National Defence vows to get better at helping men who report military sexual misconduct
The Department of Nation‐ al Defence (DND) says it's taking steps to improve training for staff at the mil‐ itary's sexual misconduct support centre, acknowl‐ edging that men who re‐ port being abused have not always felt "safe, secure and supported."
The federal government is‐ sued a notice late in Decem‐ ber saying it intends to award a sole-source contract to an Ottawa-based company to provide personnel training at the Sexual Misconduct Sup‐ port and Resource Centre (SMSRC).
The centre "has a require‐ ment for the provision of training on how to best sup‐ port men affected by sexual misconduct, particularly those who have lived experi‐ ences of sexual trauma," says the notice, posted online on
Dec. 20, 2023.
"The SMSRC serves a large clientele of men and requires specialized training in this field from a subject matter ex‐ pert(s)."
The request for outside help, specifically for counsel‐ lors and peer support facilita‐ tors, comes as the number of reported cases involving male victims in the Canadian Forces continues to rise.
Men accounted for almost half of all new case files opened on claims of sexual misconduct in the military during the latest official re‐ porting period in 2022-23.
DND said that, during that reporting period, 1,431 new case files were opened over 12 months. Of those, "645 identified as women and 528 identified as men. The re‐ mainder identified them‐ selves as gender diverse or the gender remained uniden‐ tified."
In previous years, men made up only about onethird of new reported cases, the department told CBC News.
The centre's programs and services are meant to be in‐ clusive and open to everyone, regardless of gender, but offi‐ cials acknowledge shortcom‐ ings.
WATCH: Reports of mili‐ tary sexual assaults spike
"It is of prime importance that people feel safe, se‐ cure and supported. Unfortu‐ nately, that hasn't always been the case for many peo‐ ple identifying as men who have been historically faced with stigma in both the het‐ erosexual and LGBTQ2S+ communities," DND said in a media statement.
"SMSRC understands that everybody can be affected by sexual misconduct and have designed all programming with this in mind."
The department said it does not currently offer ser‐ vices tailored specifically to men.
The company in line for the sole-source contract is Men and Healing, an Ottawabased psychotherapy firm. No dollar figure was attached to the solicitation, which was intended to give other inter‐ ested companies the oppor‐ tunity to demonstrate they could do the work.
Percentage of males re‐ porting sexual assaults soars
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said DND's admission that male victims of sexual misconduct have not been well served is significant.
Last month, Statistics Canada reported that the per‐ centage of men in the military who reported having been sexually assaulted was 2.5 times higher in 2022 than it was in 2018.
"We know that men tend to under-report sexual as‐ sault," said Duval-Lantoine. She called for more research to determine whether the re‐ ported increase was driven by heightened awareness of sex‐ ual misconduct or by an actu‐ al spike in the number of as‐ saults.
She said it's not surprising that men in the military re‐ porting sexual miscon‐ duct generally don't feel safe or supported.
"When you look at such a masculine culture as the Canadian Armed Forces, you will tend to see that sexual as‐ saults towards men [are] not really accepted, especially if the perpetrator is a woman," she said.
"It is not at all surprising that you see this type of situ‐ ation where men are not being understood or not being listened to, or even being altogether dismissed."
Duval-Lantoine said that while women undeniably are more likely to face sexual misconduct in the military, an unconscious bias — an as‐ sumption that men are the abusers and women are ex‐ clusively the victims — is just starting to be recognized.
She noted that more than 40 per cent of the com‐ plainants taking part in recent class action lawsuits against the federal government over sexual misconduct in the Armed Forces were men.
"We have just been ... wak‐ ing up to this issue," DuvalLantoine said.
DND said that while the SMSRC does not have specific programs for men, it's funding 32 projects in the community non-profit sector across the country.
"Most of the funded projects provide services to those who identify as men, though some of them have projects uniquely for those who identify as women," the department said.