Gendered and Sexual Violence Annual Report 2022-2023

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From:    Office of Human Rights and Conflict Management
Date:     November 16, 2023
Re:        Annual Report May 1, 2022 - April 30, 2023

Rationale for Report

The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) Act requires that a report be provided to university Board of Governors and to the MTCU regarding the institutional prevention and response strategies to gendered and sexual violence.

Legislative Requirements

 The MTCU Act requires the following information:

  • The number of times supports, services, and accommodations relating to sexual violence are requested and obtained by students enrolled at the college or university, and information about said supports, services, and accommodations.
  • Any initiatives and programs established to promote awareness of the support and services available to students.
  • The number of incidents and complaints of sexual violence reported by students, along with information about such incidents and complaints.
  • The implementation and effectiveness of the policy.

Supports and Services

In the 2022 -2023 academic year, the Sexual Violence Response staff supported 203 members of the Laurier community and received 133 new disclosures from students impacted by gendered and sexual violence.

As a part of the supports and services available for those impacted by gendered and sexual violence:

  • 172 students accessed crisis, brief, and/or trauma counselling,
  • 36 students accessed safety planning,
  • 76 referrals to counselling and medical services were provided,
  • 28 instances of financial support were provided,
  • 87 academic and campus accommodations were arranged,
  • 4 respondents accessed a caseworker,
  • 7 respondents accessed accountability counselling.

The Sexual Violence Prevention and Response staff also provided trauma-informed care resources, information and advocacy for on- and off-campus reporting and complaint pathways, systems navigation and resources within the university and the broader community, and advocacy within the university and legal systems.

Laurier has held an ongoing service agreement with the Sexual Assault Centre Brant and Sexual Assault Support Center Waterloo Region. Dedicated counsellors from the respective Sexual Assault Centres (SAC’s) in both Waterloo and Brantford were available on site and virtually this past year. As a result, we had trauma-informed, expertly trained counsellors providing counselling and other supports to 136 survivors during this academic year. Due to high demand, there was frequently a wait list for the SAC counsellors on and off-campus. In response and to address the needs of our students in a timely and trauma-informed manner Laurier’s Sexual Violence Response staff regularly met with impacted students until they were connected to SAC counsellors. For more complex cases when specialized therapeutic treatments were needed and deemed outside the scope or capacity of the Sexual Violence Response Staff or SAC supports, the institution worked to provide limited-term funding for students to connect with trusted community practitioners.

The Office of Human Rights and Conflict Management (OHRCM) offered a variety of psycho-educational healing and learnings spaces for survivors of gendered and sexual violence. The Connected Healing Series is a skills-based healing workshop series for Laurier students to explore a variety of different modalities and approaches to healing practices. Some of these workshops were Love in Action: Reconnecting with the Inherent Wisdom of Our Bodies, Speaking Your Healing: Creative Writing After Trauma, and Trauma and the Body: Unpacking the connections between disordered eating and sexual trauma. These workshops were attended by 45 survivors. The OHRCM also partnered with the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region to facilitate two psychoeducational/psychotherapeutic closed groups for survivors. These groups included Healing from Sexual Violence (8 weeks) and Reclaiming Pleasure: Exploring Intimacy after Trauma (5 weeks). These groups were attended by 17 survivors.

Complaints

During the 2022-2023 academic year, there were 8 Formal Complaints submitted involving 6 respondents. All 8 cases were moved to Early Resolution at the request of the complainants. There were an additional 4 cases in which the complainant chose to not submit a Formal Complaint but engaged an Informal Resolution process. 2 of these cases moved into restorative justice processes facilitated internally. 2 Formal Complaints that were filed in the 2021-2022 year were resolved in 2022-2023. One moved to Investigation and the other moved to a restorative shuttle process and reached a resolution.

The OHRCM noted an increase in requests for options that did not involve filing a Formal Complaint. While this option had previously existed within the Sexual Violence Policy it prompted the OHRCM to explore language in the policy and in practice to articulate and make these response routes more transparent. This year the OHRCM prioritized implementing restorative practices within the gendered and sexual violence portfolio. Laurier staff facilitated 3 sexual harm cases engaging restorative justice processes and referred 4 sexual harm cases, in which the respondent was not a Laurier community member, to a community restorative justice organization.

The Restorative Justice Community of Practice (RJ COP), initiated in Winter of 2020, has continued toward its collective goal of embedding restorative principles to both build community and respond to experiences of harm across the web of relationships and processes that constitute Wilfrid Laurier University. Restorative Justice approaches to harm offer a unique, anti-oppressive, trauma-informed framework that centres the needs of those harmed, holds those who have caused harm accountable, and recognizes the broader community as both impacted by, and critical in responding to, the ripple effect of harm and violence.

In the summer of 2022, 17 staff participated in a weeklong Restorative Practice Training developed and facilitated by the OHRCM, the Centre for Indigegogy, and Community Justice Initiatives of Waterloo. This training included staff participants from OHRCM, AVP Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the Student Union, Student Affairs, Indigenous Student Centre, Laurier International, and the Centre for Student Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. This network of trained staff formed the new Restorative Justice Community of Practice (RJ COP) at Laurier- committing to supporting the implementation of restorative practices across the institution. The vision of the community of practice includes the goals of collaboration, communication and transparency, education and training, information sharing, and a unified philosophical approach in responding to harms and conflict within our community.

Education and Awareness

Sexual Violence Education strategy is coordinated by the OHRCM. The effort and responsibility for facilitating these efforts is shared amongst multiple key departments across the institution including the Sexual Assault Centre partners, the Centre for Student Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the Student Wellness Centre, and Advocates for a Student Culture of Consent.

This year departments collaborated to offer targeted themed programming which included: Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Pride Month, Consent Awareness Week- September, 16 days of Activism to End Gendered Based Violence, Consent on Campus Week- Winter Term, and Radical Sexual Ed. Week.

The ongoing shift to continue to provide online programming allowed the opportunity to collaborate on virtual events with other institutions. Notably among this programming was: Stories Spark Change with Adrienne Maree Brown, We Deserve Healing and Not Harm (A speaker series focused on the ongoing widespread criminalization and punishment of survivors of gender-based violence), and the Curiosity Labs: An Interactive and Collaborative Learning Series.

At the request of Residence Life, the OHRCM developed the online 7 module training ‘Consensual Sexploration: A Shame-free, interactive learning program to build skills in our relationship’. The training is divided into seven modules that explore reflections and tools that will help students grow their abilities to have better relationships. This program asked students to explore their understandings of: Boundaries, Sexual Communication, Sexting and Flirting, Rejection and Breakups, Apologies, Hard Conversations, and Safer Partying and Play. The goal was to collectively deepen students’ skills so they are making better and healthier choices in all relationships. As a pilot, Residence Life emailed all the first years, living on campus, requesting they take the training. 904 first year students participated in the virtual training. The pilot was a great success and was adapted to be mandatory for all first-year undergrad students for the Fall 2023.

Laurier continued to offer the virtual Bystander Training modules as supplementary learning for student leaders as part of their onboarding processes. During the Fall 2021 and 2022 onboarding processes, this training was piloted to deepen students learning alongside the in-person training being offered. The critical teams identified who participated in the virtual training (either the 4 modules or 9 module version) were Residence Life student staff, student union icebreakers and volunteers, and hospitality services student staff. The training modules explore the topics: Bystander and Bystander Effect, Understanding Gendered Violence, Consent, Intersectionality Power and Privilege, Hate Crimes, Male Allies and Healthy Masculinity, Disclosures, and How to Intervene.

The Sexual Violence Response Staff continued to coordinate and facilitate the Sexual Violence Response Certificate. This certificate focuses on building students’ knowledge, ethic and skills to respond to disclosures of sexual violence and build solidarity with survivors. This robust certificate program offered 8 unique workshops that allowed more nuanced coverage of each topic. By attending a minimum of five of the eight workshops, students received a certificate on their Student Experiential Record. This series includes the trainings: Responding to Disclosures, Bystander Intervention, Building Collective Care as a Response to Secondary Trauma, Exploring the Relationship Between Desirability Politics and GBSV, Making Sense of Trauma and Its Impacts, Supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ Survivors, Exploring the Relationship Between Colonialism and GBSV, When Your Friend Has Caused Harm, Unpacking SV Through an Anti-Racist Framework, and Exploring the Relationship Between Desirability Politics and GBSV. The project had a total of approximately 328 students and staff registered across the workshops.

For the 2nd year in a row, Laurier invited in the Male Allies program to work with a leading fraternity to explore issues related to toxic masculinity and gender-based violence. In the Spring of 2022, Male Allies and the Sexual Violence Response Staff facilitated circle discussions with the fraternity to help build upon the program piloted in 2021-2022. This feedback was used to grow the project through a student focused lens. This year’s program was run as a 4-part series with the fraternity covering the topics: Intro to Male Allyship, Understanding Consent, Bystander Intervention, and Creating a Culture of Change and Community Accountability. 30 members of the fraternity participated in the program.

During 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, in collaboration with The University of Waterloo, Conestoga College, The Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region, and local artist Trisha Abe, Laurier participated in the second annual Consent Matters campaign. Consent Matters is a united approach to showing solidarity against gender-based violence and to raise funds for our community partners at the Sexual Assault Support Centre through purchasing and wearing a t-shirt designed by a local artist. Campus and community members were encouraged to wear their t-shirts on November 25, 2022 - the kick-off for the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, share a photo in solidarity, and commit to tangible actions to support our work towards a Laurier free of gendered and sexual violence.

Approximately 95 workshops, class talks, trainings and events were hosted at WLU. Some of these initiatives included:

  •  Curiosity Labs: Flirting and Sexting
  • Understanding the Relationship Between Colonialism and GBSV
  • Safety Planning and Risk Assessment Staff Training
  • Bystander Intervention
  • Reclaim Your Pleasure Workshop
  • Self Care as an Act of Resistance
  • Trauma Informed and Consent Based Practices Faculty Training
  • Protected or Dismissed: Responding to the Needs of Black, Indigenous and Racialized Survivors
  • Responding to Disclosures of Sexual Violence
  • Healthy Hook Ups
  • Curiosity Labs: Safer Partying and Play
  • Restorative Justice for Sexual Harm with Survivor Marlee Liss

4,502 students, staff and faculty participated in sexual violence education and programming facilitated at WLU this year.

In 2022-2023 the Sexual Violence Response staff continued to grow its communication and online strategy including further updates on the Gendered and Sexual Violence website, maintaining, and growing a bi-weekly self-care newsletter for survivors and their allies, ensuring a daily presence on all social media sites, running Instagram Live learning sessions, and creating new resources that provide passive opportunities for learning.

Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy

At the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, the Office of Human Rights and Conflict Management completed the Sexual Violence Policy Community Consultation Process. This consultation process included a virtual survey (completed by 406 students), targeted focus group discussions using a design think model (35 students in 6 focus groups participated), and individual meetings (2 students offered feedback). In the spring of 2022, a report was created in response to the feedback with 8 recommendations offered to improve the policy from a student perspective. The results from this consultation and recommendation report were used to form the framework for a substantial review of Laurier’s Sexual Violence Policy that took place throughout the 2022-2023 year.

Priorities and Recommendations for 2023-2024 Year

  • Implement, and assess impacts of shifts to, Laurier’s Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy and Procedures approved Spring 2023.
  • Develop and coordinate a Community of Practice for individuals working with respondents and providing accountability supports under the Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy.
  • Develop web information to offer students a more accessible framing of the opportunities for community reporting and Laurier’s accountability and formal complaint options.
  • Pilot, as a mandatory training, and evaluate ‘Levelling Up Relationships: A shame-free, interactive learning program to explore what we know about relationships’ with all incoming first years.
  • Update the virtual Bystander Training and offer to staff and faculty across the institution.
  • Develop and pilot the Safer Workplaces Micro credit program for Business students in collaboration with Lazaridis School of Business and Male Allies, Sexual Assault Support Centre Waterloo Region.
  • Work with students to reimagine the Consent Culture Advocacy Group.
  • Create further sustainability for Laurier’s Restorative Practice Initiative.
  • Continue to meet with other universities to discuss how to respond to challenges and co-create ideas for addressing sexual violence on campus.