by Jody Dallaire, a City Councillor in Dieppe, NB. Originally posted at jodydallaire.ca, re-posted with permission.

Can you name the 3 Canadian cities with the highest reported sexual assault rates?

Most of us would guess large cities or certain municipalities with reputations for toughness, a large transient population. Places in B.C. or out West maybe, or Ontario. Maybe Halifax is among them, we think.

Well, we come to find out, the 3 Canadian cities with highest sexual assault rates include two in New Brunswick.

Fredericton & Saint John ranked second and third among Canadian municipalities, for the highest number of sexual assault incidents reported to police in 2011.

Using Statistics Canada data about police reports of sexual assaults, Maclean’s magazine established rates per population among communities with a population of 10,000 or more in Canada. Maclean’s only published the “top” 15 cities, and no other New Brunswick municipality made it in the group.  The magazine called their list, “Where Canadian criminals go to play – A look at the cities with the most lawbreakers”. Ugh.

The highest rate of reported sexual assaults per capita was in Belleville, Ontario, with almost 137 sexual assaults per 100,000 population.

Fredericton and Saint John, respectively had rates of almost 130 and 115 incidents per 100,000. Halifax was 12th, with 87 reported sexual assaults per 100,000 population.

New Brunswick’s showing on that list is shocking, mostly because it seems that our province is not aware of the extent of the problem nor doing much to prevent the crime.

It is also shocking because we know that, here as elsewhere, most victims of reported sexual assaults are children.  In 2009, in 61 per cent of cases, the sexual assault victim was a child in New Brunswick – a child younger than 12 in 21 per cent of cases. That’s about 350 children in New Brunswick in 2009 who were victims of a sexual assault reported to police. Read more