Rural isolation, stigma compound trauma for sexual assault survivors, cabinet minister says

By George Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Travel distances and the stifling quiet of stigma make sexual assault especially dangerous for rural Albertans, a cabinet minister acknowledged in a recent interview.

Commenting on a funding announcement of nearly $21 million under his ministry, Searle Turton said: “It just breaks my heart when I hear that in the past survivors were feeling stigmatized or feeling isolated, and that they didn’t know where to go.”

Turton, the minister of children and family services in the UCP government, called it “my job” to bring light to that type of darkness.

And it’s the public’s job too, he emphasized.

Outreach and education, along with personal and bystander responsibility, are critical for Alberta to make inroads.

“It’s up to us — and especially men — to add our voices to the conversation and say this is not appropriate or acceptable behaviour,” Turton said.

“I never want to hear stories about someone observing a situation and then, because they were silent, someone got hurt or worse.”

His comments followed an announcement last month that the province has allocated $17 million to fund 15 individual sexual assault centres and the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services, or AASAS.

The announcement marks a $3.3-million increase in funding to start meeting a UCP commitment to boost dollars for sexual assault centres by $10 million a year by 2028-29.

Before the fiscal year ends, the province will have reached $6.3 million of the target, the announcement says.

The government also highlighted $3.7 million in annual funding to eight child advocacy centres. That money represents an aim to increase access to specialized, coordinated care for children, youth and families affected by sexual violence and abuse.

And in a more recent news release, Turton’s ministry announced that applications are now open for $3.2 million in programming grants for family resource networks.

The money is for prevention and early intervention services through the networks, whose annual funding from the province has now reached $66.7 million.

Applications are open until Sept. 29 under the grant call for the networks, which offer free services like parenting and short-term mental health support in rural, Indigenous and urban communities.

“Family resource networks are often the first place that families turn to when they need help and are going through their darkest days,” Turton told a roundtable with rural media last week.

“I’ve been pounding on my drum as I’ve been traveling around the province that there are supports for families that need help the most, regardless of where you live,” he told reporters.

Turton said the gloom families sometimes face “is not lost on me, so I want to make sure that there’s no family left behind, that everyone has access to these supports when they need them.”

Alberta’s sexual assault centres say about 43 per cent of Albertans have experienced sexual violence. For 34 per cent of Albertans, it happened before they turned 18.

Statistics Canada reported that in 2023 the annual rate of police-reported sexual offences was 183 per 100,000 people in rural Alberta. That’s 46 per cent higher than in urban centres, where the rate was 126 per 100,000.

In StatsCan reporting, rural means beyond urbanized groupings of 10,000 or more people.

But AASAS, the association representing assault centres in Alberta, estimates that 97 per cent of sexual assaults are never reported to police.

Turton noted that crisis help is a phone call or text message away.

“It’s our goal to make sure that regardless of where you live in the province, if you need these services, that you’ll have access to them,” he said in his Gazette interview.

Anyone in Alberta who’s experienced any form of sexual violence and needs crisis support can call or text 1-866-403-8000, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

If you’re in immediate danger, call 9-1-1.

For child intervention concerns, call the 24-7 Alberta Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-387-5437 (KIDS).

Among the announced recipient groups are Aurora in Lethbridge, Lethbridge Family Services, and the Southeastern Alberta Sexual Assault Response Committee in Medicine Hat.

The Association of Communities Against Abuse Society in Stettler in east central Alberta gets dollars, as do Lloydminster Sexual Assault Services and Little Bear Child and Youth Advocacy Centre in Lloydminster.

Western Alberta community groups on the list are the Harmony Project in Banff and the Hinton Friendship Centre Society.

Northwest of Edmonton, two groups in Grande Prairie receive funding — Providing Assistance, Counselling and Education on Sexual Abuse, or PACE, and Caribou Child and Youth Advocacy Centre.

To the capital’s northeast, Bonnyville’s Dragonfly Counselling & Support Centre receives funding. So do Waypoints Community Services Association in Fort McMurray and its child and youth advocacy centre.

AASAS and groups in Sherwood Park, Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary also received dollars under the announcement.