directly to police, they have the option to withdraw if they aren’t comfortable, she said.
“They’re always in the driver’s seat. If they get partway through the process and say: ‘I can’t do this, let’s put this on hold,’ we can do that,” she said, as long as no one is at risk.
“I don’t know that there’s ever a way to make the justice system a positive experience, but this makes it a more positive experience,” Ross said.
The Victoria Sexual Assault Clinic also has an exam room and another room equipped with a camera for police questioning, so that a victim doesn’t have to feel as though a spotlight is on them, if a police officer meets them in the emergency room.
Increasing awareness about the supports available will mean more people can get access to them, Ross said.
“It will still be a process, getting everyone in the community to understand how that clinic works, but it’s been a huge success so far,” she said.
Survivors also face barriers in the civil system, said Rajinder Sahota, a personal injury lawyer at Acheson Law in Victoria.
In contrast to the criminal system, which involves police reports and Crown charges, the civil system involves claims for compensation because someone commits a negligent or intentional act.
“There are structural difficulties that would be faced by any litigant, let alone survivors of sexual abuse or discrimination,” Sahota said.
Those barriers range from the cost of litigation to the difficulty of putting a dollar value on the damage caused by sexual violence.
One way to reduce the cost, when possible, is by pursuing class-action suits, such as the one Sahota is working on against the Canadian Armed Forces.
“What we’re able to do is aggregate the claims across a broad range of people, so we’re able to make justice more affordable and accessible,” he said.
But there’s no quick fix for the broader cultural barriers that exist, he said. It sometimes takes time for the justice system to catch up with societal shifts, such as avoiding victim-blaming, he said.
“The justice system is a reflection of society at large,” he said. “I don’t say that with any glee.” It takes time for the big machine that is the justice system to adjust, he said, but there are tools available to make that happen — including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Act.
“This is a big steamship that doesn’t change direction quickly. The real work is done in the conversations being had in homes and cafés across the country,” Sahota said.