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Sarah Maetche is the communications specialist at the Central Alberta Sexual Assault Support Centre.

In March, Alberta Health Services and the RCMP announced the Third Option program, which provides recent sexual assault survivors who seek out medical attention the choice of delaying their decision to report to the police.

Before this, in the hospitals in which it was rolled out – in Calgary, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge – sexual-assault survivors were offered two options: receive medical care and not involve the police, or have a forensic kit collected by a sexual assault nurse examiner who would be required, in turn, to immediately involve the police.

But the period of time right after a sexual assault – a critical time when collecting evidence is pertinent – survivors are often not ready to report to the police, and as a result, many don’t pursue medical attention at all. What the Third Option does is exactly what’s in its name: it offers survivors another option of having the evidence collected and then stored for up to a year without police investigation, giving them time to assess options, process and heal before making an ultimate decision.

On Dec. 17, Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the RCMP announced that they will expand the program to rural hospitals within the Edmonton zone, as well as the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre. That’s a very good thing: Sexual assault and sexual crimes are violent acts that remove an individual’s most fundamental human right – the right to choose what happens to their body – and the Third Option brings back some semblance of this right, offering a choice to the survivor at a challenging and confusing time.

Each individual’s healing journey – and how they respond to and heal from trauma – is unique. So it can be challenging to make the choice whether to involve the police at that exact moment in the hospital.

Sexual violence remains the most under-reported crime in Canada with 95 per cent of survivors not reporting their assaults to the police. In 2014, 83,000 Albertans reported sexual assaults.

The aim of Third Option is not directly to increase the rate of reporting such crimes, although it could have such an effect. Third Option offers a safe and secure way to gather evidence that may not be possible in the fraught moments right after the incident. With the option to report to the police later on, survivors may feel more confident in this choice.

For rural Albertans, who often deal with sexual assault and other aspects of sexual violence with little to no local services and support, the addition of this service at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre in particular is important. Red Deer serves as the major connector to many small rural hospitals and health care facilities, serving 450,000 individuals in the Central Alberta region, with well over half being rural residents.

This may seem like slow progress, but it’s simply the reality of the collaborative nature of the program, between AHS and the RCMP and/or municipal police forces. Third Option involves many moving parts and co-ordination to offer such a meaningful service to survivors; for a successful province-wide rollout, all hospitals would require a team of sexual assault nurse examiners, who provide medical care, emotional support, follow-up medical treatment and collect evidence for the police. It would also require a strong police partnership in order to be able to store the evidence securely and anonymously for the year. The resources for both elements are simply not in place across the province, at least not yet.

Provincial sexual assault centres are a good start; they support the collective goal that all Albertans who are affected by sexual assault will receive the same level of care and support, regardless of where they live.

Expanding Third Option further into Alberta’s rural towns and cities, and reducing any kind of onerous journey to find support, would only increase this feeling of empowerment and choice for the sexual-assault survivor.

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