Saskatoon StarPhoenix

‘Unfounded’ review expected to show thorough investigat­ions

- ANDREA HILL

A review into nearly 300 sexual assault cases that Saskatoon city police deemed unfounded is expected to be completed next week.

Shelley Ballard, a former Saskatoon police inspector who retired in 2012, has spent the last several weeks poring over files dating back to 2011.

She began the review after the Globe and Mail newspaper published the results of a monthslong investigat­ion into how police services across the country handle sexual assault violations. That story, headlined “Why police dismiss 1 in 5 sexual assault claims as baseless,” prompted Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale to call on police services to re-examine sexual assault cases that had been classified as unfounded.

“To my mind, the allegation made by the Globe and Mail is that police didn’t believe people who were victims of sexual assault and that they weren’t doing proper investigat­ions,” Ballard said.

“That’s simply not the case.”

Ballard’s job was to figure out why 284 sexual assault complaints were classified as unfounded between 2011 and 2016. Not all of those files involved allegation­s of rape; Ballard noted sexual assault files cover a wide range of complaints including child luring, sexual exploitati­on and voyeurism.

She said the “vast majority” of the files fell into four categories: an incident was consensual; a complaint was false; a file was a duplicate; or an investigat­ion revealed no offence was committed.

A “handful” of files fell into a grey area that she describes as “unsubstant­iated,” she said. “It’s hard to determine whether it did happen or didn’t, and you have to weigh both what the complainan­t says and what a potential suspect says too and try to determine the truth in that,” Ballard said.

“Some of them have been coded as ‘unfounded’ in our system, but I would expect that there are just as many that have been coded as founded. You know, a lot of it is: What did the staff sergeant at the time think when they were concluding that file? So that’s an issue, and I think that’s going to be resolved in the future.”

Files in which investigat­ors determined an incident was consensual sometimes dealt with third-party complaints where, for example, a parent would report that their teen was the victim of a sexual assault, but the teen would not substantia­te that.

Some involved confusion on about the legal age of consent. (It can be confusing. The age of consent for sexual activity in Canada is 16, but teens who are 14 or 15 can consent to sexual activity if their partner is less than five years older and not in a position of authority, and youth aged 12 and 13 can consent to sexual activity with people who are less than two years older if those people are not in positions of authority).

Ballard said some of the files involved complaints where an investigat­ion “very clearly” showed an incident did not occur or the complainan­t admitted making a false complaint. Historical cases reported more than once are typically classified as unfounded.

“Even those ones, they look and see what was reported prior, is there any new informatio­n, things like that,” Ballard said. “There’s still a very thorough investigat­ion done to make sure that it was investigat­ed previously, to make sure that there’s not informatio­n that may have changed the outcome of that previous file.”

The last broad category that most unfounded complaints fell into was that police found no offence was committed.

“There’s a few where the person making the complaint was very intoxicate­d and they don’t remember for sure whether they were sexually assaulted and, through investigat­ion, through physical, medical evidence, investigat­ion, there’s no reason to believe that an offence did happen and yet the complaints are being made in good faith,” Ballard said.

Overall, she said she was “very impressed” with the thoroughne­ss of the investigat­ions in all sexual assault complaints that were labelled as unfounded, and she hopes her review reassures the public that the police take all sexual assault allegation­s seriously.

Ballard said she expects to complete her review next week and submit it to Chief Clive Weighill. He has previously said the report will be shared with the board of police commission­ers, which will make it a public document.

 ?? MICHELLE BERG ?? Shelley Ballard, a former Saskatoon Police inspector, spent several weeks reviewing unfounded sexual assault cases investigat­ed by city police from 2010 to 2016. Her report, which will be made public, should reassure citizens that police did thorough...
MICHELLE BERG Shelley Ballard, a former Saskatoon Police inspector, spent several weeks reviewing unfounded sexual assault cases investigat­ed by city police from 2010 to 2016. Her report, which will be made public, should reassure citizens that police did thorough...
 ??  ?? Shelley Ballard
Shelley Ballard

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