A. Sexual Assault is defined as any kissing, fondling, oral/anal sex or sexual intercourse without consent or not stopping when asked to do so.

Q. Does a person have to be raped to report this to the police?

A. No, any unwanted sexual contact (ranging from touching to intercourse) is considered a sexual assault under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Q. Who can become a victim?

A. Victims can be either male or female, any age or race and of any social or economic background.

Q. How many sexual assaults are reported by the victims in Canada?

A. On average only 6 percent of victims report this crime.

Q. What are my chances of being sexual assaulted by a stranger?

A. Statistics indicate that you stand a 10 percent chance of being sexual abused by a stranger. That means 90 percent of victims know there attacker.

Q. Can a person report sexual abuse if the person causing the abuse is their husband/wife, common-law partner or life partner?

A. Yes. Regardless of the relationship, no means No! Unfortunately, the closer the relationship between the victim and the offender, the less likely the victim is to report this abuse to anyone.

Q. Who commits sexual assault?

A. Offenders can be either male or female; youth, adult or senior citizen.

Q. Do sexual assaults always cause injury?

A. Not all sexual assaults are violent. Although a victim may not suffer physical injury, emotional injury always occurs. Victim’s deal with a loss of trust, increased anxiety when the are alone, disrupted eating and sleeping patterns and a wide range of emotional after effects.

Q. How often do people make false sexual assault reports because they are angry with another person.

A. False accusations of sexual assault happen no more often than false reports of other types of crime (about 2 to 4%), which means that 96 to 98% of reports are true.