Photo Credit: Christy Clark, breaks silence on her experience of sexual assault in support of new law

Christy Clark breaks silence on sexual assault

Christy Clark, the first woman elected Premier of the west-coast province of British Columbia, broke her silence on a sexual assault she experienced as a young girl.

It was prompted by a bill, proposed by the Green Party earlier in the spring, that established clear guidelines for sexual assault and misconduct at all public post-secondary institutions in the province. Clark said she was reading the bill and was surprised by a question as to whether or not her government would pass the bill. 

“I knew it was the right thing to do.”

“As I got up to answer, I decided that our government would pass the legislation. I knew it was the right thing to do.” she wrote in a letter to the media, explaining her position, and sharing her own story for the first time.

She describes growing up in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby in the days “when there were lots more kids than parents around. The days before chronic over-scheduling, when kids were allowed to waste time and wander.”

But, she acknowledges in the letter, “with that freedom came some dangerous encounters”

“I don’t remember everything from my youth, but I do remember all of the sexual advances from strangers: getting flashed, groped, spied on. Things that no person should experience, let alone a young girl or teenager.”

Clark recalls one experience, in particular, when she was attacked by a stranger at the age of 13.

“It was a sunny day, and I was walking to work at my first job. A man suddenly jumped out, grabbed me and pulled me out of sight into a deep copse of shrubs.

“He didn’t say anything. I don’t even remember what he looked like. I remember wondering where he had come from, and why I hadn’t seen him. And I remember being very scared.

“Luckily, it didn’t last long. When he pulled me down the little slope, it must have shifted him off balance. He loosened his grip for a moment, giving me a chance to wriggle away, clamber a few feet forward, and get out of the bush.

‘I never told anyone’

“Once I got out into the sunlight, I ran like the wind. When I got to my restaurant job, overflowing with relief that I was safe, I stopped outside to catch my breath. Then I went in, put on my apron, and got to work.

“I never told anyone,” the letter continues. “Not about this or any of the other frightening things of a sexual nature that happened to me as a child or a teenager. For 35 years, it’s as though they never happened. I told myself: Get over it. Bad things happen. It was trivial.”

Clark says she now realizes that victims of sexual assault need help ending their silence.

“Sexual violence is common. Unfortunately, so is staying silent about it. Our silence makes it easier for those who wish to harm us.

“I’m not speaking out for sympathy; I don’t need it,” she says. “I am speaking out because as Premier of British Columbia and B.C.’s first elected female premier, I am privileged to have a public platform. I want women who have never said anything about sexual violence in their lives to know they are not alone.

“You know what bothers me the most about what happened to 13-year-old me? Not knowing if the man who pulled me into the bushes kept going until he caught a girl who couldn’t get away. I wish I’d had the courage to say something then. I do now. ”

The ‘Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act’ was passed by British Columbia’s Legislature in May. It allows universities and colleges one year to articulate specific policies on sexual violence that set out clear procedures for responding to complaints and provide support services for victims.

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