The Founding Team
We are The Survivor Collective, a survivor-led group formed to change the systems that continue to mishandle sexual violence.
We combine lived experience with research, ethics, and operational discipline to identify patterns, redesign safeguards, and build prevention into the system itself, so the same harm doesn’t keep happening.
We formed this team to turn experience into insight, insight into prevention, and prevention into lasting system change.
Justine Hopkins
Justine Hopkins was the first survivor to come forward publicly regarding an alleged repeat perpetrator and the first to uncover massive Telegram chats, websites, and archives exposing abuse. Drawing on her investigative journalism skills, she is driven by a mission for accountability, truth, and systemic change.
Her work spans advocacy, policy, and legal reform, confronting failures within police services, victim programs, and institutional responses to sexual violence and exploitation. Justine brings a rare combination of investigative rigor and systems fluency, exposing emerging trafficking tactics—particularly within nightlife, digital spaces, and encrypted platforms—while translating complex threats into actionable knowledge for communities and decision-makers.
Throughout this process, Justine has operated as her own legal advocate, researcher, and public strategist, navigating highly complex systems independently while building a strong academic foundation in political science, criminology, and forensic science. Her ability to synthesize evidence, identify patterns, and move quickly from discovery to action has made her a central force in accountability efforts well beyond her years.
Justine is widely recognized within the founding team as a decisive, execution-oriented leader—someone who makes things happen. Her judgment, stamina, and clarity consistently exceed expectations, and her contributions reflect the discipline and drive of a future legal professional. She intends to pursue law school and brings to this organization a forward-looking perspective grounded in lived experience, investigative depth, and an uncompromising commitment to survivor-centred reform.
Her presence on the team strengthens the organization’s capacity for evidence-based advocacy, policy engagement, and real-world impact, ensuring that survivor-led work is informed not only by experience, but by action, accountability, and results.
Melissa Heaton
Melissa Heaton brings lived experience, public accountability, and care-centered perspective to the founding team. She was the first individual to come forward publicly about another alleged repeat offender at the age of 18, a disclosure that played a critical role in revealing a broader pattern of harm and underscored the systemic barriers faced by young survivors when they speak out.
With a background in professional modeling, Melissa has firsthand experience navigating public visibility, scrutiny, and the pressures placed on survivors once their stories enter the public sphere. This perspective informs her understanding of how exposure can both enable accountability and create additional risk—insight that is essential to shaping ethical advocacy and survivor protections.
In the years following the assault and legal process, Melissa has undergone significant personal transformation and now works in long-term care. This work is grounded in empathy, patience, and dignity, and reflects a sustained commitment to care, trust, and human-centered support, values that translate directly into survivor-informed organizational culture.
Melissa contributes deep insight into the long-term impacts of sexual violence, the realities of early disclosure, and the complexities of reporting within systems that are often ill-equipped to protect those who come forward. Her presence on the team strengthens the organization’s commitment to safety, accountability, and reform that centers survivor wellbeing over visibility or optics.
Sarah Jezek
Sarah Jezek is a survivor and a founding member of this nonprofit. Her involvement is rooted in firsthand experience navigating Canada’s criminal justice system and in the lasting personal, professional, and health impacts that followed. Through that process, she witnessed not only how difficult it is to secure accountability, but how quickly survivors are left without support, protection, or recourse once formal systems conclude.
That experience shaped Sarah’s understanding of where systems break down — not just during investigations or trials, but in the long aftermath survivors are expected to navigate alone. It also clarified what is missing: continuity, accountability beyond outcomes, ethical safeguards, and structures that do not rely on survivors to carry the burden of reform.
In forming this organization, Sarah brings a survivor-informed perspective grounded in lived reality, alongside the ability to translate hard-won insight into durable systems. She contributes a focus on boundaries, consent, and accountability, and a commitment to building survivor-led work that is ethical, resilient, and designed to endure beyond any single case or moment.
Her role reflects a belief that survivor-led change must be both principled and sustainable — and that systems will not change unless they are confronted with evidence, pressure, and structures that make harm impossible to ignore.
Visit sarahjezek.ca for more information.
