Just before noon on December.
2017, the Red Deer RCMP received a call from the local remand center, a chaotic brick building that houses prisoners, only a few blocks from the town hall.
Investigators were told that a prisoner was sexually assaulted inside. A 44-year-
The RCMP said the elderly were eventually accused of sexually assaulting another prisoner living at a facility in central Alberta.
Issuing a ban covers any information that can identify a victim
He himself served his sentence for sexual assault.
The case continued in court.
Although Alberta provincial government statistics show dozens of charges on record, the Red Deer remand center case is the only sexual assault in the province's correctional system that has led to criminal charges in the past five years.
A spokesman for Alberta's judiciary and attorney general said in an email that sexual assault charges against prisoners at Alberta's correctional facility have been "very rare" in history ".
Official statistics from the federal corrections system also show that sexual assault is relatively rare within the prison walls.
But someone who has spent time inside and outside the Canadian correctional facility tells another story.
"They have to put their heads on the ground to not know that this is an issue," said Senator and former head of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Association, Kim Pett.
In 2001, Human Rights Watch released an influential report on sexual assault in American prisons.
In the book, author Joanne Mariner wrote, "rape has established status in the myth of prison life.
"xa0Sexual assault, she wrote, is considered so prevalent, "when the topic of the prison comes up, it seems almost mandatory to mention rape jokingly. ”In the U. S.
There is data to support this view.
At 2003, Congress passed.
Estimates in the bill's text suggest that at least some American prisoners have been sexually assaulted in prison --
It is equivalent to more than a million people in 20 years.
The bill was passed with bipartisan support and, among other things, statistics on sexual assault in prisons and prisons need to be collected annually.
In 2015, in the last year of data, there werexa0From the prisoner.
This picture is vague in Canada.
In onexa0Philip ellenbogan of the Journal of Legal and social issues in Colombia wrote that prison rape was considered not a problem north of the border.
While ellunbergen acknowledged that it might be true, he found a shortage of statistics and records on sexual assault in Canada.
At that time, the Canadian correctional services department did not track allegations of sexual abuse of prisoners.
This is "an issue that cannot be explained by Canadian scholars and officials," he wrote ".
Only 8 of them can provide data.
Five Canadian provinces, two regions and the federal Department of Correctional Services.
These statistics vary from system to system;
Some only count cases where allegations are made, while others follow up on the charges.
Five correctional systemsB. C.
Manitoba, Nunavut, Ontario and SA-
Either sexual assault is not tracked or data cannot be provided.
Quebec did not respond by time.
Education Canada,xa0Regulators say they investigated 17 cases of sexual assault last year. a five-year high.
For Alberta figures, Postmedia made a request for freedom of information on the five-year detailed sexual assault statistics broken down by correctional institutions.
The red deer case is the only one that appears in these records because it leads to the charges.
The latter media then requested data on alleged sexual assault by Alberta Correctional Services;
These numbers are much more common.
Alberta prisoners have filed 67 allegations of sexual assault in the last five financial years
There are only 13 complaints per year on average.
For one reason or another, 66 of these cases were not charged.
Even if they do exist, statistics are only part of the story.
According to Statistics Canada, sexual assault is a violent crime in the country.
Some estimates suggest that only 5% of the attacks were reported to the police.
In prisons or prisons, the restrictions on reporting sexual assault are even more serious, and anyone who is labeled as a whistleblower may face violent retaliation.
There is another limit to official statistics: they exclude other forms of sexual violence from prison. Howard Sapers —
Former Edmonton MLA, Canada correctional investigator from 2004 to 2016, currently independent consultant for Ontario Correctional reform
Sexual assault, he said, "is probably the most rare form of sexual contact in correctional institutions.
"There has been a lot of sexual contact between the prison and the prison," he said . ".
"Some are acts of violence.
Some are mandatory.
He said that, despite being banned, the sexual behavior agreed by both parties did occur internally.
However, some prisoners may accept unwanted sexual contact under normal circumstances as a distraction or as a "smaller of the two evils ".
"Prison is a very special environment," he said . "
"I have spoken to men and women who often engage in dangerous behavior during their detention, and they shudder at the thought of their actions.
"Strip Search is another form of sexual violence," said Martha Pett, a nurse who works with the prisoner advocacy group Women's Health.
"If it's outside the prison wall
Force someone to take off their clothes and search them through their body cavity
"This is obviously a sexual assault," she said . ".
The American Civil Liberties Union recently called it ".
"At the beginning of 2017, Gordon Robinson, a former Edmonton Remand Center prisoner, filed a civil suit claiming that he had been subjected to degrading torture in the hands of four unnamed correctional officers.
The case was settled out of court.
Robinson claimed that he was taken from his cell on the evening of August.
2016, and ordered to take off the clothes in front of a group of guards in the shower room.
One of the guards allegedly told him to "bend f-
Come and show me your-—
It worried him that he would be sexually assaulted.
The statement said that Robinson was walking naked in front of male and female prisoners in the corridor, while the guards repeatedly joked about his genitals.
He continued to claim that one of the guards had broken his elbow and that he was not properly treated. ex-
Prisoner Gavin Annette claimed that the guard had sprayed pepper spray on his rectum.
He claimed that he was then forced to bend over to reveal the anus and then "sweep the mouth" with the same finger ".
After the claim against Annett-
Trauma Stress, anxiety and depression after December.
2017, torture.
The claim is in progress and no defense statement has been filed.
The prisoner's complaint about the strip search has been long-standing.
A particularly aggressive strip search at Kingston women's prison was the subject of a major investigation into prison conditions.
On April 22, 1994, six prisoners in the prison had what was called a "short but violent physical confrontation" with the staff of the facility ".
The women were isolated from several other prisoners.
At the time of apartheid, women remained violent.
Staff demonstrated outside the prison demanding the transfer of these women.
On the evening of April 26, the warden convened
The men's agency emergency response team at the men's prison took eight women from their cells and carried out undressing and probing.
According to the standard procedure, the search process is recorded.
The women were forced to wear paper gowns with restraint devices and feet irons.
Footage of the invasion, hours-
After the CBC was acquired and aired at the Fifth Estate, the long process caused outrage.
The case led to an investigation led by former Supreme Court judge Louise Arbour.
When Arbour gave birth in 1996, she found that the treatment of women was "cruel, inhuman and degrading ".
"There are a lot of suggestions from Arbour --
Including a ban on men from undressing women prisoners.
One of the women testified that she saw other men, including two construction workers, watching the procedure.
"If something like that happens on the street, it's a crime.
If you rip off the girl's clothes in the apartment, it's a crime.
This is a sexual attack.
"Sexual violence is at the heart of a major lawsuit filed by four former employees of the Edmonton agency of the Federal Supreme Court --
Security prison in northeast Edmonton
The lawsuit describes a workplace that has been "awash with discrimination, harassment, bullying, abuse of authority and sexual assault" over the past few years ".
No plaintiff or alleged abuser was named in the proceedings.
No defense statement was filed. One ex-
An employee of the pseudonym Andrea claimed that a senior male colleague
The worker sexually assaulted her at work and threatened to sexually assault her after handcuffed her to a chair.
Another ex, Jessica.
The employee claimed that she had been sexually harassed at the Edmonton agency for 10 years.
She's right. xa0Senior male colleagues
The worker Andrea identified, including the one who would "March" in the office, reveal the penis and use it to "stir" the unattended drinks of female colleagues.
Jessica also said she was followed by another male colleague who would touch her improperly and leave gifts in her car, including sex toys.
On one night shift, she claimed that the man bent her over the table and handcuffed her to the table with underwear.
It's an environment, she says, and conversations between colleagues inevitably turn to each other.
"Over time, it will always become a sexual topic," she said in the lawsuit . ".
Canada's current Correctional Investigator Ivan Singh spoke in his annual report about allegations issued last month by the Edmonton agency.
"If staff members do not respect, humiliate or (abuse) each other, one can only imagine how they will treat prisoners," he wrote . ". Jesse Lerner-
Human rights group Justice Detention International spokesman Jin Lake said one thing learned from the data collected by the United StatesS.
The law on the elimination of prison rape provides that prison rape can be prevented.
"Some prisons and prisons have a terrible incidence of sexual violence, and some prisons and prisons have actually eliminated sexual violence.
"Sexual abuse occurs in prisons and poorly managed detention facilities," he added . ".
"If you have a well
Run the facility and you won't have a problem with sexual abuse.
"As a result, Canada may have largely eliminated sexual assault in its cells simply by better managing prisons.
Ellen Burgan, an American scholar. S.
Canadian prison, wrote, and the United StatesS.
It is well known that prison rape rates in Canada are "extremely high", but it is said that there are no equally serious problems.
Ellenbogen identified three different things the Canadian system has done to reduce sexual violence: smaller correctional facilities, shorter sentences and isolation of sexual offenders.
Perhaps most importantly, the ban rate in Canada is much lower.
A study he cited found that sexual violence is not common in Canadian prisons, "mainly because the size of the prison population is controllable.
Sapers said Canada needs to do more to understand sexual violence in prisons and prisons, whether it is better or worse than in other countries.
He said: "I think there are some other correctional systems . . . . . . Had a more frank conversation on the issue and admitted it was a bit more . . . . . . The problems we can solve more easily in Canada.