Fort McMurray has needed a Sexual Assault Response Team, or SART, for some time now, and one has officially been launched in response to this need. The team members and groups involved in SART have developed a working collaboration so that the sexual violence victims can access the help they need in a streamlined fashion. Some of the groups involved in the collaboration include the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre, the RCMP, Waypoints, and other community groups who are involved in the fight against sexual violence and sexual assaults. Waypoints’ sexual assault program manager Ginger Nickoli explained “When someone experiences a sexual assault, they often will go through one service or one door when there’s a lot of different services that can support them. (We’re) building a team to ensure that there’s no gap in services, that if someone wants to access the other services, it’s made easier for them.”
The Sexual Assault Response Team in Fort McMurray requires close collaboration so that sexual assault victims do not end up feeling overwhelmed or hassled during the process. Wood Buffalo RCMP Sgt. Jadine Dara explained “People kinda get tossed around like a ping-pong ball. One agency could potentially be telling them something totally different than the other one, and then you see the frustration and people get very disillusioned.” This is the first SART team in Alberta to launch in over a decade and the community expressed interest almost immediately. Ginger Nickoli said “We’re hoping is that in time, people will be quicker to report. There’s not that stigma there that ‘I’m going to be blamed for what happened’. People will realize that it doesn’t matter. People shouldn’t be sexually assaulting other people.”