Child sexual assaults climb in Baker Lake

SARA MINOGUE

Children in Baker Lake have reason to be afraid — the community has one of the highest rates of sexual assault charges in Nunavut.

Statistics on the number of sexual assault charges, and charges involving children, are difficult to find, but a glance at recent court dockets shows a high number of people charged with sexual assault this spring.

On March 8 and 9, 10 different men, in a community of just 1,600, appeared in the traveling circuit court to face charges of sexual assault — six of these involving children under 14.

“That was a really disturbing circuit,” said Susanne Boucher, who prosecuted several of the cases on behalf of the Crown.

One of the men charged with sexual interference was just 22.

Baker Lake RCMP Cst. Robert Strong was at the court, and said the number of charges was not unusual.

“It’s higher than average, but I don’t think it’s exceptional, because we have had a number of circuits where there were several charges like that,” he said.

Strong has been a cop in Baker Lake for two years.

“It’s not uncommon for us to have cases of sexual assault on children,” he said.

When the court circuit returned in mid-May, they continued to deal with six cases of sexual assault — including three new ones. At least one of these cases involved a child.

Strong admits he is alarmed by the high amount of child sexual abuse, but he observed “there doesn’t seem to be a great outcry against it in the community.”

On a positive note, Baker Lake’s three RCMP officers may be laying a lot of charges because offences are reported more often.

“We let people know as much as possible if there’s any victims out there, to come forward if anything like this ever happens. In a lot of cases, it’s repeat victims, where they come forward once and they realize that it’s not that bad to deal with us, and then they become more open with us and they report further incidents.”

That said, there could also be even more cases that aren’t reported.

Strong suspects that much of the abuse is alcohol related.

Baker Lake is not the only community dealing with a large of amount of child sexual abuse.

In Clyde River in early May, the traveling court also dealt with 10 people charged with sexual assault. Five cases involved children under 14. That community consists of only about 800 people.

One of the cases involved a 20-year-old man charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm to a girl under 14 last December.

In Gjoa Haven, the court heard another case of historic child sexual abuse. Mark Ullikataq was sentenced to eight months in jail for raping a 10-year-old girl over a period of four years 20 years ago.

The rate of sexual assaults per capita in Nunavut is roughly 12 times higher than in the rest of Canada. There were 279 cases of sexual assaults in Nunavut in 2004, according to Statistics Canada.

Those statistics do not show how many of these crimes involved children.