Montreal’s homeless in the WaPo
The Washington Post looks at efforts to vaccinate the homeless around the world, with Montreal in the headline and the story. I’m quite surprised to find out Vatican City has homeless people.
-
Kate
Reply
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Pages
Other levels of gov’t
Sideblog projects
Enviro Montreal is a Bluesky feed that follows local environment news. Also available on Mastodon.
Archives
Pages rescued from montreal.com
Meta
DeWolf 13:56 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
It sounds like the Vatican runs shelters so I imagine it’s all homeless people from the surrounding neighbourhoods in Rome.
Michael Black 14:19 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
When I was there in 1965, at age 5 it was a concept hard to grasp, a separate country, but it’s a city. Not even that, it’s not even away from Rome.
Blork 16:45 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
It’s very weird. Imagine if the McGill campus in Montreal was its own city-state. Sort of like that.
Kate 22:38 on 2021-01-25 Permalink
McGill already is. I didn’t post about this story last week about a McGill student accused of sexual assault. “McGill sent an email to students in December explaining that the university was looking into the case.” There’s more in there about the university undertaking an investigation, yadda yadda. There’s no mention of police or legal charges in the whole piece.
It was also reported straight up on CBC radio and nobody questioned why, if there were credible allegations of sexual assault – multiple instances, if the plural in that piece is to be believed – nobody CALLED THE COPS. You don’t waffle around putting people off with academic mumble about internal investigations. You CALL THE COPS.
Unless you’re a city state like McGill.
david1000 00:27 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
Does this add up or sound just strange?
“”The entirety of this process is covered by confidentiality regulations imposed on us by law, and as such, details or updates concerning particular cases cannot be provided to anyone outside those immediately involved,” Lee said.”
“The investigation was launched Dec.16, after an online petition signed by more than 50,000 people alleged that a first-year student had sexually assaulted several young women on campus last fall.”
“Seeing his name pop up on that Zoom list was a blow,” said another student, who was present in a Zoom class with the student under investigation. “I was fearful. I was extremely uncomfortable,” she continued.
CBC hasn’t spoken to any of the women who filed formal complaints about the alleged misconduct.
david1000 00:31 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
Does anyone seriously believe that a serial sexual assault artist at McGill – who had 50,000 people sign a petition to get him booted out – wouldn’t be referred to the cops, and that instead the school would cover up for that?
I’m not privy to what’s going on, but let’s wait to see what the facts are before the internet gossip crucifies someone, and the maybe the best institution in our city and province.
Michael Black 02:09 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
The CBC article seems vague so maybe it’s groping or inappropriate words. People have seen it’s not just them, but happened to others, so they want the university to do something about him. One time, it might not seem bad enough to call the police, but as one of a few or many like incidences, it does make them more uncomfortable.
I’m not trying to dismiss this, just find a reason, from the article, why it’s not a police matter.
A glance at thestudent newspapers doesn’t show anything, but I didn’t do searches.
Alison Cummins 13:34 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
It’s very difficult to be the only person to bring charges of sexual assault. Ideally there is at least one other survivor who can support your claim.
It’s *possible* that the university asks survivors whether they want to go to the police (no! please no! just get rid of him so I don’t have to drop out of university!) and keeps a file. When there are enough survivors in the file, they are contacted and asked again whether they want to go to the police.
Possible. Not particularly likely though. It doesn’t sound like it. But a policy like that would have the effect of increasing the number of police reports and successful prosecutions.
Alison Cummins 14:14 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
RE the likelihood that these assaults are not considered to be police matters because they are just inappropriate langage, creepy behaviour or casual groping—highly unlikely. I know today is different, but I can’t imagine multiple young women going to the dean to say that so-and-so called me a slut, or grabbed my ass at a party without being invited to do so. I just can’t imagine it. I can only imagine that what is being reported is coercive penetration.
In separate studies, thousands of young US men — college students and navy recruits — were asked whether they had done any of the following:
A. Used substances to get sex from an acquaintance.
B. Used violence to get sex from an acquaintance.
C. Used substances to get sex from a stranger.
D. Used violence to get sex from a stranger.
4% of the college students and 8% of the naval recruits reported B or C. Practically speaking, only D is prosecutable. (We can hope that the men who would otherwise have reported D were not part of the study because they were in jail.)
While most men reported only having done this once, maybe twice, some reported having done it four or more times. Remember, these are young men. They have busy lives ahead of them.
So, maybe 6% of US men are rapists; maybe 0.5% are serial rapists.
Let’s assume that nice Canadian McGill University students are only half as likely to be rapists than American college students are: that’s 2%. Maybe 0.1% serial rapists?
The McGill student body is 40k, majority women. We’ll say 16k men. If 0.1% of those men are serial rapists, that’s 16. Using statistics conservatively, it’s plausible that 16 individual McGill students have extorted sex four or more times each, whether using violence against an acquaintance or substances against a stranger.
By this reckoning it’s far more plausible that if it’s not a police matter, it’s because McGill doesn’t want to report rapes, than that lots of women are complaining to the dean that a fellow student called them a slut.
Kate 14:15 on 2021-01-26 Permalink
david∞ – McGlll doesn’t like scandal. In the past, they’ve tried to cover up or at least minimize allegations of sexual aggressions, particularly by their athletes, or by the sons of important families. Here’s a piece from 2013 in the McGill Daily, for example.