Sexual Assault Awareness Week

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This week is Sexual Assault Awareness Week, a week dedicated to raising awareness for sexual violence through public education. 

This year’s theme, No Story Left Untold, focuses on sharing voices, stories, insights, and actions from the front-lines. 

Everything that will be shared with you throughout the week is a reflection of the work captured in the research report released on April 29 in partnership with SASS, CUISR, and FSIN. 

We invite you to join us in spreading the message of #nostoryleftuntold from May 11-15 to stand with the voices of survivors and take action to help change the story about sexual violence. 

Today, we honour the voices of survivors who have shared their stories of sexual violence. Through the telling of their stories, they have shed light on the path toward healing and give hope to those whose stories remain untold. 

The sharing of these stories does not come easy. Many survivors are faced with fear about what people will think, what people will say, how they will be treated, and what could happen to them if they tell the truth. 

By sharing their stories, it does not mean that the healing is done, for these experiences stay with them for the rest of their lives, but what it does mean is that they have the ability to live through the unimaginable. 

If you know of someone in your life who is a survivor, send them a message today and tell them that you will stand with them as they move through the unimaginable. 

If you are a survivor reading this, we stand with you as you move through the unimaginable. 

Today and everyday, we honour the voices of survivors. 

There are many barriers that survivors face that keep stories of sexual violence in the dark. ‘Barriers’ are people, places, systems, and environments that either indirectly or directly affect the validity of the survivors’ experience. 

Each of these barriers are connected and add to the complexity of the issue of sexual violence that creates immense grief, shame, and guilt for survivors and doesn’t allow for them to get the help they need. 

Removing these barriers starts with someone like you, either by being a safe place for a survivor to share their story or by reaching out to someone you know who has experienced sexual violence and offering a helping hand. 

Scroll down to download Barriers to Services and Supports - the barriers that keep survivors’ stories left untold. (in PDF format).

Often times, the only safe space that survivors have to share their stories is with a counsellor. 

Unfortunately, most counsellors in our province who are specialized in sexual violence related trauma, have limited resources and capacity to meet the demand. 

For survivors, it takes months just to be able to get in to see someone. 

This means that their story is kept silent, that they have had to live overwhelmed by trauma, without saying a word to anyone about it. 

If survivors don’t have a safe space to share their story within three days of experiencing assault or abuse, it’s likely that they won’t tell anyone about it for months or even years. 

Survivors need more safe spaces to tell their stories. 

Help us create those spaces for them by volunteering your time or making a donation. 

You can change the story about sexual violence. We all can. 

How? By knowing that every single one of us has, at one time in our lives, wanted to be seen, heard, and understood by someone else.  We have wanted someone to see a difficult experience that we have gone through and say, “It’s okay. I believe you. I know it’s really hard. You will make it through.” 

We might not understand sexual violence. We might be afraid of sexual violence. We might want to ignore the thought of someone we love experiencing violence.  We might want to pretend that sexual violence isn’t happening. 

But it is, and the longer that we stay silent, the more stories of survivors remain left untold. 

Now is the time to reach out to someone, to speak up for someone, to believe someone, to love someone. 

To be someone that is willing to change the story about sexual violence. 

Will you be that someone? 

Eagle Feather News, a monthly publication dealing with topics of interest to readers in Saskatchewan's First Nation and Métis communities, published a story about Sexual Assault Awareness Week, which is also available in text form and as a podcast on their website.

In the article, Eagle Feather News talks to several people involved in sexual assault counselling, including Corrine McArthur, the manager of SIGN Sexual Assault Counselling. As she noted in the article, she is the First Nations councilor in Saskatchewan who specializes in sexual assault.

Read the article

Listen to the podcast.