Prevalence of Sexual Assault in Canada: Does it Justify Rape Culture Hysteria?

There is much discussion and debate about the true prevalence of sexual assault in Canada. Statistics are often cited that look like this:

• 1 in 3 women around the world will be raped in her lifetime
• 1 in 4 women will be raped before graduating from college
  
• 1 in 4 North American women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime
• 1 in 5 women reported experiencing rape at some point in their life
  Etc., etc...
  

So Which Statistic is Accurate?

Actually none of these are relative to any one country. One of the problems with citing these statistics is they don't  separate the global from the individual nation, from the American from the Canadian from the college students from the men and from the women, or the act of violent rape from the broadly defined sexual assault. Another problem is that special interest groups consistently ensure that police-reported statistical data is marginalized by the claim that a much higher number of sexual assaults/rapes go "under-reported".

How Canada Defines Rape and Sexual Assault
Firstly, it is important to point out that Canada does not legally recognize "rape" as an offence and hasn't since 1983. This is described on StatsCan here (though their list of legislative changes related to sexual assault is incomplete and will be discussed later on STW). Other nations, including the U.S. legally define rape generally as unwanted or forced penetration. In 1983 Canada decided that women can be sexually violated in many more ways than forced penetration. They range from sexually charged comments that make a woman feel unsafe, to unwanted sexual touching, to penetration involving physical violence, threats, weapons, intoxication or false promises. Most recently the issue of consent has become a hot potato and accused men have often lost in court claiming that implied consent was obvious to them. Now it seems consent is a moot point as a defence since a man can't prove it on any level unless she explicitly said "yes". We have shifted from "no means no" to "yes means yes". Leading us into a new level of sexual consent policy sure to come. A Florida-based venture already saw this coming and has created a "Consent Conscious Kit" complete with a consent sex contract currently geared towards college and university campus environments.

Back to Canadian law, there are three levels of sexual assault and they are legally defined as follows:

• Level 1 Sexual Assault:  An assault committed in circumstances of a sexual nature such that the sexual integrity of the victim is violated. Level 1 involves minor physical injuries or no injuries to the victim but doesn't elaborate any further and is open to subjectivity. But we know this can include anything from verbal comments perceived to be sexually charged, an unwanted pat on the bum, common horseplay with a child perceived as sexual touching, or a sexual encounter gone wrong. Level 1 is categorized as violent crime.
  
• Level 2 Sexual Assault: Sexual assault with a weapon, threats, or causing bodily harm. This definition is consistent to what we historically thought of as rape and the violence associated with it. 
• Level 3 Sexual Assault (Aggravated): Sexual assault that results in wounding, maiming, disfiguring or endangering the life of the victim. This definition is consistent to what we historically thought of as a severely violent rape.

Source: "An Estimation of the Economic Impact of Violent Victimization in Canada, 2009"

The Statistics
In 1995 it was reported by Correctional Services Canada that 60% of all sexual assaults reported to police were Level 1. As noted above, this is the least violent offence and the most vague and open for interpretation. Statistics from StatsCan show that Level 1 Sexual Assault continue to comprise of the majority of police-reported incidents consistently since 1983. Level 1 can and does result in prison sentences for up to 10 years, let alone resulting in a terrible, negatively life-altering and expensive experience for the accused male. It should be noted that most cases of sexual assault are launched by the Crown where the complainant is the key witness. That means that even if the complainant decides not to press charges or recant her story, the Crown has the power to force the case into trial. Level 2 and Level 3 offences, the true violent levels, comprise of a tiny fraction of the total statistics. Most interestingly, all levels of sexual assault offences are reported to the police at a consistent rate of less than 1% of the Canadian population. On average 24,000 Level 1,2 and 3 incidents are reported each year across Canada. That works out to about 1 in 1,400 Canadians reporting sexual assault on some level. Actual violent sexual assaults Level 2 and 3 comprise of an even smaller amount of the population. So where does the 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 statistic come from? So far it's looking grossly unfounded, at least relative to Canada. (Note that I am unable to reference one link to these StatsCan statistics, I had to dig 'manually' to get them. Unfortunately they do not make it easy to highlight the real statistics with their current database search structure.)

Under-reported Sexual Assaults
These are a hypothetical and questionable variant numbers (365,000-500,000 per year) calculated based on self-reporting surveys conducted by StatsCan. Some of their questioning methods are questionable themselves. And how that data gets manipulated after the fact is also questionable. For example respondents are asked if they've ever been coerced into sex by false promises or guilt. That yes answer gets classified as an unreported Level 1 sexual assault. Huh?

Conclusion
None of the numbers in this analysis justify rape culture hysteria in Canada. Yet it is worth noting that the manipulated 'under-reported' stats based on leading and/or twisted questioning in self-reporting surveys have been making their way into our provincial justice systems and police forces in the form of sexual assault handbooks.