Image from the Pace Centre's website

By Liam Verster

Domestic and Sexual Violence Unit

PACE executive sees need of Grande Prairie RCMP’s new Domestic & Sexual Violence Unit

Sep 25, 2020 | 12:49 PM

Grande Prairie RCMP has launched a new six-member Domestic and Sexual Violence Unit, designed to combat domestic and sexual violence in the city and surrounding areas, and help connect the victims to available supports and services.

The RCMP already works with PACE, as well as Victims Services and the Caribou Centre, which investigates instances of child abuse. In 2019, the Caribou Centre completed 222 interviews with children who were victims of some form of abuse. PACE’s annual report shows that 310 individuals accessed therapy, while 134 children and their families accessed support services in the communities they serve in 2019.

Jackie Aitken, the Executive Director of PACE, says this new unit is very needed, as sexual and domestic violence has been on the rise in not just Grande Prairie, but throughout Alberta. She says a new survey of over 1,500 Albertans, Prevalence of Sexual Assault and Sexual Abuse in Alberta, shows some staggering figures.

“What it found was that at some point in a person’s life, 60 per cent of women and 31 per cent of men will have been sexually abused. Seventy-five per cent of that abuse will happen prior to the age of 18.”

The new research also shows that 34 per cent of Albertans under the age of 18 (44 per cent of girls and 24 per cent of boys) are victims of sexual abuse.

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Aitken says rural, isolated communities have a higher rate of domestic violence, and integrating these two issues under one unit is a wise decision.

“When we have domestic violence within a family, 40 to 60 per cent of the time [that there’s] primary violence against the one partner, there is also child abuse. And this has implications for us all across our lifespan. “

She says the report’s data shows that childhood trauma can lead to lifelong physical and mental health issues, ranging from heart disease, to addiction, to mental illness, to early death.

“If someone had more than four adverse childhood experiences, they would be looking at eight times the possibility of becoming an addict. They would be looking at, if there were more than six adverse child experiences in a person’s life, what they found was there would be 20 years less on their life expectancy.”

Aitken says while having more focus on intervention and support resources to help victims heal is very necessary, there also needs to be resources for offenders. She says while most don’t go on to become offenders, the majority of both sexual and violent offenders do have a history of abuse in childhood.

Aitken says if resources could be made available to help offenders see the cycle they are in and offer ways to change, it could have an impact on stopping people from re-offending.

Victims of sexual and domestic abuse can access supports and services through:

• The PACE Centre
• The Caribou Youth & Childcare Centre
• Grande Prairie and District Victims Services
• Odyssey House
• The John Howard Society

The RCMP’s Domestic and Sexual Violence Unit is a one-year pilot project, which started on September 21.