Male victims need help, too
Sweden has long been considered the gold standard for gender equality in the West. Activists for such goals as gender equity in pay, maternity benefits and universal daycare routinely cite Sweden’s enlightened policies in these areas.
Reinforcing that reputation, Södersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm, which already runs a 24/7 clinic for girls and women who have been sexually assaulted — treating between 600-700 patients annually — will in October admit boys and men to “gender equal” emergency care for rape victims.
Some 370 Swedish men and boys were estimated to have suffered sexual assault in 2014, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, although some experts place the real figures higher, given the general perception that “men cannot be raped.” One physician at the hospital says male rape victims can suffer more than women, yet the subject remains “extremely taboo.”
Objective observers of the gender inequality in this area can attest to the taboo nature of male sexual abuse, in spite of the findings confirming its reality in numerous published studies. In 1996, Health Canada published The Invisible Boy: Revisioning the Victimization of Male Children and Teens, by psychologist Frederick Mathews. The report is replete with disturbing statistics confirming that sexual abuse of boys is equal to that of girls in preadolescence (much of it perpetrated by women) and not very much lower afterwards. Noting the virtual absence of any funded resources for male sexual abuse victims, Mathews concluded that: “A double standard (exists) in the care and treatment of male victims, and the invisibility and normalization of violence and abuse towards boys and young men in our society.” Yet the groundbreaking report remained, well, “invisible” to policy-makers.
In 2006, for example, even though the report was still quite fresh, Ontario introduced the Routine Universal Comprehensive Screening protocol (RU CS) in 25 Ontario public health units, which screened incoming patients under the age of 12 for past or present sexual abuse. Yet it was neither universal nor comprehensive, as it served only girls. Explaining the policy, a spokesperson said, “There is no evidence to support the screening of men at this time,” and screening boys “may do more harm than good.” This flies in the face of a study cited in a 2005 article in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, which concluded: “Those professionals who do not screen both boys and girls for abuse are not meeting professional obligations by withholding services that they know or should know would be beneficial to their patient/ client.”
No exploration of this subject would be complete without a reference to Project Truth, Justice Normand Glaude’s thoughtful, in-depth 2010 report on the “historical abuse” issues addressed by the four-years long, $50-million Cornwall pedophile inquiry. In addition to his 235 recommendations for action, Justice Glaude issued shaming indictments of those who had abused or failed to protect male victims, to wit: “Police forces were not well-equipped to provide support to victims of historical sexual abuse, particularly men”; “Lack of training, particularly in the area of ... abuse of boys and young men, hampered even well-intentioned individuals”; and “Men need integrated and coherent plans for services and a way of tracking and measuring implementation and effectiveness of services. Right now there is no integrated plan.”
There is still no plan in Canada for addressing the legitimate needs of male victims of sexual abuse. Once again, Sweden has stolen a genderequity march on us. And yet, as The Invisible Boy and the Glaude Report, amongst other compelling evidence easily available to anyone with the slightest interest in male suffering demonstrates, we cannot plead ignorance on this file. Sweden has shown the way. Let us follow.