Blair Crew
Appearances
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
For a brief moment in the year 2000, the city of Phoenix was on fire. You could see a glow in the sky. An arsonist was on the loose.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
From novel and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Arsonist Next Door. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly, wherever you get your podcasts.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
So I'm Blair Crewe. I'm the director of Queen's Legal Aid.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
I'm also a panelist advisor in the Independent Legal Advice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Pilot Program operated by the government of Ontario.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
Some are calls for things that happened a long time ago. Some are survivors in need of urgent advice that literally they were sexually assaulted or raped with in the past hour and need immediate advice.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
It is probably the most bitterly ironic thing about some of this work that, you know, not universally, but that generally speaking, people that were boy victims do make out better in the process than women survivors do, than people that were girls at the time of the assault. And most of the laws, let's face it, were written by men.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
So there was a sense at the time that anything that was any kind of coerced homosexual conduct, of course, was immediately a crime. And I also think that there's something in that the legislators related to the role of men and said, you know, I would have hated to have gone through this.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
So at the same time that the law was not doing an effective job to protect women and girls, it would do a much more complete job of protecting men and young men that were abused by people in position of authorities.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
So one thing that I have seen from time to time is looking in that discriminatory application of the law, that sets up the process that there might be a human rights complaint there. Over 90% of the survivors of sexual assault are women. Therefore, any differential treatment in the law that affects women or sexual assault survivors differentially than any victims of any other crime
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
is going to be discriminatory treatment against women. I've seen a couple of cases in which the outcome of the human rights process has been the police agree to go back and reinvestigate, you know, or to take a different approach if they ever did an investigation earlier.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
I agree. I think that that's exactly what it is. I think that they didn't care to get to the truth of the allegations about what was going on. I think the fact it's appalling, appalling that with the resources that you and Julie had, you were able to find so many other survivors so easily because they were there to be found if they had just looked.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
The one thing that I do know is that the more the conduct against the female survivor involved sodomy, the more likely they are to use that as a charge even now. Whereas if that was not there, there's a tendency to try and say, well, it was indecent, it was improper, it was assault, but it wasn't gross indecency.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher
People that were boy victims do make out better in the process than women survivors do, than people that were girls at the time of the assault.