The federal agency’s latest publication, titled “Criminal justice outcomes of police-reported sexual assault in Canada, 2015 to 2019,” highlights dozens of eye-opening facts and trends, including information on how sexual assault prosecutions and sentencing fare in the criminal justice system and the rate of attrition for sexual assault prosecutions (i.e. which don’t make it to the end of the process) as compared to prosecutions for physical assaults or other kinds of violent crime.
On Nov. 6, 2024, StatCan reported that Canadian police services received reports of 115, 859 sexual assault incidents from 2015 to 2019, as compared to 96,766 such reports from 2010 to 2014.
Of this total for the latest period, only 36 per cent (41,669 incidents) resulted in charges being laid or recommended versus 42 per cent (40,627 incidents) in the prior five-year period.
And for the minority of sexual assault incidents where a charge was laid or recommended, 61 per cent (25,323 cases) proceeded to court in 2015–2019, versus 67 per cent (27,176 cases) from 2010–2014.
As for case outcomes, there were convictions in less than half (48 per cent) of the 17,757 cases that did proceed to completion in adult court (i.e. there were 8,472 decisions of guilt) in 2015–2019 versus a 48 per cent conviction rate for physical assaults during that period.
From 2010 to 2014 there were 9,802 convictions for sexual assault, with a conviction rate of 51 per cent.
While the StatsCan publication focuses on police-reported incidents of sexual assault, the agency noted most sexual assaults are not reported to police.
(Indeed, according to the 2019 General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety, the most recent source of self-reported data, just six per cent of all sexual assault incidents were reported to police as compared to 36 per cent of physical assaults.)
Of the 115, 859 sexual assaults reported to police services in 2015–2019, the vast majority (98 per cent) were classified as the lowest level one (i.e. an assault of a sexual nature that violates the victim’s sexual integrity).
StatsCan said few police-reported sexual assaults resulted in custodial sentences, i.e. 22 per cent proceeded to court, just under half of these led to convictions (48 per cent) and half of the convictions led to jail.
“Altogether, five per cent of sexual assaults reported to police in 2015–2019 resulted in a sentence of custody,” the agency said.
Almost nine of 10 complainants (89 per cent) were women and girls. Charges were laid or recommended more often when the complainant was a woman or girl (in 38 per cent of reported incidents) than when the victim was a man or a boy (29 per cent of reported incidents).
However, convictions were higher for sexual assaults involving male (51 per cent) versus female victims (48 per cent). Custodial sentences were also more frequent when the victim was male (56 per cent) versus female (51 per cent).
The relationship between the accused to the complainant was associated with different police-charging and court outcomes, StatCan said.
More than half of alleged sexual assaults by intimate partners (54 per cent) resulted in charges being laid or recommended — the highest of any type of accused-complainant relationship. However, when it came to going to court and sentencing, intimate partner sexual assault was more in line with the general trends, the federal agency said.
By contrast, sexual assaults by strangers had lower charge rates (28 per cent) but were more likely to continue to court (69 per cent of those charged) and result in convictions (56 per cent) compared to when the victim knew the accused.
There were lower rates of attrition among the small minority of police-reported sexual assault cases that were more serious (i.e. level 2 sexual assault involving a weapon or bodily harm and level 3 aggravated sexual assault).
While only 35 per cent of level 1 sexual assault incidents reported to police resulted in charges, 59 per cent of level 2 incidents led to charges and 62 per cent of level 3 incidents resulted in charges.
Delays in reporting sexual assault incidents are higher than for other types of violent crimes and have “important implications for attrition.”
From 2015 to 2019, almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of sexual assaults reported the same or next day proceeded to court while less than half (47 per cent) of those that were reported more than one year after the incident proceeded to court.
Of cases that proceeded to court, those linked to sexual assaults reported on the same day or the following day had the highest proportion resulting in a finding of guilty (51 per cent), compared to about four in 10 of those that had a longer delay, StatsCan said.
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