How the system is hiding us

This morning...

a little bit of my coffee went through my nose as I was reading Retired Peer Support Coordinator Fred Doucette statement in the Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016 transcript.

Five or six in 10 years?!

Fred Doucette admitted to only have dealt with five or six sexual assault cases in his 10 years with the Operational stress injury support program.
Only 5 or 6 people with Military sexual trauma in 10 years? I got over 95 entries in one year!

the "Hidden thing"

Is it really because ‘’It’s a hidden thing’’?. Or is it because we just make sure to keep it hidden?
Let's see…

• MST survivors tried for YEARS to get a program running with OSISS. All requests have been turned down.
• Survivors of MST offered to expose their experience in OSISS promotional video. That too, was turned down.
• Last time I checked, the sexual misconduct centre was not even redirecting MST survivors to OSISS for support. They were sending queries to external civilian resources.

• Nowhere on the OSISS website is it mentionned that OSISS  is dealing with Military Sexual Trauma.
  
• None of the Peer-Support Coordinators hired have actually experienced a military sexual trauma.
  
• None of the staff is trained to deal with Military Sexual Trauma.

Since I wasn't invited to these talks, I will share some info here...

• Nobody is tracking MST survivors down. Just the cases and occurrence.
• Maybe in your five or six cases, most assaults happened overseas, but that is not the case with my 95 entries.
  
• "Service-related" sexual assaults is more than sexual assaults occurring during overseas missions! What about injuries during training? Exercises? Tasking? Non-overseas deployments? Work functions? Or cumulative injuries overtime? If physical (and mental) injuries occurring during these times are considered service-related, why are sexual assaults or cumulative harassment occurring in these same settings not considered ‘’service-related’’ injuries as well?
  

Conclusion?

I am sure all intentions were noble here. You can only provide inputs on what you know and saw. It's just a shame that no Canadian expert exist out there to provide deciders with more than an educated guess.
I will at least agree with the last thing you said: ‘’ It's terrible, and it's something that DND has to look at. They can't sweep it under the table anymore.’’