A woman who says police mishandled her 2021 sexual-assault case is pleased that the Abbotsford Police Department now has a sex crimes unit in place and hopes that it eases the investigative process for other victims.
“I think a lot of women will benefit from this unit, and even knowing that they have the protection now … I just really don’t want anybody to deal with what I did,” said Avery Scott.
The APD’s sex crimes unit (SCU) was established in April 2025 under provincial policing standards.
Sgt. Paul Walker, APD media officer, said the province recognized the need for specialized teams to investigate sexualized violence.
Prior to that, a “sexual assault investigations” policy established by the APD in 2023 stated that officers will “conduct thorough, professional, timely, unbiased, risk-focused investigations” and be “cognizant of how specific experiences impact victim trauma, memory, reactions and behaviour.”
It also stated that victims should be supported to “feel safe and to minimize the potential for re-traumatization by the investigative process.”
Before 2023, sexual assaults against women fell under a policy titled Assault Domestic Dispute – Violence Against Women in Relationships.
The new SCU consists of six detectives from various backgrounds who have been trained in area such as trauma-informed interviewing, interviewing children, cultural sensitivity, bias, and advanced sexual-offence investigations.
“The process aims to provide victims/survivors with the highest level of care and compassion,” Walker said.
Scott, a single mom of two children, said the investigation of her sexual assault left her feeling re-victimized and unsupported.
She said she was assaulted on April 17, 2021 by a man she had met the day before. She does not want the details of the incident to be reported on.
Scott said she was so traumatized after the assault that it took her about 16 hours to call police.
“I luckily had a very sympathetic dispatcher. He was so nice, and if I hadn’t had such a nice dispatcher, I probably wouldn’t have reported it,” Scott said.
An officer called her about 90 minutes later and advised her to put the clothes she had been wearing into a paper bag. A evidence collection kit to be completed of Scott could not be done until the following evening.
The investigation proceeded – including the discovery of the perpetrator’s name – and Scott said she had regular updates from April to June 2021, but then they stopped.
Scott said she attempted to reach the lead investigator, but by January 2022, 36 text messages went without a response, as did 17 phone messages asking to hear from a sergeant.
She said it wasn’t until she began making social media posts about her experience that she heard back from the APD, who said they were continuing to investigate her case.
Her attacker, who had been on parole for another offence, was arrested and charged with her assault in February 2022, but she said she found out through a letter from the parole board, not through the police.
Scott said she continued having to seek updates throughout that year from both the Crown and police, and was then told in December 2022 that the charges had been dropped.
“She (the Crown) blamed me for not working with them. She said, ‘Usually, my victims work a lot more closely with the police to ensure conviction. I was like, ‘Are you serious? You have to be joking right now,’ ” she said.
The lead officer told Scott that despite the charges being dropped at that time, they were continuing the investigation. But Scott said she continued to have difficulties reaching the officer.
By July 2023, she said she had had enough, and she decided to file a complaint with the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner, detailing the difficulties she had had with the APD investigation.
“I felt like I wasn’t a victim enough for them to care, that there was something I did or didn’t do that made them not do anything,” Scott said.
“ … I started to doubt myself. It really did destroy me as a person. I really couldn’t understand why this was happening. I couldn’t understand why nobody was getting back to me. I couldn’t understand why everybody seemed to be OK and their world was moving on, and mine couldn’t.”
The complaint made its way through the APD’s professional standards section, with recommendations being made in April of this year.
Among the recommendations were that the supervisor of the new SCU conduct case reviews and “provide direction” to officers investigating sexual offences and that the unit provide ongoing mentorship and guidance to those investigators.
Scott said she was happy to hear about the formation of the SCU.
“That’s all I could have asked for. This is going to change a lot. It’s not going to change anything for me. It’s not going to make any of what happened to me better … but no one’s going to have to go through what I did … because there’s going to be something to hold them responsible now,” she said.
