The One With A Visit To Ottawa Police Station

uOttawa Protection Services.

What an ominous title...There's a great Twitter hashtag doing the rounds at the moment: #YOHOYA. It's like YOLO for year abroad-ers and it stands for You Only Have One Year Abroad. With that slogan, us year abroad-ers are officially given license to do as many crazy and weird and unique things as humanly possible on our years abroad. But I don't imagine that when this philosophy came into inception, that spending a Friday night in a police station was quite what it meant.

Now, I'm not going to go into details, but I do have permission to blog about this, fear not. Basically, a friend of mine was assaulted. First of all, we went to the Protection Services at uOttawa which is the kind of Exeter Estate Patrol equivalent. After the supreme bravery of my friend in giving a statement to protection, we were then advised to go to the police. Thanks for the life, Protection. Oh no wait, you didn't give us one.



Police Station.

So it's Friday night and we're at Ottawa Police Station. Get this: you have to use a touch screen application to alert them of your presence and the nature of your visit. Yes, that means that if you turn up to report a sexual assault, you have to select that option on a computer screen. What. The. Hell? To make matters worse, my friend then had to recount the entire story again in front of the entire waiting room so that the person behind the counter could deal with her report. BUT, after telling him that Protection had told her to come to the Police, this guy then said he couldn't do anything without the statement she made first to Protection.

Back in the taxi we hop, back to Protection. Protection can't hand over the statement to the police without having a case number from the police. My friend then calls the police; but they have no record of the visit because they couldn't complete a report without having the initial statement. So now, my friend is caught between a rock and a hard place. Protection can't hand over her statement without a case number from the police and the police won't give a case number without the initial statement.

Bloody ticket machine.

Meanwhile, how many thousands of, sorry to generalize, women are being assaulted every single sodding day and then the police have the audacity to urge women to step forward and report it? Why should they report it when you don't care? When you put them through the humiliation of selecting 'sexual assault' on a computer screen? When you make them live the experience in front of everyone else in the waiting room? And when you won't then do anything about it?

Bloody hell, thank goodness my friend is strong enough that the actions of the Police haven't completely destroyed her after what happened on Wednesday night. Thank goodness she was able to confide in me and have someone to accompany her to the police station and tell her chicken anti-jokes. The whole situation has royally hacked me off. It's abominable the way my friend has been treated and I am furious. As someone who has been sexually assaulted (thank you Exeter FC fan for groping my breasts and giving my vagina a squeeze), it winds me right up that still the police could be so incompetent and insensitive. She wasn't reporting a missing cat, she was reporting a situation which, had she not been skilled in self defense, could have ended fatally. Moreover, how many women have been pulled into vans and then, y'know, murdered?

Turns out that injustice against women truly is a universal problem. Sort it out, Ottawa. Sort it out, World. I've had enough. My friend has had enough. Every single woman I know has had enough. Violence against women in abhorrent; it's unacceptable. And we can do something about it if every case is treated by Police with the severity and respect it deserves.