The Sexual Abuse Network of Canada’s opinion on this election.

Statistics show just how much worse it has become for victims of sexual abuse here in Canada since the Liberals have been in power. They have not only gone back on their promises since they were first elected about these cases, they have only done the opposite and made it easier for offenders to reoffend.

Here are some things not covered on the stats they released in the photo.

1. it is no longer mandatory to add a convicted sex offender to a database of people convicted of sexual offences because it’s against THEIR rights. And the National Sexual Offender Registry is only accessible to a handful of officers, and the rest of Canada’s law forces have to submit a form to have a name run through the system.

2. Minimum sentences for child sexual abuse and rape have been removed again because it’s against the OFFENDER’S rights .

3. Convicted offenders have been granted diversion programs instead of going to jail and with no record after a few years, only to have many of them caught again .

4. In Ontario, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick (the ones we know about), they have been running a pilot project reclassifying high-risk sex offenders as persons with developmental disabilities and having nonprofit organizations house these offenders in group home-type facilities with no in-house treatment or security. Now these offenders are being treated as patients that may relapse and are not subject to the same laws when arrested again.

5. When the conservatives were last in place, they had a bill on the floor we have been pushing for since we started 17 years ago, and that is opening the National Sexual Offender Database to the general public so we know who’s living near our kids, and the Liberals not only dropped the bill, they made it easier for offenders to move on and reoffend somewhere else.

Over the past 10 years, when advocating for a member, we always reached out to the local members of parliament for the area to get their public voice in cases that needed federal pressure, and only a handful of Liberals actually picked up the phone to help, unlike the conservatives, who were always there to speak out for justice and survivors of sexual abuse.

The laws around sexual abuse/assault that allow repeat sex offenders to reoffend and how the system is now starting to deem sex offenders as persons with developmental disabilities and calling pedophiles persons Minor-Attracted Person just show we can not do this for another 4 years .

With these policies, it makes it so hard for victims to have faith in a system to make a report of abuse knowing there is such a slim chance anything will actually be done.

As a victim myself of historical child sexual abuse and ignored by the system after reporting the abuse because I was just one voice going against the church and ignored by police because of the position of the abuser, I know what the victims are going through, and when they reach out, we are able to put them in touch with the right people.