Unknown Speaker 0:18 Finally we have our last survivor. Her name is Olivia. She's going to be reading a speech for us Unknown Speaker 0:37 Hi, Unknown Speaker 0:39 my name is Olivia. I'm in second year at Kings Unknown Speaker 0:44 as well as a student, I am an athlete, Unknown Speaker 0:47 a daughter, Unknown Speaker 0:50 a sister, Unknown Speaker 0:52 a friend Unknown Speaker 0:55 and a service survivor. Unknown Speaker 1:08 During the final days of orientation week at Western University allegedly over 30 students were drugged and sexually assaulted. This situation was originally referenced as a rumor by a Residence Life Coordinator and an email to med said Hall residents. People are up in arms about how Western has chosen to address the situation. The Western University community in London Ontario was rocked when allegations surfaced on social media of mass sexual assaults and drugging during the school's Orientation Week. Unknown Speaker 1:38 Most of those incidents are linked to the night of September 10. Up to 30 women say they were assaulted in the Medway Sydenham Hall residents. Unknown Speaker 1:50 Students organized and created the safe campus coalition. They hosted a walkout to support survivors of sexual violence on campus. Unknown Speaker 2:02 That's where Olivia doing a second year student at Western University and a sexual assault survivor first decided to tell her story. Unknown Speaker 2:11 A lot of my interests include sports. I'm big on like running, swimming, and cycling. And I think I'm a friendly person I like to meet new people see, like, meet friends everywhere. So in December of 2020, I had started hanging out with a guy for a couple of months, I guess we started off as like running partners, we would train together like hanging out, mainly just like going for runs. And then he asked me out so we started dating. One night, we were just watching a movie at my house, my apartment in London. And we like it started getting late. Unknown Speaker 2:56 We decided like mutually that, like it would be just easiest if He just slept over. He started like doing more like, to me physically. I kept asking him to stop to like, get off. But he didn't hear me in the sense that like he heard me but wasn't listening, I guess. Unknown Speaker 3:17 So I kind of froze, and like Unknown Speaker 3:21 he did sexually assault me. And then as soon as he was done, he got dressed, got his stuff and just walked out. Unknown Speaker 3:31 I was still lying in my bed naked just like Unknown Speaker 3:36 trying to process what had happened. But like I wasn't really processing. Unknown Speaker 3:44 Whenever anybody experiences a sexual assault, it's a traumatic experience. And by that I mean it literally rewires your brain. So memory is challenging, not just at the event, but across sort of your whole life scape and your power moment. Things get reprioritize you're sort of in survival mode for a certain period of time and that can last months months, not just sort of a week. Dr. Annalise Trudel is the manager of anova a sexual violence Support Center in London, Ontario. Unknown Speaker 4:14 A Nova has been providing support to students like live since orientation week and was recently named to the school's Task Force. Think it was on Sunday that I started to see stuff getting posted on socials and started to follow it. And my my heart just sank. I got like sort of a nauseous pit in my stomach because while frankly we expect sexual assaults every frosh week and every sort of September that we see an increase in that every September. There was something about this moment that was so coordinated and so intentional, that I had never seen before and it made me nauseous. The events themselves weren't a surprise to Cassandra Fisher. Fisher is the coordinator of the sexual violence support program at St. Joseph's Hospital in London, Ontario. Unknown Speaker 5:00 An increase in in volumes of cases isn't a surprise during that time we, we generally see an increase in September and October and then also, in the January time coming back. Unknown Speaker 5:13 Our main role is here to help to support anybody that is needing our support. That's the message that we wanted to give out to anyone and everyone that is on campus. She basically just like started the Instagram icon, and I was like, Oh, do you need any help with that? Unknown Speaker 5:30 And then we connected me. Like, she was basically like, yeah, I would like to plan that. And I had a different set of people from like, student council that were like thinking about planning something. So I just put them all together in a group chat. And then that's how we started planning the walkout. Wow, yeah. Paola Gomez is a student at Western University. And here on college, who experienced gender based violence on campus. They are one of the students who worked to plan the walkout alongside the safe campus coalition. I was like on campus just for like poster making. And I met this girl that was like, I just like she seemed kind of lawless. And she came and she was like, always here, you make the posters? And I was like, Yeah. And I was just asking her like, hey, what year are you in, and she was like, a first year. And I just like, you know, like, your heart just sort of like moves because like, I helped her with a poster. And then we just moved on, after she told me that she was staying with one of her friends who lived off campus because she was like, not really feeling safe to go back to residents yet. And it just broke my heart, how, like, impactful this is, even if it didn't happen to her, like the amount of people that just don't feel safe anymore. I didn't get the chance to like, actually sit down with my feeling like it got so busy, like, just the next day, we were doing interviews with newspapers, and like the rest of the week was just like insane amount of planning. And it was also the first week of school. Unknown Speaker 7:00 First, like, standing up here, I was like, looking at other people, I was like, Oh my gosh, there are like, way too many people hear I can't do this. We need mandatory gender based and sexual violence. And then I had like my speech with me and I was just like, just gotta like read and most of it memorize. We deserve the right to feel safe on campus, no matter who you are, or where you're going. At this moment. Westerling HBK students do not feel safe. Unknown Speaker 7:30 So then just read it. And I like focus on my boyfriend in the audience who stood there. And I was like, I can't look at anyone else. Just him. And I know it was fine. Like my heart was beating a bit fast but turned out to like, be super easy. Unknown Speaker 7:44 There are professors are more concerned about plagiarism than they are about sexual assault. Unknown Speaker 7:53 So the amount of people were here, the police told us that there were about 10,000 people in the audience, it means a lot. They can emote it just because it means that like there's 10,000 people who care enough to come out and support survivors of sexual violence with the number of allegations surfacing on social media, there seems to be a disconnect with the number of reports filed with the police or the university. Some people might be wondering why that is. I felt like going into the police station. I was like, I felt kind of like a criminal. It was really like difficult to go through it again. Especially because the police officers like their questions are so like, direct, it seems like insensitive and scary. That's why it's very difficult for people to come forward is because there are always those questions of what were you doing? What were you wearing? Why were you there? Unknown Speaker 8:53 Were you taking substances, and Unknown Speaker 8:57 ate even gets to the point of where people are asking how many partners have you had in the past how many it gets very, very invasive. So I think it was more about ensuring that the messages and how we talked about this event and the media in particular, was really not going to place any disbelief on survivors because what ended up playing out was that most survivors did not report to the police. And so there's been a constant sort of refrain around what then did it actually happen. Unknown Speaker 9:24 So the day after I was sexually assaulted, I had an online exam Unknown Speaker 9:31 is rough ice sat in my exam. It was like online. So I sat there on the computer doing it and cried the entire time I was writing it. Unknown Speaker 9:42 I didn't really want to reach out to the school about it. I didn't think they would care in a sense, since it didn't happen like within campus boundaries. Unknown Speaker 9:53 So I guess I didn't think they would do anything about it. I had heard so many horror stories of like Unknown Speaker 10:00 Other girls and like so many of my friends who had tried to like, report things like sexual assault and then it ended up going so badly how the process should be that a student goes to a sexual violence support person on campus, and that that support person navigates All accommodations as students should never have to tell a professor I was sexually assaulted a week ago that should not be a requirement to get an accommodation. The Ryerson documentary unit reached out to Alan Shepard, the president of Western University, and Dr. Terry McQuaid, one of the co chairs of the school's new task force. Both declined to comment, a representative did provide a statement here are a few excerpts. I wanted to tell you that we did reach out to Alan Shepard. Oh, did he answer? He did we also reached out to Terry McQuaid. Oh yeah. Both refused to speak to us. Unknown Speaker 10:53 Lovely. A newly established Action Committee on Sexual and gender based violence has been tasked to dig deeper into issues of student safety in the context of gender based and sexual violence and make recommendations for action Western has implemented mandatory training for all students and residents on Sexual Violence Awareness and Prevention. As part of a comprehensive student safety plan, Western is in the process of recruiting a number of safety advisors to bolster support and residents during the late night hours. The university has reestablished faculty sopes ability to access and support first years in residence, Western will be engaging a third party to inquire into concerns raised by students that this year's orientation. Unknown Speaker 11:32 No, I haven't seen any of the stuff happen. Unknown Speaker 11:36 That you just read to me. I think it's more responsive, like they were put in the spotlight. And now they have to show that they're doing something. Unknown Speaker 11:47 Yeah, I don't know. Like To what extent I can say like, oh, no, they really care about this issue. They aren't addressing any of the survivors who have spoken up, or any of like the past survivors, they only like trying to implement processes to stop sexual assault in the future. Unknown Speaker 12:04 It doesn't seem like they're doing anything to help the victims. Unknown Speaker 12:10 Both the student emergency response team and the special constables on campus declined to comment when we visited their headquarters. Unknown Speaker 12:18 London Police Services declined an interview with our team. Tuition is very expensive, it's very expensive to go to university. And it shouldn't come with the added stress of having to worry about going anywhere on campus where you generally live for four years. Unknown Speaker 12:36 It's not really fair to students to have to always watch their back, especially female identifying students who have to also have the added issue of like, staying safe at parties at night. Unknown Speaker 12:54 Trying not to like Unknown Speaker 12:56 trying to protect themselves from sexual assault and violence when it shouldn't be them having to protect themselves. It should be other people just not sexually assaulting people. At first, like hearing the word survivor was like, I didn't really survive like, like, My life wasn't really at stake. So it's like, it's just like an event that happened to me, I guess. Unknown Speaker 13:24 But as I've like, Unknown Speaker 13:26 grown from it, I think and like as it's gone on longer. Unknown Speaker 13:31 It's been a while since it happened almost a year. So I think like the word survivors seems pretty fitting considering like, I think I did survive it. Unknown Speaker 13:43 I like was able to, like continue on, like finished school. And like, basically continue on with my life, I guess. Unknown Speaker 13:54 Which was definitely not easy. Unknown Speaker 13:58 And I struggled a lot to do it, but I was able to so I think the survivor the word survivors, like more fitting Unknown Speaker 14:12 I think the biggest thing that I would want any survivor to know is that I'm going to think about this because I want it to be like meaningful. Unknown Speaker 14:23 I think for the survivors of the sexual assault during a week, I just want them to know that there are people here to help to support Unknown Speaker 14:31 and Unknown Speaker 14:34 it's so important to be able to have those supports around you. Unknown Speaker 14:40 Trauma is something that should never be dealt with alone. First of all, Unknown Speaker 14:46 I am really, really, really sorry that this happened to you. Unknown Speaker 14:53 It is not your fault. And Unknown Speaker 14:58 I'm really sorry that we were unable to Unknown Speaker 15:00 To Unknown Speaker 15:01 protect you, Unknown Speaker 15:03 and make you feel safer. Unknown Speaker 15:07 No one deserves that ever. That should not have happened to you. Unknown Speaker 15:12 Regardless of what you chose to do with that experience, you're believed. And for those of you that did find a way of telling friends that ended up sort of inciting this social media moment in particular, that was incredibly brave. They're not like alone or like, they're not the only ones it has happened to. So it's not like their fault. Unknown Speaker 15:34 It's 100%. The perpetrators fall like they didn't ask for it to happen to them. Data from Statistics Canada shows that 95% of sexual violence cases are not reported. Unknown Speaker 15:48 And it's not just a Western University problem. This is occurring right here on our own campus, and it is happening everywhere. Sexual Violence is a problem on campuses across Canada and students are calling for change. So I guess I just wish that it would be a safe campus for everyone. Unknown Speaker 16:10 Of course, I wish that sexual assault would never happen again to anyone I know. That's not realistic wish right now. Maybe in the future, hopefully in the future, but I think just having a safe space on campus. Transcribed by https://otter.ai