‘It has been a culture shift’
More sex assault victims speaking out after #MeToo, I Believe You campaigns
It’s a simple phrase, but CALGARY one capable of carrying so much meaning for those on the receiving end of the words: “I believe you.”
The short but powerful phrase was the central focus of a campaign launched in 2015 with the aim of educating Albertans about how to respond to survivors of sexual assault.
Debra Tomlinson, the CEO of the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services, said the initiative also had a powerful effect, leading to a 53 per cent increase in new counselling intakes in a year for the association’s network of 14 sexual-assault centres across the province, where agencies provide supports including counselling.
The increase is part of what Tomlinson describes as an enormous shift over the past four years. Other factors in that dramatic change, she said, have been the influence of social media — including multiple survivor-led social media movements — a number of highprofile sexual-assault cases and the #MeToo movement.
In 2017 and 2018, following wide media and social media exposure of the #MeToo movement, Alberta sexual assault centres saw another 25 per cent increase in new counselling intakes.
And as the #MeToo hashtag spread around the world, so did the #IBelieveYou message.
“With our I Believe You campaign, we always measured social media reach,” Tomlinson said. “And it was about five or six million.
“During #MeToo, it went up to 40 million and came in from all over the world, because people started tagging #MeToo and #IBelieveYou.”
These multiple coinciding factors that prompted increased awareness of sexual violence led to “changes like I’ve never thought I would see in my lifetime,” Tomlinson said.
“Sexual-assault centres have been in Alberta for 40 years, and people have worked hard to try to get the message out,” she said.
“Honestly, we haven’t seen the kind of success that we’ve seen in the last three or four years for the past 40, no matter what we did, and how many people we talked to and how many presentations we gave and how many public awareness campaigns. So it has been a culture shift.”
The same year that sexual-assault centres noticed increased demand due to the I Believe You campaign, police reporting rates also went up in Edmonton and Calgary, Tomlinson added, including historic cases. But she noted the estimated reporting rate for sexual assault in Canada is only about five per cent.
Tomlinson believes those numbers will rise. But she also believes further change is needed in the response to the crime.
“I think survivors are afraid that they’re not going to be believed,” she said. “We also have strong beliefs that the survivor must have done something, said something, behaved in a certain way, that contributed to the fact (a) crime took place — which we call victim blaming. And those two things really have kept survivors silent.
“That’s why they haven’t come forward. And, unfortunately, those beliefs are deeply entrenched in all of us, no matter what your professional discipline, no matter how many years of university you’ve had, and they ’re embedded in our systems. So I think we need to change that in order to have more people come forward, and to have more people reaching out for help.”
Before the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services launched the I Believe You campaign with support from the province, polling done through Leger research indicated less than one per cent of respondents said they would say “I believe you” to someone who disclosed sexual assault to them. That number has since gone up to
They talk about the first person that believed them, it just means so much to them. It’s what they can hang on to.
21 per cent.
Tomlinson said research has shown that if someone gets a positive response to a disclosure, they are more likely to seek help and to consider their options for seeking justice — hence the importance of that simple phrase, “I believe you.”
“You don’t have to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and can make a tremendous difference in somebody’s life,” she said.
“Because when you talk to survivors and they talk about the first person that believed them, it just means so much to them. It’s what they can hang on to. It’s like their rock.”
As part of the I Believe You initiative, the association partnered with 28 post-secondary institutions across the province and held meetings with student leaders. Tomlinson said those talks have made her optimistic for the future.
“We said, ‘What are some of the positive changes that you’ve noticed?’ And they said, ‘Our conversations are changing,’” Tomlinson said.
“Those are our leaders of the future. That that change is happening at that level just gives me so much hope.”