I was a military dependant as a child. In otherwords, I was an itinerant moving from one side of this country to the other at the whim of my father’s military career.
I lived on military bases from the day I was born until months into my 16th year. I lived in 6 different houses on 5 different bases in four different provinces by the time I was 12. If you include the 2 months that I moved back in with my father when I was 18, I lived in 7 different PMQs on 6 bases in four provinces. But hey, who’s counting.
You would think that living on a military base would be the safest place for a child, but sadly this isn’t the case. A child was just as likely to be sexually assaulted on base as they were to be sexually assaulted off base. The primary difference between the child assaulted on base and the child assaulted off base is that the child assaulted off base was more likely to receive justice that the child sexually assaulted on base.
As this blog goes on, I will be highlighting the historical flaws in the National Defence Act which serve to prevent persons who were sexually abused on base prior to 1998 from receiving any type of recognition or justice for the abuse they endured. Parliament has the ability to rectify these issues. But it remains to be seen if the Minister of National Defence will ever acknowledge these flaws.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 