She still remembers how her hands shook uncontrollably as she logged into the initial video hearing convened by her university after she reported being raped on campus in 2021, dreading seeing the man, a fellow student, accused of assaulting her.
The young woman, whose name is protected by a court publication ban, said coming forward to Université Sainte-Anne forced her to recount her experience several times, including to professors, staff and students at the small francophone university in southwestern Nova Scotia.
The woman said her mental health deteriorated as she tried to cope with the aftermath of the alleged rape, while struggling to get academic accommodations, overhearing hateful rumours around campus, and trying to navigate both a police investigation and the school’s.
“I had a horrible panic attack afterward. It was just … I had to see him again, and hear him and feel watched,” she said of the initial hearing.
“I was just falling apart. I didn’t even want to be alive anymore.”
The young woman said she attempted to end her life, was hospitalized and subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In an effort to turn things around for herself and others at Sainte-Anne, the woman helped launch an online campaign last fall calling for the end to rape culture on the campus of about 350 full-time students in Church Point, N.S.
The woman’s experience, which she said involved the school going to police on her behalf and a drawn-out hearing process, is an example of how sexual assaults should not be handled, she and some professors following the campaign told CBC News.
“I just didn’t want students — present or future — to have to go through what I went through,” said the woman. “I knew if nothing was done, it would keep happening. It’s been happening for decades and it’s been brought to their attention over, and over, and over again.”
University administrators declined multiple requests for an interview and did not respond to a request for more information about the reporting process, the woman’s experience and how the university has responded to the SA Change Now campaign.
The school said in an emailed statement to CBC News in November that is has installed more lighting on campus and recently revamped its sexual violence policy. However, it remains unclear what has changed.
A wider issue
Sainte-Anne may be the latest university in Atlantic Canada to grapple with allegations of fostering a rape culture, but calls for reckonings around sexual violence have been a familiar refrain for the past decade, with students imploring their institutions to adopt approaches that support survivors and strip away the silence around a problem they say is all too common.
According to a 2020 Statistics Canada report, 71 per cent of students at Canadian post-secondary institutions had witnessed or experienced “unwanted sexualized behaviours” in the previous year.
Eight years ago in Nova Scotia, the provincial government even tied funding increases to measures — including having policies for sexual violence — to calls from students who said there were a patchwork of approaches and services on campuses.
There have been high-profile cases of sexual assault allegations at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., leading to one criminal case, and a lawsuit launched by a complainant alleging the school failed to protect students that’s still winding its way through the courts.
Late last year, the University of Prince Edward Island created seven new positions following a scathing external review that looked at allegations of sexual violence, bullying, racism and sexism on campus, with both students and staff as victims.
Nearly every public university and college in Atlantic Canada has an office or person on staff dedicated to hearing complaints and working with survivors of sexual assault. But members of the SA Change Now campaign said Sainte-Anne is far behind its counterparts, and that not enough has been done on campus to address the issue.
After a student-led campaign erupted at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., in 2020, the school commissioned an external review of its policies.
“A lot of people have been here a long time and it’s often hard to see where the problems are when you’ve just been doing the same thing for decades potentially,” said Lisa Dawn Hamilton, a psychology professor and sexual health researcher who co-chaired an internal committee that responded to the review and examined Mount Allison’s approach to sexual violence.
As a result of that work, the school created a new position and Hamilton said there’s more emphasis on ensuring the staff who work with students reporting sexual violence or harassment have trauma-informed training.
There are also options for counselling, help accessing academic support and efforts to ensure people don’t encounter any surprises through the school investigation and hearing process, she said.
Policies must be ‘trauma-informed’
She said being trauma-informed requires prioritizing consent when working with survivors, respecting boundaries and ensuring someone tells their story as few times as possible.
The criteria laid out by Hamilton as to what’s considered best practices were not in place at Sainte-Anne, the young woman said, but they’re similar to the goals laid out by the SA Change Now campaign.
The campaign has called for reforms including better lighting on campus, more support for survivors, including a psychologist, a sexual assault complaints office, an external review of the sexual assault hearing process, and trauma-informed professionals throughout the hearing process.
The Sainte-Anne student reported her experience to her school’s sole student services staff member, whom she said informed the administration, the people in charge of her academic future.
The woman said that the university then reported her assault to the RCMP without her consent, which prompted officers to show up at her dorm room asking for a statement.
“I wasn’t ready to give that statement yet,” she said.
CBC News has been unable to verify this independently, as police are not permitted to disclose this information, according to RCMP spokesperson Const. Dominic Laflamme.
The university would not comment on this claim when asked.
The university paused its investigation as the police investigation unfolded, and the process dragged on for more than a year. By that time, the student accused of the assault was graduating. It all became too much for the young woman, who eventually ended her complaint in early 2023, feeling defeated, she said.
“I completely understood why victims and survivors sometimes choose not to report,” she said.
The man was charged with sexual assault, but the Crown later dropped the charges.
The SA Change Now website launched last September. As part of the initiative, the young woman and dozens of others shared their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on the campus. In response, a petition garnered 800 signatures of support.
These accounts also prompted the Meteghan RCMP to launch a public appeal for information regarding more than 50 incidents of alleged historical sexual assaults at the university.
But it’s unclear what, if anything, has changed in the six months since then. Gibson and the young woman said they have felt like their efforts have gone nowhere.
Sainte-Anne’s director of communications, Rachelle LeBlanc, told CBC News in an email in November that the school’s administration “unreservedly condemns inappropriate conduct of any kind” and she linked to the September 2023 sexual violence policy.
In February, Const. Laflamme told CBC News that no one came forward to police following the public appeal and unless someone does, the investigation will remain closed.
Brian Gibson, an English professor and faculty adviser to SA Change Now, said he has been appalled by the administration’s lack of response and behaviour toward the campaign, saying posters have been ripped down on campus.
“I think it’s pretty embarrassing for the university,” said Gibson. “It’s unfortunately symbolic of this administration not only not taking the issue seriously, but in some cases, attacking the campaign in really trivial, sort of juvenile, delinquent ways.”
Threats of academic consequences
Gibson said the administration and many of his colleagues still refuse to recognize the issue of rape culture on campus, often giving him the cold shoulder for his involvement with the campaign.
The young woman said one school administrator even called her cellphone and, during a conversation that lasted an hour, threatened her with academic consequences because of her role in the campaign.
The administrator instructed the woman to stop putting up campaign flyers around campus, referring to them as “vandalism and harassment.”
“I’ll get severe consequences for that, but my rapist and so many other rapists had no consequences and were just able to walk away with nothing. It’s nice to see where their priorities lie, I guess.”
CBC News reached out to the university about that allegation, as well as to the administrator, but did not receive a response.
A pledge to keep going
Looking back on the hearing process, the young woman said that seeing the accused student at an administrative hearing was unnecessary. More discussion around how to hold those hearings in a way that supported her would have been helpful, she said.
She’s still trying to cope with her PTSD, but continues with her studies and advocacy.
“I’m not optimistic about anything changing within the university because they don’t care about their students. They have shown that for so long,” she said. “They have neglected their duty of care for so long.”
Despite feeling discouraged, the woman said she refuses to give up and plans to stick with the campaign even after she graduates.
“I’ll do it for as long as I have to, to make sure that they implement changes that are necessary to keep their students safe,” she said.
For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services via this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.
