It can’t have been easy. But Premier Kathleen Wynne swallowed hard and delivered a remarkably gutsy and sharply pointed message about sex assault at a news conference this past week when she was asked whether she had ever been assaulted.

“I’ve been privileged … not to have experienced serious sexual assault,” Wynne said. Even so, “It’s hard to talk about,” she added, her voice quavering a bit. “Because we all have experiences that we can go back to and say, ‘Was that my fault?’ … or ‘Boy, I escaped that one!’ ”

Then Wynne recalled an incident from her youth when she was working in the service industry. She lived on-site and used to make late night raids on the kitchen for snacks. While she didn’t give it much thought, an older man began showing up during her raids. “I was very trusting.” Then “a couple of younger guys … my friends … started coming into the kitchen as well because they didn’t trust the older guy,” she recalled. “They told me afterwards that this guy had a reputation. I never really got a chance to thank them.

“That’s the kind of world I want to live in, where people look after each other.”

This was a thoughtful, graceful reply from a premier who is making it her business to get out the message that it’s never okay to sexually harass or assault anyone. The question came as she was in Guelph announcing funding for sexual assault centres.

This is a time when Canadians have been shaken awake as never before to the ugly reality of violence against women by the Jian Ghomeshi, Bill Cosby and Rehtaeh Parsons cases, among others. Statistics Canada has reported that one woman in four will be assaulted in her lifetime.

Wynne’s call to look out for one another is the theme of Ontario’s powerful campaign — It’s never OK — featuring stark TV ads and other measures to promote public awareness, and action, on an issue that affects millions.

Forceful as the campaign is, Wynne’s spontaneous decision to add her personal inflection to the message will help personalize it and drive it home. This is an issue we should all be talking about.

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