Getting the brush off
Prince County woman explains why she found it hard to report assault to police
The first time Jane Smith called the police about spousal abuse, she was made to feel unimportant.
“Why did you stay with him?” the officer asked Jane.
“Because I love him,” was the only answer she could muster.
This wouldn’t be the first time she asked herself, “why bother” when reporting her assaults to the police.
She wasn’t asked about her bruises, which she had taken pictures of, and she was left feeling like nothing was going to be done to help her.
“It’s hard on the head to
“I felt brushed off. I felt dumb because it seemed like I shouldn’t ask for help since I stayed in the situation.” Jane Smith
leave an abusive situation, and it doesn’t help when you are made to feel the people who are in place to help you don’t care,” she added.
Jane, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said the relationship was emotionally, physically, mentally and socially abusive.
“I felt brushed off. I felt dumb because it seemed like I shouldn’t ask for help since I stayed in the situation.”
Jane, a young mother from Prince County, made the decision it was best for her and her children to leave after learning that one of her children has seen an assault.
“It’s not nice to hit people,” she said to her little one. “But daddy hits you,” the child replied.
She added reflecting on the interaction, “I was stuck because I didn’t report it because I didn’t want to get my partner in trouble, but I also didn’t want to stay in the situation.”
Jane says another reason she didn’t report it was she felt she was a piece of gum stuck to the officer’s shoe.
In a 2017 profile released by Statistics Canada, which details 2015 numbers, there were over 86,000 victims of violence committed by a spouse, parent, child, sibling or other family member in Canada. That represents about 26 per cent of all victims of police-reported violent crime. Physical assault was listed as the most common form of police-reported family violence at 73 per cent. And similar to its rate in 2014, P.E.I. had some of the lowest rates of police-reported family violence at 154 per 100,000 population. This mirrored the provincial distribution of crime rates in general.
In another Statistics Canada report from 2017, there are more than an estimated 600,000 sexual assaults in Canada in 2014, and about five per cent of sexual assaults against persons 15 years and older were reported to police.
Cpl. Jennifer Driscoll of the Summerside Police Service says there are many reasons a person may not report assault. “These would vary from person to person, but just imagine having endured a sexual assault, and then having to tell a total stranger (a police officer) all about it, when you likely haven’t processed it yourself.”
She also said it could be fear of not being believed.
“The challenges faced by investigators is not that they do not believe the victim, it is their job to prove the offence so that the offender is not only charged but convicted in court.”
She added, “One of the most frustrating things for police officers is knowing an offence occurred and not being able to prove it.”
From a police perspective, reporting offences immediately often provides investigators with further evidence of assault like physical evidence, DNA or witnesses, she said.
“The victim’s statement is a very key piece of evidence as well, and that is why investigators must ask questions of the victim. Although it may seem intrusive, the answers to the questions will often provide police with the evidence they need to prove the offence.”