The Regina Sexual Assault Centre (RSAC) is speaking out after an open letter claimed the Experience Regina campaign led to an increase of calls to sexual assault services and called for a town hall to discuss the effects of the campaign.
The open letter was released on May 9 by Sexual Assault Services Saskatchewan (SASS).
“Survivors have been reaching out to SASS, sexual assault crisis lines, and other supportive community agencies for help due to re-traumatization from the campaign, and its messaging," the letter said.
SASS consists of nine organizations located across the province. None of its member organizations are located in Regina.
Lisa Miller, the executive director of RSAC, agrees that the campaign was problematic but disagrees with several points made in the SASS letter.
For one, she said that “core agencies” in Saskatchewan did not receive a noticeable influx of calls following the failed Experience Regina tourism campaign, which tried to incorporate unsavory attempts at humour involving the city's name.
“There are three core sexual assault agencies in the province, Battlefords, Saskatoon and Regina … We would need to go back and kind of analyze how many calls we got after the blow-up of that campaign but we did not notice any increase in calls,” she told CTV News.
“We can’t speak for their [SASS] member agencies without a doubt. If they've received calls, it's entirely possible they may have but … I guess it would be a bit surprising to me if a sexual assault centre in PA had received numerous calls related to the Experience Regina campaign.”
“It would stand to reason that the majority of the increase the calls would have come here,” she added.
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Additionally, Miller said she disagrees with SASS’s demand for a town hall to review the launch of the problematic brand, arguing there is a lot of potential risk with the format.
“We know that in the public, there were a lot of people that saw absolutely nothing wrong with the campaign … If you're proposing a public town hall, about a controversial issue like that, where you have survivors present, who potentially start sharing stories about their own sexual violence experiences with other people with no moderator, and no rules around what that looks like. I think you got potential risk for really traumatizing people, leaving them feeling very vulnerable,” Miller explained.
“We talk a lot about what restorative justice looks like and in practice for sexual violence. We know that it can go terribly sideways even with trained facilitators, even with lots of prep work for people leading up to that and I see a town hall as having the potential to be pretty disastrous.”
Miller and RSAC argue that a more private format including survivors and decision makers would be a safer choice.
“I think if we had survivors that wanted to be heard, then having statements, like pre-prepared statements, and closed meetings with some of the decision makers might be a better option.”
Miller went on to say that she was hastened to speak out after the letter caused confusion as to where the recommendations were coming from.
“People thought that RSAC was demanding this town hall and that we were involved in advocating for that and we weren't, because we're involved in some other conversations that are happening,” she explained.
“The intent is not to disempower agencies in the province that saw this issue and cared about this issue. Because they to work with survivors and they saw the problem with the campaign.”
A problem that was very clear to all those involved with supporting survivors of sexual assault.
“Now, I want to be clear, the campaign is super problematic and there's no doubt that it did not land well and for all kinds of good reasons,” Miller said.
“I also support the idea that there were people that would have felt really gross about the slogans and felt this was going to contribute to more harm against particularly women. But, you know, we personally saw very little related to Experience Regina.”
CTV News has reached out to SASS for comment on RSAC’s clarification and the organization’s alternate recommendations. This story will be updated with any response received.
