A scathing look at the sexual violence that plagues the Canadian military is the focus of an exclusive investigation by L’actualité, Maclean’s sister publication.
Every day, five individuals in the Canadian military community become victims of sexual assault, according to statistics obtained through Canada’s Access to Information Act.
The numbers show military police have received between 134 and 201 complaints of sexual assaults every year since 2000, which averages out to 178 per year.
“I haven’t heard anything either from the minister of defence, the chief of defence staff, [or] Prime Minister Harper, really taking a stand about that issue,” she tells us.
Mercier researched the topic for eight months. “There are studies that show that being sexually assaulted within the military can have worse psychological consequences than being sexually assaulted in a civilian context.”
Borden military base in Ontario had the highest sexual assault complaints.
In the United States, 26,000 active-duty members reported unwanted sexual contact in 2012; that’s a 35 per cent increase from 2010.
Agencies/Canadajournal
When they tried the midnight-stalking wing commander at Base Trenton a couple of years ago, it became fairly evident that, if somebody wasn’t a slaverin’ pervert while in uniform, somebody very badly ‘bent’ on weekends and off-duty hours, could still rise to great hieights in the military. Suppose you’re and ordinary, ‘good guy’ , ‘tits and ass’ man, you could be what? A Brigadier? Or even a Minister of Defense? Hey ….. we’ve had both, already.
If it ain’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed. It needs to be funded, eh?