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The Vancouver Police Department, in partnership with BarWatch, Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS), Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), BC Women’s Hospital Sexual Assault Service, NEWAD Inc., and ZOOM Media, are launching the 2013 “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign.

The primary goal of this campaign is to reduce incidents of sexual violence in the city of Vancouver. The campaign includes posters with a hard-hitting message aimed at males between the ages of 18 and 25, and that message is:

Sex without consent is sexual assault.

The posters will be in clubs and bars in the entertainment districts around the city for the months of July and August.

The VPD would like to acknowledge and thank the Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton Committee (SAVE), which is a diverse coalition of individuals and group from various professional backgrounds working for women’s safety. SAVE developed the posters to raise awareness about sexual assault and particularly drug and alcohol facilitated sexual assault. These posters focus the responsibility for sexual violence on the offender where it belongs.

The “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign in Vancouver has three related components:

The poster campaign aims to shift accountability to the offenders and away from the victims. It is designed to reach out to young males with the message that sex without consent is sexual assault.

Specialized investigators from the Vancouver Police Department’s Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit, have developed and are delivering a training session to increase the awareness of front line bar staff in order to help them to more easily identify persons who are temporarily vulnerable due to the consumption of alcohol and/or drugs.

The VPD Operations Division have committed to assign police members to the entertainment district of Vancouver to specifically focus their attention on predatory males who may be targeting temporarily vulnerable women.

The “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign’s hard-hitting message is designed to focus attention on sexual violence and to force young males to recognize the boundary between consensual sexual contact and criminal sexual assault. Recent court decisions have supported the core message of this campaign:

Sex without consent is sexual assault.