This is a story from real people, told in
their own words.
It contains information about themes that
may be difficult for some audiences.
My name is Nicole and six years ago, I was
raped by someone that I know.
Sexual assault offenders are often known to
the victims.
A little over half (52%) of self-reported
incidents of sexual assault were perpetrated
by a friend, acquaintance or neighbour of
the victim and 4% by a spouse.
You never really think that something like
that would happen to you.
You know, you have a sense of trust and that
kind of, is gone and the shame that, you know,
what did you do to deserve this?
It was early, early morning when I had received
a phone call from Nicole’s friend and all
she said to me was, ‘I’m bringing Nicole
to you’ and my heart hit the floor and I
can, even now, feel that emotion because I
knew in that instant, Nicole had a story like
mine.
Karen Kuntz is Nicole’s aunt.
When she was 20 years old she was the victim
of a violent rape.
Karen now works in Victim Services.
She wanted to help others through the trauma
of sexual assault.
When Nicole came to me and of course, my role
with Victim Services I believe and believed
in fighting the good fight.
I wanted women to report and make people accountable.
I wanted to see justice.
That was my job and I felt confident.
But, as Nicole’s story started to unfold
and different people got involved and, I think
right from policing to nursing to, um, the
court process itself, at every turn, my heart
dropped for the way that Nicole had been treated.
The case went to trial.
Two weeks after being convicted, the accused
was released on bail pending an appeal.
The accused was subsequently found not guilty.
The entire process took five and a half years.
The courtroom is where the shame comes from
you have a room full of people who are questioning
who you are as a person and trying to tear
that apart.
You have to stand the whole time that you’re
there.
Through the appeal, I was standing for 5 hours
being questioned and you just feel like you’re
up on display.
It does feel like I’m the one that did something
wrong and they’re trying to tear apart what
I have to say and you don’t have the ability
to respond to it.
It’s, you get asked a question, you’re
only allowed to answer that.
You can’t elaborate on anything.
You can’t defend yourself.
You’re just standing there helpless.
I feel the justice system fails the victim
in the courtroom.
It’s a never-ending assault because you
constantly, for the entire time, every trial
that there is, so the preliminary, the actual
trial and then the appeal, you are made to
relive in vivid detail every single aspect
of that night.
It makes you feel like you don’t really
matter.
Getting called a witness all the time instead
of a victim and not being informed of trial
dates and having to constantly call and find
out all that information yourself.
Quite a few court dates where they either
gave me the wrong date or they didn’t even
tell me about them at all.
When the final verdict came through for the
appeal, they told me the wrong date.
They told me it was Friday and the crown prosecutor
called me Thursday night and left a voicemail.
I thought she was calling to remind me about
the next day and she called and left me a
voicemail about everything that had happened.
All of the events, in a voicemail, and the
fact that he had been released.
They didn’t have any sensitivity towards
the fact that this is something that happened
to me.
They never treated me like this is something
that happened to me.
They treated me like this is something that’s
happening to him and I need to make sure that,
you know, this is what I want to do because
of how it could affect him but nobody ever
seemed to care about how it affected me.
When I would compare my story to hers, I felt
we had gone backwards.
I believed that we should be more sophisticated
in, in our way of managing victims but we’re
not.
I guess you question whether or not it was
worth it to do it in the first place.
The process and everything behind it, it never
gives you a chance to heal.
It never gives you a chance to get past
it and the way that the system worked, I would
never tell someone to go through with it.
How can we transform Canada’s criminal justice
system to better address victims’ experiences?
Join the online discussion on this page and
share your ideas.
To learn more go to justicetransformation.ca
