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We’re taking baby steps at this point to try and rectify the brutality of the process

“We know and we’ve long talked about how the courts can be fairly adversarial towards survivors of sexual assault,” Dobson-Hughes said. “The police system also has big gaps in how it treats survivors of sexual assault.”

“We’re taking baby steps at this point to try and rectify the brutality of the process,” Dale said.

We don’t see that we could do something other than bash the witness in order to defend the defendant

Dale has helped shape Ontario’s sexual violence strategy from the out, and lauded the move as an important first that could influence broader reforms to the justice system.

“I hope it also allows us to begin a constructive conversation about the nature of the criminal process as a whole (to) begin to discern how we can both protect fair-answer-and-defence of the accused and disentangle that very important aspect of fundamental justice from… an engagement with rape myths,” Dale said, referring to certain societal tropes that often permeate sexual assault trials, such as the idea a woman who goes home with a man consents to anything that happens thereafter, even if it turns violent and she says no. “We don’t see that we could do something other than bash the witness in order to defend the defendant.”

This week the ministry of the attorney general put out a call to lawyers interested in doing the work. The ministry hopes to have the pilot in place by late spring, likely in May. In Toronto part of the project will be integrated into a swath of services at the Schlifer clinic. Elsewhere in that city and in Thunder Bay and Ottawa the pilots will be more like legal aid, with all survivors over the age of 16 offered certificates, essentially vouchers, for legal advice in tandem with other services.

“It’s great there’s a pilot project form which we can get data and evidence (to shape future policy)… and getting survivors reactions and responses and how useful they found it,” Dobson-Hughes said. “This for me is an adaptive model that helps survivors work within the existing system. I think it’s also a tacit acknowledgement that the system doesn’t work for survivors of sexual violence.”