How N.B. police forces are changing the way they investigate sexual assault complaints

All nine municipal police forces in New Brunswick have unanimously approved a new policy that outlines how officers should conduct sexual assault investigations. 

The chiefs voted on the policy, developed by Sexual Violence New Brunswick, at a conference in February. The forces are now in various stages of implementing the policy, and the Woodstock Police Force has already posted it on its website. The RCMP also approved the policy, according to Gary Forward, president of the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police.

"A police officer's ability to better understand the place where [survivors] are currently in when they report the incident is changing the whole mindset of how we accept, understand, support and ultimately investigate on behalf of the victims," said Forward.

The policy addresses many stereotypes about survivors of sexual violence, incorporating research about how trauma affects memory and behaviour. It also lists ways officers can help survivors feel comfortable during the interview process, suggesting the use of "soft rooms," which are non-threatening spaces where survivors can tell their stories. 

While some of the approaches outlined in the policy are already being used by various departments, they'll now be standardized across the province and entrenched in policy form. This, according to University of New Brunswick psychology professor Mary Ann Campbell, establishes formal expectations of how officers must carry out sexual assault investigations — and implies consequences for officers who don't follow the policy.

"Once you have a policy and you've well-educated all your members on what that policy involves and what it really means in terms of practice, then it creates an accountability mechanism," said Campbell, who's also the director of the Centre for Criminal Justice at UNB Saint John and has provided trauma-informed training to police officers in the Saint John region. 

The policy recommends officers allow survivors to tell their stories in their own way, even if that means not recounting what happened to them in chronological order. 

According to the policy, investigators should avoid interrupting survivors, and they shouldn't ask for irrelevant details about their sexual history or zero in on specific details, opting instead for open-ended questions connected to the senses like, "What do you remember hearing? What do you remember smelling?"

"They've essentially had control taken away from them in the course of the assault, so allowing them to feel that they do have some control, some say in how things are going and how they're sharing their information with you is really important, as well as the pacing and not rushing," Campbell said.

That could mean waiting a few days before conducting the detailed interview, she said. The policy emphasizes that trauma can affect hormones in the brain for several hours or days following the assault, and waiting could actually improve the quality of the interview. 

The policy challenges the idea that a survivor of sexual assault should behave and act in a specific way. A person could be very emotional or distraught, but other reactions are also normal, Campbell said.

"It's also normal to be quite numb or flat in your presentation," she said. "Having that myth-busting is a really important element of training, and policies that directly embed this into the operational practice of how officers investigate sexual assault complaints, I think, is really valuable because it can start to change the culture."

Changing the culture is something Insp. Mary Henderson of the Kennebecasis Regional Police Force said she's witnessed at her force over the past few years.

In 2021, the force started working with an independent oversight team to review sexual assault cases. Paired with training from Campbell, the force developed its own policy in 2022 on how to investigate sexual assault.