The Ontario premier recently promised Lia Valente and Tessa Hill, two Grade 8 students who gathered some 40,000 names on a petition, that the province’s new sex-ed curriculum will contain a surprising new component — consent. We say surprising only because it has never been included in sex-ed curricula before.

In fact, consent should have been front and centre in the curricula for decades, but after a year in which the media was dominated by stories of high-profile sexual assaults allegedly perpetrated by the likes of Bill Cosby and Jian Ghomeshi, and of rape culture apparently prevalent on Canadian campuses, it seems the issue could no longer be ignored.

To understand what constitutes sexual assault it is essential that we understand what constitutes consent and what it means for it to be withheld, withdrawn or unable to be given. Teaching consent is an excellent preventative measure and should be applauded, but more is required if we are going to make significant strides toward stopping sexual assault.

In particular, we must do more to educate those who have already survived a sexual assault. Reports repeatedly show that girls, young women, women and even men rarely report an episode of sexual violence.

The 2009 General Social Survey conducted by Statistics Canada showed that 88 per cent of individuals did not report sexual assault to the police. The same survey showed that females were more than twice as likely as males to self-report a sexual assault, and that young people (15 to 24) and Aboriginal people, had experienced the highest rates of sexual assault in the country.

Why is it that so many suffer in silence and do not seek the justice they so rightly deserve?

There are many reasons, but the core is the stigma of reporting a sexual assault, and a lot of that comes from how the media addresses sexual violence. In the past few months, as the news of multiple sexual assaults unfolded, we have witnessed behaviours such as victim-blaming and the refusal of acknowledging rape for what it is.

Survivors of sexual assault experience a great deal of shame and guilt, particularly young women, as they internalize the victim-blaming messages conveyed by the media. This often keeps them from seeking the support they so desperately need.

This stigma is greater when it comes to newcomer, racialized and Indigenous communities. Young women from these communities are not only silenced on a daily basis, they have more barriers in accessing services in general, whether it is due to their status, language or location.

Especially troubling is that this stigma is often reinforced by those providing victim support services. The reality is that when a young woman reports rape, she needs to tell her story to multiple intervenors. Many shelter workers are aware of the stigma, by virtue of their work and expertise, but reporting often involves police officers, courts, government youth services for minors, and others, who can heighten the stigma and unintentionally reinforce a culture of victim-blaming.

Rape culture is a systemic issue: solving it requires more than simply asking girls to shake off the stigma. Any approach — educational or otherwise — to encouraging the reporting of sexual violence must consider the roles that various social actors play in propagating rape culture, as well as the way in which different young women experience different barriers depending on their class, race, gender, location, ability and status.

Fortunately in Canada, we live in a society that invests in providing support services to survivors of sexual assault. It is crucial that we not allow the barriers to accessing these services to persist.

At Girls Action Foundation, we are currently concluding a three-year national project that addresses intimate partner violence among young women in Canada. Many young women who took part in this project stressed the guilt and shame surrounding sexual violence.

But there’s an upside to our research: When girls’ critical-thinking skills are developed as part of such projects, they become acutely aware of media messaging and the role it plays in deterring reporting. This then helps put an end to barriers for accessing support services in cases of sexual violence. Or better yet, it helps put an end to sexual violence itself.

As we approach International Women’s Day, we ought to applaud Ontario’s promise to start teaching the province’s children about consent. And we need to recognize that this is just a start — there’s still much work to do to eliminate barriers to accessing support for survivors of sexual violence and to deconstruct and challenge rape culture.

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Most importantly — and we can’t start soon enough — we must listen to and believe young women when they speak.