Details about how and when police in B.C. will be required to review closed sexual assault files have advocates concerned that the exercise won’t do anything to redress past wrongs or ensure future accountability.
Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth announced the case review Monday while announcing new policing standards for sexual assault investigations. Underpinning the announcement was an acknowledgment that the vast majority of victims choose not to report these crimes, that confidence in police is low, and that the criminal justice system has not been effective at delivering justice for survivors or accountability for perpetrators.
"The standards are going to ensure that we are doing a much better job in this province than we have in the past," Farnworth said during the announcement.
WHICH CASES WILL BE REVIEWED?
The review of closed cases, however, will not actually require police to look at cases closed before province-wide standards for investigations come into effect.
"The minimum requirement in the standards is for police to conduct reviews moving forward, starting in 2024," the Public Safety Ministry told CTV News in a statement.
"The standards will take effect in July 2024 and will require ongoing reviews from then on," the statement continued.
This failure to order police to look back is just one of the reasons Angela Marie MacDougall with Battered Women's Support Services is skeptical about the file review process.
"We already know that there are so many cases where police investigations have been appalling," she says, referencing cases like one in Kelowna where an Indigenous woman ended up suing the police for negligence for subjecting her to what court documents described as a "malicious interrogation."
MacDougall says a fulsome review of past files could have been an opportunity to really reckon with the issues plaguing the system and that such a review needn't wait until after the new standards come into effect.
"The province had an opportunity here to learn from the past and to bring a level of justice that has been denied for survivors. We've always had the expectation police would conduct proper investigations, now they're being told to – and so we do think that they should be told to also review their prior practice."
The updated policing standards say that a case review will have to occur every 24 months of files that were closed without charges being recommended.
The reviews are meant, according to the standards, to identify potential opportunities for improvement and training and the establishment of "processes" for cases where it is found "that further investigative steps or follow up may be required."
Given that the standards don't come into effect until 2024, it seems entirely possible that no police department will have to review any files until 2026 – a timeline MacDougall describes as "ridiculous."
POLICE 'FLEXIBILITY'
Asked at Monday's news conference for more details about the file review, specifically, how many cases would be scrutinized, Farnworth did not provide an answer.
CTV News asked his ministry for more details and was told that while the provincial standards require closed cases to be reviewed -- the way in which reviews are conducted is essentially left in the hands of police.
"There is flexibility for police agencies to determine criteria for which cases and how many cases will be reviewed," the emailed statement from the ministry said.
"Police agencies must establish a review process for concluded cases. Police agencies have some flexibility in relation to how they will establish a review committee, the schedule for periodic reviews, the criteria to determine which cases will be reviewed, and set up a checklist for the reviews."
The standards do include minimum requirements for these checklists, which include some of the elements of the new policing standards including the requirement for "active supervision" and "victim-centered approaches and trauma-informed practices."
Allowing police forces to set the standards and criteria for which cases get reviewed, how, and by whom is another detail of the plan that MacDougall takes issue with, citing widespread and longstanding criticism of putting police in charge of overseeing themselves.
"There's been some egregious cases. What is so clear is how police struggle with and are really ineffective at holding themselves accountable for harms done," she says.
"And that includes so many things. It includes officer-involved domestic violence, officer-involved sexual assault, officer-involved shootings and killings."
Further. MacDougall says that the organizational culture in police departments, particularly the RCMP, has revealed itself to be rife with sexism and racism and discrimination, which impacts how individual officers respond to the victims of sexual assault.
The ministry also confirmed that the results of the review will be reported to individual police boards and not the province.
"A summary of the reviews is to be provided to the police board which will assist with their governance role and with budget or resourcing," the emailed statement said.
THE PHILADELPHIA MODEL
The standards require police agencies to create a team to review files, and Farnworth's office says they allow for the possibility of including people who are not police.
"Varied and pertinent subject matter expertise, including from experts who are not from within a police agency, is beneficial to reviews," is what the ministry said when CTV News asked if the review teams would have to include anyone other than police officers.
Some anti-violence workers and advocates have argued that police forces in Canada should adopt the so-called "Philadelphia model" of oversight. Broadly speaking, that model involves bringing in those who work with and advocate for survivors of sexual assault to participate in a review of closed cases.
MacDougall says involving advocates or other experts is something police should welcome if they are serious about improving their response.
But she doubts that will happen given that it's not been mandated.
"It does require policing agencies to value and to see the benefit of having civilians involved in critiquing their work and that is contrary to everything that I've seen within policing agencies," she says. "It's a very closed system --- even the notion of that thin blue line -- part of the culture is to be a closed system."
MacDougall notes that on an individual level, the presence of an advocate throughout the criminal justice process improves results for survivors. It's why organizations like hers accompany victims to make police statements, make follow-up phone calls on their behalf and go with them if they are ever called upon to testify in court.
"Every survivor of sexual assault should have an advocate in every aspect of the legal process, And that would be the case, certainly, in reviewing files. There needs to be an advocate in that space."
At the news conference announcing the new standards, provincial officials noted that only six per cent of victims choose to make a report to police. They also acknowledged that the decision not to contact police is often due to fear of being blamed or doubted, a lack of faith that the system will deliver justice or accountability, and a reluctance to go through a process that will be re-victimizing and re-traumatizing.
These concerns are more acute for women who are already marginalized or have historically faced discrimination – the same women who are disproportionately vulnerable to sexualized violence.
Even as the rate at which victims report remains vanishingly low, the number of police-reported sexual assaults in B.C. increased by 15 per cent in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available from Statistics Canada. Nationwide, the number of sexual assaults reported reached a 25-year high.
"There was a lot in the announcement that was about things that are going to be happening well into the future. Meanwhile, we have what has been an epidemic of sexualized violence and sexual assault here in B.C. and all across Canada," MacDougall said.
"There doesn't seem to be too much urgency."
