More victims of sexual abuse and intimate partner violence are seeking help from the Ottawa Hospital this year compared to last year, according to its care facilitator.
The Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program (SAPACP) is a program at Ottawa Hospital that provides one-on-one care to patients who are 16 years or older and have experienced sexual or intimate partner violence.
The program received around 1,200 patients last year, and have already reached that number this year, according to SAPACP care facilitator Kaitlyn Maki.
The program expects to see around 1,500 patients by the end of 2024.
This represents a 30 per cent increase in people seeking care for sexual assault and a 10 per cent increase in people seeking care after intimate partner violence, according to Maki, who is also a registered nurse.
That increase suggests a need for more data about sexual and intimate partner violence and more funding to support victims willing to seek help, experts told CBC.
Why have the numbers gone up?
Maki cited two factors for the rise in cases: more sexual violence overall and victims who are increasingly comfortable seeking care.
“As a society we are having much more open and frank conversations about sexual violence and intimate partner violence in our everyday, and I think that’s given a lot of people the strength to come forward looking for help,” she told All In A Day’s Alan Neal.
Statistics Canada data shows the number of sexual assaults reported to police rose significantly between 2016 and 2019, and has continued to rise. Likewise, intimate partner violence reported to police is increasing.
Intimate partner violence spiked during COVID-19, according to Bailey Reid, the co-founder of the Spark Strategy, a national organization that works with businesses and their employees to prevent sexual violence. Society may still be experiencing “lingering effects” from the pandemic, she said.
The return to mass gatherings featuring drugs and alcohol could also lead to increased sexual violence, Reid suggested.
Providing care for victims of sexual or intimate partner violence in one place — and which avoids police involvement — is a big draw according to Dawn Moore, a Carleton University professor who studies police responses to domestic violence.
“We’ve always had hotlines,” Moore said, “but we’ve never had a one-stop shop like they have now at the Ottawa Hospital.”
A service where victims are not immediately scrutinized is invaluable, she said. “You can tell somebody, ‘I’ve been sexually assaulted’ and they’re not going to be suspicious of you immediately or just not believe you, which is such a common response … especially when they report to police.”
The SAPACP offers a variety of services, including injury treatment, assessment, documentation, testing for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and crisis counselling.
More funding and better data needed
Whether an increase in patients at the program indicates a broader increase in violent offending is unclear however.
“Was it ever really that low pre-pandemic, or did people not feel comfortable reporting?” asked Reid.
In 2019, Statistics Canada data showed that only six per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police.
A lack of reliable data about sexual assault and intimate partner violence, combined with a lack of funding, hinders action to combat the issue, according to Irvin Waller, a retired professor of criminology from the University of Ottawa and author of The Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime.
The government could set a goal to reduce sexual violence by a certain amount within a specific timeframe, but without better data would have no way of assessing its progress, according to Waller, who spent his career working to reduce violent crime.
The “generalized” data collected by Statistics Canada isn’t enough, Waller said, suggesting that a more specialized survey would give better insight.
“If the city of Ottawa wants to reduce intimate partner and sexual violence, then they need to commit to that,” he said, by collecting the data and funding programs like bystander intervention and consent training.
Maki identified the same need for greater funding for community partners who support the program with counselling services, shelter services, advocacy, and more.
“Some of our community partners are reporting they’ve doubled in the number of referrals from last year to this year, and yet they still have the same level of staffing, the same funding,” Maki said.
8:17Why the Ottawa Hospital’s sexual assault care program is seeing a surge in patients
The Ottawa Hospital’s Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care program is seeing a spike in patients seeking treatment and health workers are expecting the trend to continue. Kaitlyn Maki, the care facilitator for the program, shares what is contributing to this rise.