"The three year-old whore was asking for it"

According to a news report from Radio-Canada and a survey from the Fondation Marie-Vincent, adults in Québec still carry a lot of harmful prejudices with respect to sexual violence to children.

As a matter of fact, Radio-Canada reported that 1 out of 4 adults believe that a child may provoke a sexual assault through his or her behaviour, that sexual assaults on children generally occur in the streets or at school rather than in a domestic context, and that a child who is sexually assaulted will physically resist or attempt to flee his or her assailant.

The study also reveals that 1 out of 2 adults believe that sexual assaults necessarily involve anal or vaginal penetration.

The Fondation Marie-Vincent emphasized the fact that merely 1 out of 10 incident of sexual assault on a child is actually reported to the authorities.

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This report remembers me of a sad case where a father was accused of sexually assaulting his three year-old daughter. When he testified at trial, he mortified the Court when he explained how it was really his daughter who had been initiating the sexual contacts, and described her as "very cuddly" and compared her to a "pussycat in heat" ("une p'tite chatte en chaleur").

The man was eventually found guilty.