OTTAWA - The federal government has made crime-fighting a top priority, but new statistics appear to support critics' claims that general lawlessness has declined or remained the same, not increased.
About 7.4 million Canadians — just over a quarter of the population aged 15 and up — said they were victims of a criminal incident last year.
Statistics Canada reports that proportion has not changed since 2004.
The agency says most criminal incidents reported in 2009 were non-violent.
Theft of personal property (34 per cent), theft of household property (13), vandalism (11), break-ins (7), and theft of motor vehicles and parts (5) accounted for 70 per cent of reported incidents.
Violence — physical assault (19 per cent), sexual assault (8), and robbery (4) — accounted for the remaining self-reported incidents.
Along with economic measures, the Conservative government has made a series of anti-crime initiatives a major part of its policy agenda, despite statistics indicating general crime rates have been in steady decline for more than a decade.
The latest Statistics Canada report found rates of violent and household victimization were similar to those reported in 2004, but the rate of theft of personal property increased 16 per cent, to 108 incidents per 1,000 people in 2009 from 93 in 2004.
The highest rates of both violent and household crime were in the Tory heartland — Western Canada, particularly Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The only exception to the trend was New Brunswick, where the rate of violent victimization more closely resembled that in the West.
Nearly 1.6 million Canadians, or six per cent of the population aged 15 and up, reported being the victim of a sexual assault, a robbery or a physical assault in the preceding 12 months — similar to the 2004 rates. Physical assault was the most common form of violence, followed by sexual assault and robbery, the agency said.
"It was not uncommon for victims of violence to report having experienced multiple violent incidents," said the report.
Of the victimized, 74 per cent reported one incident, 16 per cent reported they had been violently victimized twice within the previous 12 months, and 10 per cent said they'd been victimized three or more times.
Overall, younger Canadians were 15 times more likely than older Canadians to indicate that they had been a victim of violence within the previous 12-month period.
Number of crime victims unchanged since 2004, despite government alarms
Schools, police hold school assemblies in wake of rape of girl at party in B.C.
September 17, 2010, By James Keller, The Canadian Press
PITT MEADOWS, B.C. - Photos of a teenaged girl being repeatedly raped at a party may float around the Internet indefinitely, the RCMP acknowledged Friday as the force announced the first arrest related to the assault itself.
But as police renewed their plea for anyone in possession of the photos to destroy them and come forward, local students sparred about whether the drugging and violent assault of the young girl counts as rape.
Police say the 16-year-old girl was drugged and then raped by a half-a-dozen teenage boys and young men at a party last Friday on a rural property in Pitt Meadows, east of Vancouver, while onlookers snapped photos that ended up on Facebook.
Insp. Derren Lench acknowledged it will be difficult — and potentially impossible — to wipe the photos off the Internet completely, but he warned anyone who comes across them that the pictures are child pornography.
"That's our desire, to make that (removing the photos) happen. Can we do it absolutely? No," Lench told a news conference in nearby Maple Ridge
"We'll look at any technology that's available, we're working with Facebook. There is some computer technology we will be able to use. We'll do everything we can."
He said the police have been in touch with Facebook and are working to have the photos removed. Many users have taken them down voluntarily since the RCMP first warned of criminal consequences.
They've already made one arrest in connection with taking and distributing photos, bringing a 16-year-old into custody who could face child pornography charges.
The RCMP have also arrested an 18-year-old man who has since been released, and investigators are recommending sexual assault charges.
Assemblies were held at local schools on Friday to explain the dangers of date-rape drugs and the need to stop distributing the photos.
But despite strong language from police and school officials, some students weren't getting the message.
"I heard she wanted to do the stuff," a Grade 11 student who didn't provide his name told several reporters gathered outside the school.
When asked why he believed that, he shrugged: "There's stories everywhere, I don't know what to believe."
Jasmine Hillier, a 14-year-old Grade 9 pupil at the school who wasn't at the party, said there's no question that what happened was wrong.
"I think it's a pretty terrible thing that they did, and especially to videotape it and put it on the Internet — what kind of people do you have to be to do something like that?" said Hillier.
"Why would anybody want rape?" added one of Hillier's friends, also a Grade 9 student, who didn't want her name published.
Brandon King, a Grade 11 student, said he was at the party and knew people were drinking and doing drugs, but he didn't know anything was wrong when he was there.
"It was fun, I never even saw or heard of this when I was there," said King. "There was the same party the week before, and nothing went wrong there. Everyone likes to say it's a rave. It wasn't a rave, it was just at a barn."
King said his peers who are trying to minimize the attack are wrong, and he thinks, overall, his classmates are taking the incident seriously.
"It's not right at all," he said.
For investigators, Lench said there's no debate the girl is a rape victim.
"It's very clear from the evidence, it's very clear from her physical injuries and her recollection of it and the evidence that we've collected that she was not a willing participant and it's also our belief that she was drugged by a date-rape drug," said Lench.
"She couldn't consent to anything."
The RCMP has said the girl was conscious at the time and someone given the so-called date-rape drug is in a disassociated state, which might give someone looking at the photographs the impression — wrongly — that she was aware of what was happening.
Meanwhile, the investigation continues as police look for more suspects. The photographs, said Lench, have been a source of misery for the victim and are now important evidence.
He said investigators have interviewed many people who attended the party but are asking anyone else who was there to call them.
Both of the teenagers who've been released so far have been released as prosecutors consider charges.
The 16-year-old could face charges of producing and distributing child pornography.
The RCMP have recommended sexual assault charges for the 18-year-old, and are investigating the possibility of administering a noxious substance for him, as well. He's been ordered not to contact the victim or any other witnesses.
Both accused are expected to make court appearances in the coming weeks.
On The Farm, Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women Review done by Lee Lakeman
Review done by Lee Lakeman
In On The Farm, Robert Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing and Murdered Women,Stevie Cameron relays many details of the conviction of Robert Pickton for murdering and butchering six women and the likelihood that he killed fifty: poor, mostly prostituted, women, one third of whom were Aboriginal. She catalogues a decade of data into one readable narrative that some will see as encyclopedic, though it relies almost totally on the official versions, constructed by the police, the courts, the commercial media, local governments and the harm reduction networks involved.
Cameron includes simple biographies from the hierarchy of characters who usually define these issues and authorize these versions: mostly johns, pimps, wife beaters, boyfriends, sugar daddies, rapists, prosecutors, defense lawyers, handlers, reporters, police and politicians and those charged by the state or community services as ‘victim assistance’ or ‘harm reduction” workers to destitute women. Of Pickton, we get the cliché: he had a horrible mother and childhood and he is motivated by revenge against a prostitute he described as thieving and dangerous. Cameron seems not to notice the sex bias. She contradicts no authority.
Some compassion for individuals at risk or under pressure warms the bare facts but chafes against her over abundant regard for the professional (class) credentials of the hundreds activated after women are harmed or dead. We get many of their cv’s. But their credentials would not have saved us. Throughout, she seems to accept the current social relations that lead us to this colossal legal and social failure. No substantial investigative reporting here only those admissions that authorities have already packaged into their next demand (as in the 2005 Vancouver Police Review that insists it would all be over if we had a regional police force and a nicer attitude to “sex workers”). It is as though the material racism, class biases and sex discrimination are solved.
She reminds us that the murdered women were trapped but she understands that trap as the personal mistake they made of choosing boyfriends and husbands that introduced them to vicious drugs and the mistake they made of getting into the killer’s car. The violence, poverty and racism they suffered previously, the refusal of authorities to interfere with the men who preceded him or with Pickton’s pre murderous activity goes unconnected. She concludes only that “we do not know if women are safer”.
Women suffer hideous abuse including prostitution, disappear and die at the hands of men every year in every major city in Canada. Aboriginal women remain especially vulnerable. Women live without adequate incomes, social services or advocacy. The criminal law is applied in a discriminatory fashion that sustains male violence. The statistics are not even disputed anymore. But that hierarchical status quo maintains hundreds if not thousands of women in prostituted squalor and binds together three groups of women: Pickton’s dead, those still prostituted, and millions of other women in Canada. They are bound into a disadvantaged class that lacks adequate social and legal intervention, documentation or protection from violence against women. Cameron’s narrative, absent as it is of any other stated intention, upholds an unacceptable status quo in which fifty women or more went to their deaths.
No experts on the equality obligations of states to women, no police civilian oversight experts or media monitors or Aboriginal women or anti-violence feminists are consulted interviewed or quoted for expertise. Is there no need to change that hierarchy?
Nor did Stevie Cameron give voice to a single escaped victim although she does relay two second hand stories of the anonymous women she calls Jane Doe and Sandra Gail Ringwald. The first is a name given to half a skull found in a local slough in 1995 that leaves us to worry how long ago Pickton began killing. The second is the story of a woman who survived in 1997, reported Pickton to authorities, but was left to protect herself from further violence. Case dismissed. The attempt to murder her never did result in a case, even of solicitation. Eliminating her evidence from the Pickton murder case accounting for the missing women prevented his conviction of first degree murder by blinding the court to the extent of his evil planning.
The book confirms the mind-numbing bigotry and ignorance of individuals with the criminal justice system but more importantly, the common ideology underpinning our institutions and their functionaries: women are not trusted as victims or witnesses, are deemed unreliable, exaggerating their plight and in themselves dangerous, unworthy of the protection of law. Poverty is constructed as individual responsibility separate from race and sex. In praising tiny accommodations and kindnesses (like the lunch passes for those at court or the tent supplied by the police so the families could see the killing fields) and in refusing to rage against the status quo, the book seems to accept the steady application of social and legal policy that replicates these deadly horrors over and over again.
Prostitution remains unchallenged as an activity of men as though women don’t mind and are not at risk or harmed. Like most women’s legal and social complaints of men’s sexual violence, prostitution is not treated like a serious crime. Only weeks after an apologetic review of police failures in the Pickton case, the new police chief, challenged to explain a 20% increase in sexual assault cases excused his force by saying the cases were not “aggravated by violence” as though he didn’t know that all sexual assault was against the law and a serious transgression of the collective rights of women.
Almost all the women victimized by Pickton first suffered criminal beatings, assaults and sexual exploitation at the hands of other men, assaults either from fathers or step- fathers, husbands, boyfriends, or pimps, assaults that should have been prevented and went unpunished, that rendered the women broken and vulnerable to this deadly predator. To three women he was a “sugar daddy” who paid for wife-like duties then threatened with violence if not obeyed. Those women entered Wish Drop In and “low barrier shelters” where prostitution is talked about as a job and successfully they solicited more vulnerable women to “service” Pickton. Of these, many were disabled physically and mentally. Some were not in a state to give consent to anything.
Uncontested too is that he was known as an “ordinary john”. In spite of the law, unimpeded by police, social workers or hotel staff, Pickton solicited women on the street, in the bars where he was known and through pimps in the downtown eastside ghetto. It is likely he solicited too for the men around him at his brother’s Piggy’s Palace, in the butchery, for the truckers he employed, for the Hells Angels across the street. Such facts should give chills to those promoting a laissez fair attitude to the sex industry.
Virtually all workers against violence against women know the ongoing systemic failure to protect women from the men who abuse them including those women who offer themselves as complainants and witnesses. The failure to properly investigate, prosecute and convict, insulated Pickton in the 1997 events that Cameron tells of Ringwald. That woman, whose consent was impaired by drugs, was solicited in Vancouver, confined in Pickton’s house in Coquitlam, sexually assaulted if not raped, beaten and threatened with death. She was stabbed when she defended herself with a knife from his kitchen and although badly bleeding managed to run across the street nearly nude and still in a handcuff. She was rescued by a passing couple and hospitalized. She told. Police retrieved the key to the handcuffs from his pocket. Those in the criminal justice system judged her inadequate and themselves as helpless. They abandoned her and the case. Pickton disintegrated over the decade into his life as serial killer convicted of murdering six women, confessing to killing 49 and dreaming of killing 75.
Human trafficking: It’s happening here
Re: More Migrant Ships Could Be Coming: Toews, Sept. 8.
Congratulations to the Harper government for its new education campaign regarding human trafficking. This is an insidious crime that Canadians need to be more aware of.
While it’s a positive step forward, it is, as Canada’s leading expert Ben Perrin said, a small step. He rightly pointed out that we really need is a national strategy.
I hope the campaign will not just focus on victims trafficked into Canada from other countries, who are victimized repeatedly and face unimaginable challenges, but that it also educates Canadian on our bigger problem of domestic trafficking. Human trafficking has been taking place in this country for decades as pimps and gangs move exploited women and girls on circuits from city to city. The most vulnerable are young aboriginal girls.
The campaign will only be successful if it enlightens Canadians about the realities of this horrific crime both domestically and internationally.
Steve Sullivan, former federal ombudsman for victims of crime, Ottawa.
Respectful Relationship
ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE WHAT IS A Respectful Relationship?
Some things to think about as you negotiate having a relationship is
HOW do you want to be treated Physically, Emotionally and Sexually in your dating relationships?
What are your bottom-lines or your non-negotiables, meaning what are ways that you should not be treated and ways you should not treat others?
Below are some things youth have told us is important to them in having and maintaining a Respectful Relationship.
Physically:
Respect
No Abuse
Space and No Possessiveness - You and your partner can do things without each other and hang out with other people without you or your partner getting upset, excusing the other of cheating, etc.
Comfortable
Trust-No spying on, checking pagers, having other people give "reports"
Communication
Affection
Attraction
Emotionally:
Respect
No put-downs, especially when fighting or angry with one another
Comfortable
No manipulation or blaming
Communication (if necessary talk about how you communicate when you fight and when you're not fighting)
Trust and honesty
Love
Friendship
Security
Understanding
Caring
Sexually:
Respect
Trust and honesty
Communication (talk about expectations of what you're willing or not willing to do, safe sex, history, and consequences)
No pressure
Comfortable to say "Yes" and "No" at all times to any activity
You have the right to…
Be alone.
Express your ideas.
Express your feelings, even if they're negative.
Choose your work and your religion.
Live without fear.
Have time to yourself.
Spend your own money however you want to.
Get emotional support from your family and friends.
Listened to by your friends and family.
Choose your friends - men and women.
Express your strengths, abilities, and talents.
Decide if you want to participate in sexual acts or not.
RCMP wants Craigslist to stop erotic ads after U.S. adult services shut down
September 07, 2010, By The Canadian Press
The RCMP says it's working with Craigslist to try to stop erotic ads that many fear are a cover for prostitution from being posted on the company's website in Canada.
Craigslist shut down its adult services section in the United States on Saturday and replaced it with a black bar that simply says "censored." The move came after a group of state attorneys general said there weren't enough protections against blocking potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution.
But as of Tuesday, the Canadian site still had an "erotic" link listed under services. Mounties want that to change.
"The RCMP Human Trafficking National Co-ordination Centre has partnered with Craigslist and has met (with Craigslist officials) on several occasions trying to implement some measures in Canada," Sgt. Marie-Claude Arsenault said at a news conference in Winnipeg.
"There's already some measures in place ... not all the ones that are in the U.S. at the time, but we are speaking with them and trying to bring these measures in Canada."
When asked directly if the RCMP wanted Craigslist to shut down adult sections on its Canadian website, Arsenault said: "These are the kinds of measures we are looking at in Canada."
A Craigslist spokeswoman did not immediately respond to emails from The Canadian Press requesting comment.
However, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in a May blog posting that the company's ads were no worse than those published by the alternative newspaper chain Village Voice Media. He cited one explicit ad which included the phrase: "anything goes $90," the Associated Press reported.
The "erotic" link on the Canadian site has a warning and disclaimer attached to it. It says users agree "to flag as 'prohibited' anything illegal or in violation of the Craigslist terms of use. This includes, but is not limited to, offers for or the solicitation of prostitution."
Media and legal experts suggest Craigslist may have to follow suit by shutting down such services in Canada.
"There was a huge wave of pressure coming from all kinds of points of interest, pressuring Craigslist to shut down this service, from the community and also from government," said Sidneyeve Matrix, a media professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.
"The pushback is the same in the U.S. and Canada."
Matrix's colleague at Queen's University, law professor Art Cockfield, said there are perhaps thousand of sites that offer similar adult services.
But Cockfield said a lot of hostility was directed towards Craigslist in the U.S. was because of the so-called Craigslist killer. The adult services listings came under new scrutiny after the jailhouse suicide last month of a former medical student who was awaiting trial in the killing of a masseuse he met through Craigslist.
"Because of the U.S. action, because it's decided to shut this down south of the border, may be there will be public pressure on Craigslist and there also may be a bit of a Canadian public outcry against law enforcement saying 'Why aren't you putting pressure on them like the American authorities did?' " said Cockfield.
He's unsure if the company could be legally forced to shut down in Canada.
"If the law enforcement officials believe that they were engaged in illegal activities, actually acting as an online pimp, then that is a violation of our federal criminal laws and they could be prosecuted," said Cockfield.
Removing the service from Craigslist won't stop human trafficking or prostitution, but Matrix believes it's a good step forward.
"It's very easy to find interviews with people who are working in the ... sex trade who have said that (Craigslist) is the best way for them to advertise," she said.
"Not having that service will definitely be an obvious disincentive and it will just make buying sex and finding those kind of activities just a little bit harder."
— By Jennifer Graham in Regina
Feds, Mounties launch PR campaign against human trafficking
September 07, 2010, By The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The federal government is teaming up with the Mounties and Crime Stoppers to raise awareness about human trafficking.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says Crime Stoppers will join his department and the RCMP to tell people about human trafficking and how to report suspicious activity.
Toews, speaking at a news conference in Winnipeg, said the "Blue Blindfold" campaign will help Canadians fight a ''disturbing" crime.
He said victims of human trafficking are often coerced into working for the criminals who bring them into the country.
''Victims are forced, often through violence and threats, to provide their services or labour because of their fear of their safety or that of someone else,'' he said.
''The majority are forced to work in the sex industry and are led to a life of exploitation, deprived of basic human rights. Most are women and children and their cases often go unnoticed and unreported due to threats from offenders, language barriers or mistrust of authorities.''
''By exposing the reality of this terrible crime to the light of day, Canadians can better recognize and report evidence of criminal activity."
The RCMP Human Trafficking National Co-ordination Centre will also run its own "I'm Not for Sale" awareness campaign.
The Mounties have put together a human trafficking information kit for police, governments, non-governmental organizations and the public.
Sgt. Marie-Claude Arsenault of the RCMP co-ordination centre said it's important to enlist the help of the public.
''Our partnership with Crime Stoppers allows people to anonymously report the abuse and be assured that the information will be communicated to the police."
The campaigns come in the wake of the arrival of a Tamil refugee ship off the West Coast and warnings that more ships could be on the way.
Child abuse unit investigates possible sex assault in Calgary school field
September 07, 2010, By Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press
CALGARY - Calgary police say alcohol was a factor in a first date between a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy who met on a social networking site and then followed up Monday with a sexual encounter witnessed by their friends.
"This was not a mob attack on a child walking through the park," said Staff Sgt. Leah Barber from the Calgary Police Service Child Abuse Unit.
"This was a group of youths who knew each other, who had been consuming alcohol, and a sexual act took place.
"Obviously whenever you mix alcohol and youth, that's usually a disaster waiting to happen. And so in this case I don't think the alcohol helped any."
Police received a 911 call late Monday afternoon to Clarence Sansom School after a report that a sexual assault was in progress in a nearby school field. Initial reports from neighbours had suggested a sinister scene involving a young girl being brutally attacked by an older boy in front of a group of young people who were filming the encounter.
When officers arrived, 10 youths were in the bleachers in the field. The group included the 12- and 16-year-old and eight of their friends.
Sexual assault charges are pending against the male youth because the girl was not legally able to give informed consent and because the boy is four years older than she is.
The friends are considered to be witnesses, not offenders, Barber said Tuesday. There was no indication they "encouraged" a sexual attack.
The 911 call came from adults who were watching from the nearby school.
"I never condemn anybody for not intervening in a case like this, where you're witnessing something occur where there are numerous people possibly involved when you're watching from afar," said Barber.
"They might have felt threatened or fearful that they would be attacked."
A spokesman from the Calgary Board of Education defended the actions of those in the school.
"All I can says is I don't believe the Calgary police would ever counsel someone to intervene in a crime if it could place their lives in danger," said Ted Flitton.
Barber said police have not had a chance to interview the girl, who has been turned over to her parents.
If charges are laid against the 16-year-old, they would likely be sexual interference and sexual assault. Barber said charges are "pending" until police have a chance to consult with Crown prosecutors.
A cellphone belonging to one of the youths was checked, but no photos or video have been recovered.
Barber said there doesn't appear to be any evidence the girl was calling for help. She said there is a lesson to be learned from the entire encounter.
"Because chat sites are so normal for (youths), they don't really think about the fact this could be a dangerous event.
