Sitting near the waterfront of Toronto is a home for safe space and recovery.
While the building served as the Lakeshore Asylum until being closed in the 1970s, it has been restored by 400 volunteers to offer a different kind of refuge; opening 17 years ago as The Gatehouse. The institution is a peer run support group for adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
Maria Barcelos, the manager of The Gatehouse, who is also a full-time student focusing on restorative justice at a joint program between the University of Guelph and Humber College, says she believes the house offers an open environment for voices to be heard that otherwise wouldn’t be.
“We call ourselves a survivor group,” says Barcelos. “They’ve had this happen to them and they’ve been basically left alone to deal with it or get over it as society tells them to. There are people who come to our program and spend the first 10 weeks curled up in a ball crying because that’s the only time they’ve ever felt safe to cry. They don’t even have to say anything.”
In 2012, a new criminal charge was added to combat sexual abuse for children: making sexually explicit content available to children.
Sgt. Maureen Bryden, an acting member of Ottawa Police Force’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit, says the new charge was put in place for when it wasn’t a full case of luring by the perpetrator.
“For example, the online chat when the predator exposes himself, [or] the predator who grooms a child by providing porn,” said Sgt. Bryden via email.
While the charge may be new, the numbers are steadily increasing. In Ottawa, the number of arrests for making sexually explicit content available to children in 2013-2014 jumped from two to nine, accounting for 24 per cent of all of the arrests in Ontario.
“I have had people who have come to our program who were exposed to pornographic images as a child” says Barcelos.
“Some have developed sexual dysfunctional behaviour like sex addictions. Sometimes they deal with alcoholism, drug use, or the inability to maintain a relationship or connect emotionally.”
Barcelos says she believes The Gatehouse is also one of the first co-ed support groups in Canada.
“What I see is the women start to regain their trust in men. Some of the male survivors have also been perpetrated on by females, so it works in that aspect too.”
Toronto only had three arrests, despite having a population of over 6 million in 2014, while Ottawa only had a population of 1.3 million.
“Luck of the draw really,” said Sgt. Bryden, “The persons charged happened to fall into that charge. We did not change the way we did business.The courts have have provided us with extra tools for our toolkit.”
Ottawa accounted for 8 per cent of the total 105 arrests in Canada.
Per 100,000 people in Ottawa, one of them will be arrested for making sexually explicit content available to children. In Toronto, the rate per 100,000 is as low as 0.05.
For Barcelos, it isn’t just an increase in arrests that matter, but the support the survivors later receive.
“The polices’ job is to bring the offender in and charge them and rightfully so, but they don’t do the after effect part,” says Barcelos. “It’s not their fault, but it’s outside the scope of their job.”
“If we don’t talk about these things it’s going to keep happening. If we don’t help people who have survived childhood sexual abuse they are going to keep using drugs or possibly committing crimes or even committing suicide.”