Sexual assaults hitting record levels in Belleville, says executive director

By Jennifer Bowman

Sexual assaults are at crisis levels, according to a Belleville sexual assault centre.

Kim Charlebois, the executive director of the Sexual Assault Centre for Quinte and District, said sexual assaults have increased over the past two years.

Between April 2010 and March 2011, 32 people were admitted to the hospital after being sexually assaulted. From March to August this year, 25 people have already been admitted.

And there are still seven months to go, she said.

“Sexual assaults in general is an epidemic, and it’s not slowing down,” said Charlebois.

In August, the centre was at its capacity of 100 people with a wait list reaching an all-time high of 80. Previously, the peak for the wait list was 71 back in January.

“We as a community need to recognize, quite simply, that sexual violence is a very, very serious issue. That we can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t happen in our community because it does,” she said.

Charlebois said the incidents have increased over the last two years when there were 11 murders in 11 months and an increase in violence locally, including a high profile case at Canada’s air force base in Trenton involving former base commander Russell Williams.

During that time, Charlebois said the centre received an influx of phone calls, mostly from women. Some were victims of sexual assault and already receiving help from the centre. Those women said the violence was exacerbating their own issues. There was also an increase of calls from women who were afraid.

“It was in everybody’s face. We couldn’t go a day without reading about it or hearing about it,” she said.

Since the news has toned down, those kinds of calls have decreased, but the number of sexual assaults increased, said Charlebois.

Though the sexual assault centre associates the increase with the violence in the community, the women’s shelter doesn’t make that connection.

Three Oaks Women’s Foundation also received an increase in the number of calls in the last two years, but the Foundation’s Executive Director Pam Havery doesn’t draw the same conclusion.

“I just don’t think that there is necessarily a link,” said Havery.

“I think that it raised awareness in the community, but I’ve been working in this field for 20 years, and the incidences of violence against women have continued to increase, and I would say have continued to get more serious,” said Havery.

Throughout the summer the Quinte area faced numerous sexual acts and acts of indecency. Men exposing themselves and sometimes inappropriately touching themselves, a peeping tom said to be taking pictures through a bedroom window of a woman changing, and a sexual assault involving six men sexually assaulting a woman near Belleville’s downtown.

Despite these events, some women still feel very safe in the community.

Heather Barker is a recent graduate from Loyalist College who moved to Belleville from Toronto. She’s lived and worked in Belleville’s downtown for four years.

The only time she really felt unsafe was when she first moved downtown, she said. She didn’t know anyone, didn’t know what was going on, and all the stores closed at five.

Since then, despite the events of the summer and the past two years, she feels a sense of community downtown. That gives her courage.

“There are people looking out for you. It could be something as simple as ‘I see your face everyday, so I know you’re all right. I see your face, so I’m going to watch out for you a little bit more,’” she said.

She said some of those nameless faces have warned her about unfamiliar people they saw on the streets before she left work in the evening.

“Now I don’t have a lot of strangers downtown. Now I know a lot of people and I feel quite comfortable, it has abated my fear,” she said.

Fear is what both the sexual assault agency and police are trying to divert.

Belleville police won’t speak specifically on the events of the past two years to give the family time to heal, but Police Chief Cory McMullan said the events helped raise awareness about sexual assault, both for men and women.

“People are not afraid to speak about these issues, and that’s what we want,” said McMullan.

That may be one reason for the rise in the number of sexual assaults, said Charlebois.

“We imagine that it’s probably because of awareness. People are more aware through the media, through initiatives that different community members, police, ourselves, other social service agencies,” she said.

Belleville is more aware than many communities, said Charlebois.

According to the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, one in three women and one in six men experience sexual assault sometime in their life. In October 2010, McLean’s magazine rated Belleville as the fourth most dangerous city for sexual assault in Canada.

Charlebois said she doesn’t have the answers for the increase, but it’s time to move on.

The community needs a break from it, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be talked about, said Charlebois. The community needs to talk about how to move forward and help victims.