Two Carleton researchers have received almost $300,000 from the province to do research on police responses to sexual violence and harassment.
Carleton professor Dale Spencer will receive $42,000 to look specifically at how police officers respond to sexual violence and the training undergone to handle such situations. Dawn Moore will receive $236,220 to look at challenging rape culture on campus, researching the relationship between police and university students, and the reporting process of sexual assault on campus.
The research money was awarded under the Ontario government’s Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan, which was announced in September 2015. As part of the plan, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services issued a call for applications to award professors with money to conduct research on sexual violence.
According to Courtney Battistone, a spokesperson for the ministry, both professors were chosen based on their previous work within this field.
“Based on the applications received, two researchers from Carleton University who had showcased outstanding contributions in this field were successfully chosen as the recipients of over $278,000 in funding,” Battistone said.
Spencer said he hopes his research can have a real impact on police.
“I hope that [the project] would create environments that are more understanding of the trauma that results from sexual violence and harassment, and creates better conditions where they can more adequately respond to the sex crimes victim’s needs,” Spencer said.
Spencer will be working with researchers from the University of Western Ontario and Memorial University of Newfoundland on the project.
Moore said the focus of her research will be on interacting with survivors of sexual assault and working with faculty.
“[We’re doing] interviews with students who are survivors of sexual assault. We’re going to be doing focus groups with students in general about what they know regarding sexual assault. We’re also going to be speaking to faculty about sexual assault policies and how they can deal with student complaints. And we’re going to be interviewing campus police and municipal police about how they process these complaints,” Moore said.
Moore will be working with Doris Buss, Diana Majury, and George Rigakos from Carleton as well as Rashmee Singh from the University of Waterloo.
These two projects are among six others that will be taking place in Ontario—all part of an action plan that was started by the It’s Never Okay public awareness campaign in 2015.
“Our objective is to ensure that police have the training and tools in place to respond appropriately and to support victims throughout the justice process. Evidence-based research and findings may be used to inform future policies and programs aimed at improving police response,” Battistone said.
Moore said her research is timely because universities now have to rewrite their sexual assault policies because of provincial legislation.
“We’re hoping that this will provide the necessary empirical evidence to make those policies actually evident and to inform best practices on how universities should write their policies to best assist survivors,” Moore said.
