A Mountie botched her assault investigation when she was 14. The RCMP apologized 20 years later
CBC
Jennifer Johner's voice shakes when she reads the RCMP report from the night of Dec. 9, 2001 — the night she told police she'd been attacked by a man she knew.
Just a glance at those two pages of handwritten scrawl is enough to bring the fear and pain flooding back.
"It broke me apart," she said.
Just 14 years old at the time, she was lying in an emergency ward with two shattered teeth — courtesy, she said, of a man who "made sexual advances which I did not want" — when an RCMP officer arrived to question her.
He was was impatient and dismissive, she said.
"I was trying to explain what had happened and the officer was very aggressive," she said. "He would keep interrupting me to tell me that he couldn't understand me."
Johner said the medical gauze in her mouth made it hard to speak. The officer's notes show he believed she was intoxicated.
"The emergency room doctor report shows that I was alert and coherent and that I didn't have any alcohol," she told CBC News in Edmonton, not far from where she's now living.
"I had gauze, swelling and the fractured teeth. And he didn't provide me, you know, maybe a piece of paper to write down anything or a witness statement. He just dismissed me."
Johner said the officer didn't take photos or a written statement.
"He left a card and left me there at the hospital," she said.
In the police report, the officer said he tried to follow up with Johner but she had moved apartments. Johner she said hadn't gone anywhere.
With no access to victim services, and living on a low income, Johner said she wasn't able to access proper dental care.
"My teeth were glued together, which was supposed to be temporary ... [They] were glued together for three years," she said.
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This First Person article is the experience of Kristine Thoreson, who lives in Calgary. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.