EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Police Service has partnered with the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton on an initiative to improve police response to investigating sexual assaults and violence against women.

It’s called Sexual Violence Advocacy Case reviews, and it’s a Canadian initiative to help determine if there was any instances of gender bias that could have compromised an investigation.

“This mutually beneficial police-community initiative is part of an overall commitment to serving sexual assault survivors better,” said Insp. Sean Armstrong, of the EPS Serious Crimes Branch in a written release. “To do that, we need to understand the challenges survivors face in reporting sexual assault and help our partners understand how these cases are handled.”

The team that will conduct the reviews is made up of representatives from the SACE. They will look at police files that did not lead to charges and give feedback to help make sure the needs of the assault survivors are being met.

“The review team takes into consideration anything they believe may have inadvertently affected a sexual violence investigation,” said EPS Sexual Assault Section Staff Sgt. Terrie Affolder. “It could be anything from barriers survivors faced, to long-standing societal myths and stereotypes surrounding sexual assault. We want to know these things, because we are constantly improving the way we handle our investigations.”

The reviews will be conducted four times a year and will look at files that didn’t result in charges during that quarter. So far, the team has already looked at 251 case files over two quarters, the first in October 2020, and again in January of 2021.

Officials say the influence of systemic and social gendered bias against victims of sex crimes can influence the initial response to an investigation, sometimes leading to an assault case being concluded as unfounded.

The results of the reviews will be sent to the EPS Sexual Assault Section to be assessed, shared with officers, and incorporated into future sexual assault investigative training.

Members of the review team had training from a member of the Violence Against Women Advocate Case Review team who helped found the program nationally.

“The review process will be continually evaluated and improved upon as we go along, but through this format, we are now working to incorporate what we’ve learned, such as where we can improve our response to survivors and incorporate this into future training,” said Sgt. Brad Kline, with the EPS Sexual Assault Section.

“Statistically speaking, we know that out of every 100 people who are sexually assaulted, only five will report,” said Mary Jane James of SACE. “From those five, only one case will move forward to charges. This is out of sync with almost every other type of crime. Our role in this collaboration is to be advocates for those four sexual assault survivors whose cases didn't go to charges, and support EPS in addressing the factors that result in low charge rates.”

According to James, Edmonton is the 20th city in Canada to implement such a case review model.