Understanding Sexual Assault — Definitions and Statistics
What is sexual assault? How common is sexual assault in Canada? What does it mean to give consent? This page is intended as a resource to address questions like these and many others.
Definitions
Child sexual abuse is the improper exposure of a child to sexual contact, activity, or behaviour. Child sexual abuse can include exhibitionism, exposure to pornography, sexual touching, and/or penetration.
The age of consent to engage in sexual activity in Canada is 16. According to the Criminal Code of Canada, a person under the age of 12 cannot consent to any kind of sexual activity.
- Constantly putting pressure on someone or refusing to take no for an answer;
- Making someone feel guilty ("If you love me, you'll...");
- Threatening to withhold something or do something to make someone comply ("I'll break up with you...", "I'll tell everyone you...");
- Being emotionally manipulative ("I can't live without you...", threatening to harm one's self);
- Using physical or verbal intimidation to force someone into submitting or complying (not allowing someone to leave, previous or implied threats of violence).
- It is given by someone else;
- The person is incapable of consenting (i.e. unconscious, sleeping, drunk, or stoned);
- It is an abuse of power, trust, or authority;
- The person does not say yes, says no, or through words or behaviour implies no;
- The person changes their mind.
A great resource to explain consent using tea...
Relationship violence may include some or all of the following abuse: physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, cultural, and/or financial.
- Kissing, fondling, vaginal or anal penetration, and oral sexual contact are all examples of sexual assault if they take place without voluntary consent.
- Consent obtained through pressure, coercion, force, or threats of force is not voluntary consent.
Acquaintance sexual assault is sexual assault where the survivor knows the person who committed the sexual assault. The offending acquaintance may be someone the survivor hardly knows (e.g. a friend of a friend) or someone the survivor is close with (e.g. a partner).
Sexual harassment includes unwanted attention, demands, or a pattern of jokes or insults that affect your job, work, school environment or your chances to obtain a service.
Sexual harassment falls under Human Rights Law, a civil legislation, not the Criminal Code of Canada. Sexual harassment complaints may be reported to the Alberta Human Rights Commission or University of Alberta Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights, not to the police.
Stalking can be broadly defined as willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly following and/or harassing another person.
Under the Criminal Code of Canada, stalking is referred to as Criminal Harassment (Section 264, Subsection 1).
Stalking consists of:
- Repeatedly following the victim or someone known to the victim;
- Repeatedly communicating, either directly or indirectly, with the victim or anyone known to them;
- Watching the victim's house, or place where the victim, or anyone known to the victim, lives, works, or happens to be;
- or Engaging in threatening conduct directed at the victim or any member of their family.
Sexual Assault Statistics
- Males are the majority of perpetrators in all sexual assaults (Scarce, 1997).
- It is estimated that 5% of sexual assaults against females and 20% of sexual assaults against males are committed by females (Finkelhor and Russell, 1984).
- The majority (88%) of perpetrators in male sexual assaults are straight men (Hodge and Canter, 1998).
- National statistics report that 1 in 3 females and 1 in 6 males will experience sexual assault at some point in their life (Statistics Canada, 2006).
- It is estimated that 1 in 2 girls and 1 in 3 males will be sexually abused by the time they reach the age of 16 (Badgley, 1984).
- In over 75% of child sexual abuse incidences, the abuse is committed by a family member or someone well known to the child (Badgley, 1984).
- Across Canada, 82% of all sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the survivor knows (Statistics Canada, 2008).
- Alcohol is the most common rape drug used in drug-facilitated sexual assaults (ElSohly, 1999; LoVerso, 2001).
- About 1 in 10 sexual assaults are reported to police (General Social Survey on Victimization, 2004).
- Only 1% of acquaintance sexual assaults are reported to the police (Russell, 1984).
- It is estimated that over 80% of survivors who are sexually assaulted do not report due to feelings of shame and humiliation or fear of revictimization through the criminal trial process (Fassel, 1994).
- In fall 2010, a local project was created in which a person can anonymously submit a sexual assault or abuse experience, as an opportunity to voice what is usually silenced.
- 21% of students at the University of Alberta reported at least one unwanted sexual experience at some point in their life up until now (Survey of Unwanted Sexual Experience Among University of Alberta Students by LoVerso, 2001).
- 90-95% of survivors who come to the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre are sexually assaulted by someone they know (University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre Statistics, 2013).
- The risk for sexual assault is four times higher for women aged 16-24 than any other population group (Warsaw, 1988).
Informational Videos
Watch the series of informational videos we developed about sexual assault.