CANADA DEFENCE LEADERS APOLOGISE FOR SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE MILITARY

Tue 14 December 2021:

Top Canadian officials have apologized for the government’s failure to do enough to prevent widespread military sexual abuse.

Anita Anand, the newly appointed Defence Minister said on Monday that far too many people in uniform had suffered sexual assault or discrimination based on sex, gender identity or sexual orientation.

“We must acknowledge the pain and trauma that so many have endured because the very institution charged with protecting and defending our country has not always protected and defended its own members,” Anand said during a news conference.

“I am apologising to you on behalf of the government of Canada … This misconduct and abuse of power led to a crisis of broken trust in the defence team.”

The apology was promised as part of a 2019 C$900m ($700m; £532m) class-action settlement approved by the Federal Court. Almost 19,000 claims were submitted by the November deadline by current and former military personnel and defence department employees.

It comes after several senior officers were investigated for sexual misconduct, including former Chief of the Defence Staff Jonathan Vance, who was charged with obstruction of justice in that investigation.

“Most Nato allies have had a moment of reckoning when it comes to sexual misconduct scandals”, according to Stéfanie von Hlatky, the director of the Center for International and Defense Policy, at Queen’s University – but the number of top brass implicated in Canada is “unique”, she said

General Wayne Eyre, the current Chief of the Defence Staff, said on Monday that among soldiers, “trust can mean the difference between life and death – and we betrayed that trust.”

Women soldiers have complained that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, led by a self-described feminist, has done too little to address an issue raised in a landmark 2015 report.

Louise Arbour, a former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal, has been tasked by Canada with cleaning up a military culture.

Anand last month accepted Arbour’s recommendation that investigations and prosecutions over sexual misconduct in the military be handed over to civilian authorities because of “serious mistrust in the military justice system”.

The military reported to Parliament in April that there had been 581 sexual assaults and 221 incidents of sexual harassment since 2015.

According to the 2015 report, more than a quarter of women in the Canadian military have been sexually assaulted at some point during their careers. Only 23% of those women reported what had happened, and only 7% filed reports with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service’s military police.

According to the survey, military women are nearly twice as likely as the general population to have been sexual assault victims in the previous year, with nearly 80% of all respondents witnessing or experiencing “inappropriate sexualized behavior.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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