Professor David Tanovich is quoted in the Montreal Gazette and the National Post in separate articles posted on November 28, ‘Been raped never reported': Why 90% of sex assault victims stay silent rather than face trial by ordeal."
"It’s a cultural thing, in terms of the way the criminal justice and the legal system treated sexual assault cases,” he says. “Up until the early ’80s, it wasn’t a crime in Canada to rape your wife … and it was open season on the credibility of complainants.”
"Those cultural norms remain embedded in the profession," he adds, "and by extension within judges and lawyers."
He says that “whacking the witness” remains a strategy in 2014, and one almost completely unique to sexual assault.