published by Metro Ottawa on March 27, 2016, found that “more than 2,000 sexual assault complaints to the Ottawa police over a 15-year period have been deemed unfounded.” According to聽Sunny Marriner, executive director of the and one of CFICE’s Violence Against Women hub partners, this number is significantly out of proportion with the statistical rates of聽fabricated sexual assault reports:聽鈥淓vidence shows us that people only fabricate sexual assault reports approximately 1 to 2 per cent of the time. So, the discrepancy between what we know to be true about the level of fabrication versus what we see in unfounded categories is deeply problematic,鈥� said Marriner.
Here is a snippet from the Metro Ottawa article:
“More than 2,500 sexual assaults reported to the Ottawa Police Service within the past 15 years have been deemed unfounded 鈥� a statistic one victims鈥� advocate says is 鈥渟hocking.鈥�
Even a veteran Ottawa police officer struggled to find the words to put that number into context.聽鈥淚 have a really hard time commenting on that. The number is what the number is,鈥� said Insp. John Maxwell.聽鈥淚 have to trust in my detectives that they鈥檝e done complete, thorough investigations and that there simply wasn鈥檛 enough evidence to lay a charge.鈥�
Metro requested information on the number of sexual assaults deemed unfounded between 2000 and 2015 from Ottawa police under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
There were 2,538 sexual assault cases deemed unfounded in that period, according to the data. In 2012 alone, there were 220 reported sexual assaults that the police deemed to be unfounded.”
or learn about the Violence Against Women hub’s work on聽.