For Shannon Cooley, Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Coordinator at PearlSpace and facilitator of the Sea-to-Sky Sexual Assault Response Coordination Committee, the work to support sexual assault response in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor (from Furry Creek to the First Nations north of Pemberton, covering Sḵwxwú7mesh, Lílwat, N’Quat’qua, Xa’xtsa, Samahquam and Skatin Nations) has been an almost 30-year journey in the gender-based violence sector.
“I was born and raised here. And I’ve always had an interest in anti-violence work, advancing feminist ideals and embracing intersectionality, and reconciliation as well.”
She can trace the seeds of coordination in her community to 2006 when the Executive Director of the Howe Sound Women’s Centre, Melany Crowston co-founded the Sea to Sky Women’s Safety Network with Sheila Sherkat, the manager of the victim services program for the Whistler RCMP Detachment.
In 2008, Shannon joined the Howe Sound Women’s Centre (now PearlSpace) and the Sea-to-Sky Women’s Safety Network. She recalls that, of all the issues they considered, developing a local sexual assault response was the first and most important one to tackle. Because of the lack of stable core government funding for specialized anti-violence programs at the time, survivors had no easy access to forensic services or comprehensive victim support without a police file. A survivor of a sexual assault who wanted a forensic exam, whether they were in Squamish or Indigenous communities in the northern part of the region, had to travel down to Vancouver to access the program at VGH.
“And sometimes, if they didn’t have transportation, that trip would be in the back of a police car,” she said. “Collectively, we felt this was not right.”
It is well known that sexual assault is more prevalent in rural and remote communities because of geographic and social isolation, limited access to transportation and cell phone coverage, a lack of services for survivors, culture, and the ongoing impacts of colonization. For Whistler in particular, the seasonal influx of visitors to the area in the ski season and summer can also increase risk.
But the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics really galvanized their coordination efforts. “We knew sexual violence could increase significantly over the Olympics,” Shannon said.
At the time, PearlSpace, together with other antiviolence groups up and down the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, including Indigenous communities and in partnership with antiviolence groups in Vancouver, worked together to coordinate a sexual assault response to the coming Olympic games.
“We started developing relationships across sectors to advocate to the Province and VCHA for a more fulsome victim service response,” said Shannon.
A collaborative response to sexual assault is one that focuses on coordinating immediate interventions in response to disclosures of sexual assault to support survivors and improve their overall experience and outcomes within the medical and legal systems.
The journey to bring sexual assault forensic services to the Sea-to-Sky Corridor
Forensic services are delivered by specially trained medical professionals, often forensic nurses, who provide sexual assault examination, emotional support, medical care and collection of forensic samples for survivors. This is distinct from community-based sexual assault support that can be provided by frontline teams like those at PearlSpace.
In 2011, the Woman Abuse Response Program at BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre held a National Health Conference called For Her Own Good, with a stated goal to explore how social and health care systems and services that are designed for a woman’s “own good” may actually further harm or marginalize women when they try to access support.
Shannon and the Network were invited, and Shannon co-presented with Sheila Sherkat of RCMP Victim Services in Whistler and Chair of the Sea-to-Sky Women’s Safety Network. Their presentation was titled, “Virtually without service: Systemic perils for survivors of sexual assault in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor,” where they highlighted the lack of forensic services and other supports for survivors in the corridor.
Their presentation was well-received, and when it ended, a representative from the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCHA) stood up and announced that forensic services were coming to the Sea-to-Sky Corridor.
“You hardly ever get these tangible wins,” said Shannon. “We were super excited about that. But then nothing happened [for a few years].”
In 2015, PearlSpace received a $50,000 grant from the Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF) to launch the Sexual Assault Response and Prevention (SARP) program. That year, Shannon was hired as the SARP Program Coordinator and Advocate and was able to focus fully on building comprehensive services for survivors of sexualized violence.
During the 2015 federal election, Canadian Press reporter Laura Kane’s story featuring an interview with Shannon about the lack of forensic services for women in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor made national headlines.
Within 48 hours of the story’s publication, the Province of BC announced that VCHA would be offering forensic nursing services to the Sea-to-Sky Corridor.
“Basically, it was Christmas Eve in 2015 when forensic [services] finally arrived in the corridor,” Shannon said. “Unfortunately, for the first couple of years the service was only offered during business hours Monday to Friday.”
“It actually took the CBC circling back in 2017 to tell the story of the limited services and then forensic [services] were moved all the way up the corridor,” said Shannon. “First to Whistler, and then eventually to Pemberton.”
The role of the Sea-to-Sky Sexual Assault Response Committee
By 2016 the Sea-to-Sky Sexual Assault Response Committee (SARC) was formed to address sexual violence in the region. The goal of the SARC is to support a collaborative community sexual assault response through education, prevention initiatives, trauma-informed, victim-centred and inclusive practices and reducing service gap barriers.
Shannon explains that the committee thinks about “How do we bridge our working practices and language so we can actually create some positive change? It’s been a process. We’ve recently heard from the Public Health Office that we have one of the best relationships in health and community social services collaborating for sexual assault response.”
The committee is made up of members from across sectors — 71 community partners who have contact with survivors who disclose sexual assault like police, healthcare, and justice services, but they also invite guests to join their meetings, including survivors. Between 20 to 45 people attend every quarterly SARC meeting.
Shannon’s role of advocate and coordinator itself became permanently funded through the provincial government Sexual Assault Service (SAS) Program as of 2023, rather than through grants and funds from PearlSpace’s thrift store, Pearl’s Value and Vintage. The stable SAS Program funding now supports her role as the SARC facilitator. Shannon shared, “I would love to have a travel budget, better technology to support hybrid training and meetings.”
Just some of the positive outcomes from PearlSpace’s advocacy and the SARC’s coordination efforts include:
- Developed stronger relationships with local Indigenous communities: During the Olympics, the PearlSpace (then the Howe Sound Women’s Centre), had a three-year First Nations Outreach Worker (FNOW) project funded by the BC Aboriginal Health Initiative Program in partnership with the Southern Stl’atl’imx Health Society. With the support of each Nation in the region, each First Nation had an FNOW who worked within their Nation to develop a collaborative community response to elder abuse and violence against women. The project had five FNOWs and one coordinator, all from local Nations. They partnered with coordination efforts by anti-violence organizations in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor to develop “Violence Against Women Whistler Response 2010”.
- There are now eight team members in the SAS program based in Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish. The program is accessed through the Izzy Platform, which hosts a crisis line as well as a chat option through the pearlspace.ca. The Izzy platform is Canadian, with servers based in Canada and several SAS programs across Canada use the platform.
- Since 2015, representatives from the Sḵwxwú7mesh Nation, N’Quat’qua Nation and the First Nations Health Authority have participated regularly in the Sea-to-Sky SARC, with the Lil’wat Nation sometimes being involved. PearlSpace’s current Sexual Assault Support (SAS) program has an outreach worker who works with First Nations north of Pemberton and is working towards growing their role in a way that’s responsive to Indigenous communities.
- Survivors can now get access to forensic services from nine forensic nurses across the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, and depending on staffing levels, can be accessed 24/7.
- Nine government-funded Sexual Assault Services (SAS) working out of PearlSpace.
- Now offer consent and gender-based violence prevention education to schools and the hospitality sector.
- Training on trauma-informed practice from Dr. Lori Haskell for service providers in the corridor. “Dr. Haskell really helped the police forces here have light bulb moments about how to change policing practices.”
- In March 2020, one week before the initial pandemic “shutdown”, held a multi-sector training forum called CrossHatch at the Squamish-Lil’wat Cultural Centre, attended by community partners from across the corridor. Experts in various areas of sexual assault response best practices delivered two days of training that included guidance on navigating the justice system and “pathways to healing”.
- Special Victims Units in Squamish and Whistler, with dedicated RCMP officers who work with people who’ve experienced intimate partner violence, gender-based violence or sexual assault.
- Recognition of community-based victim services as an equal partner at the table. One example is that the local Sea-to-Sky RCMP, have established a set of guidelines, reviewed by Crown Counsel, for how Sexual Assault Support workers can provide emotional support during RCMP interviews with survivors. “We had to do a little bit of advocacy around that, but it has come to fruition because we are recognized as professional victim service workers who can be trusted not to influence survivors in the interview room,” said Shannon. “We understand our role and can maintain and meet professional expectations.”
What’s up next:
- Leah Zille, the Executive Director of Treehouse Child and Youth Advocacy Centres came to their February SARC meeting, and shared how to support child sexual abuse and assault. “We do have a Sexual Abuse Intervention Program (SAIP) here,” Shannon said,
“but in terms of trauma-informed and specialized responses to child disclosures, we definitely need to build capacity”.
- For an upcoming meeting, they’ve invited the RCMP Provincial Police Third Party Reporting (TPR) Coordinator, Cathleen Falebrinza, to talk to them about her role. The committee did a campaign in the corridor in 2017 to raise awareness of TPR and plans to do another one in the near future.
