Sexual violence has multiple facets

Re. “Cultural brokers program forges connections between newcomers and mainstream,” May 5

We at the Multicultural Family Resource Society would like to share our concerns about this article.

We understand that the realities of newcomers are often invisible to the public’s general understanding.

The topic of sexual violence within ethnocultural communities has multiple layers of complexity that require a deeper understanding of the issues that intersect gender, religion, culture, pre- and post-migration trauma, Canadian immigration laws, mental health and poverty, which we understand cannot be captured in a short article.

Given the challenges North American society has on bringing to light the prevalence of sexual violence, there are greater challenges within various ethnocultural communities who see this topic as a deep taboo.

We are concerned the tag line, “Brokers might hear about an issue such as a 25-year-old man ‘dating ’ a 14-year-old girl” fuels increasing xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants and refugees.

The goal of the presentation was to share the amazing and multi-faceted work that is currently being done by cultural brokers in the community to open up the dialogue on highly sensitive topics related to sexual health and violence, including as it relates to these problems societally and systematically.

Even though this quote is an example of sexual violence linked to ethnocultural communities, we have to also recognize this example occurs in our broader Canadian society.

The project aims to harness the knowledge of our cultural brokers to document strategies to open up the conversation and identify ways service providers can culturally respond to newcomer families who are experiencing sexual violence and accessing services in the mainstream. There are very few disclosures related to sexual violence from immigrants and refugees due to fears of the systems and lack of culturally responsive practices to support disclosures. This is the amazing potential of this project that was shared at the presentation that unfortunately was not fully captured in the article.

Winnie Chow-Horn, executive director, and Tristan Robinson, board chair, Multicultural Family Resource Society