St. Clair College introduces new sexual violence reporting system

St. Clair College has implemented a new sexual violence reporting system called the Respect, Educate, Empower Survivors (REES) Platform. 

St. Clair will be the first college in Ontario to adopt the REES Platform for their students. 

Rebecca Demchuk, assistant vice president of safety and security at St. Clair College, said this will allow students to make reports about sexual violence on campus. 

“The reporting will allow the students to give out a report to the college and allow us to either take action or not depending on what the student wants,” said Demchuk. “If a student decides to take action from being sexually assaulted, we will then alert local authorities to perform an investigation on the report.” 

The reporting system is available for all students to use through the St. Clair College website at stclaircollege.reescampus.ca.  

Julie Macfarlane, a sexual assault survivor, said having the REES platform will be helpful as well as the anonymous reporting. 

“People need the safety of anonymous reporting to disclose,” said Macfarlane. “I think with the anonymous reporting platform, we’re beginning to see these adopted now in universities in the UK, for example and in, increasingly, universities and colleges in Canada.” 

Macfarlane said having something like the reporting platform can help encourage post-secondary students to use the platform to report acts of sexual violence on campus by providing data on repeat offenders. 

It will allow the students to report anonymously, give their report to the police – if they wish to do so – get in touch with the student’s campus for a follow-up on the help needed. 

It will also allow the REES Platform to create a Repeat Perpetrator Identification (RPI) so the student can describe the person to the campus and make sure they don’t affect someone else. 

To learn more about the REES program, you can find more information on the REES Platform website, or St. Clair College students can email Demchuk at [email protected] for more information.